October, 2007

"Trouble on the home front?" said an irritatingly familiar voice to his left.

Noah didn't jump, but he certainly tensed all over. For a half second, he thought about drawing his gun and ventilating Sylar, thoroughly. It was a vivid fantasy. He didn't do it, though. They were in a public bar, well-attended by the uninvolved, but more importantly, it wouldn't do much good. "Why can't I find you when I'm actually looking for you?" Noah growled, frustrated by weeks spent hunting this man, pursuing one dead end after another in trying to trap the killer and make him pay.

"Ah, you Bennets are all the same," Sylar smiled sweetly as he took the seat right next to Noah. "You want to be ready for me just like your wife was." Sylar lofted his brows at Noah with amusement. "And oh, she was so ready."

Many of the reasons that applied to his gun did not also apply to his fist. Noah sent it crashing into the side of Sylar's smug face with all of his might, hitting solidly enough to knock the philanderer right off the stool and onto the floor. Bennet lunged on top of him, punching, grabbing, and snarling while Sylar inexplicably played the role of innocent victim, hands up to block his face while he cowered and called for help. It was so unsatisfying. Noah didn't resist when well-meaning bystanders pulled him away, but he did manage one last kick.

Sylar was helped to his feet. Noah could see the way the man's eyes darted around, weighing the mood of the impromptu crowd that had gathered to break the fight apart. The bartender was calling for both of them to be tossed out. A couple patrons argued in Sylar's defense, as he hadn't started it. A few others were talking at once to both Sylar and Noah, trying to find out what had happened and why.

"He raped my wife!" Noah said loudly, trying to get control of the narrative before Sylar did. It seemed to work. People quieted fast, looking to Sylar.

"Why don't you get her in here and ask her what happened?" Sylar snapped. "It's funny – normally in a rape story, my version and hers would be different, but this time they're not! You're the one who can't handle the truth – and the truth is you're a shitty excuse for a husband!"

Noah stared at him, noticing what Sylar wasn't mentioning. "You don't know everything, do you?" He smiled viciously, deeply amused by the moment of uncertainty on Sylar's face.

"Throw them both out!" the bartender called again.

"He'll kill me if you do," Sylar said matter-of-factly, eyes never leaving Noah's, trying to figure out the puzzle Noah had given him.

"He's got a gun," observed one of the bystanders, having seen Noah's weapon when his jacket was opened as he was pulled off Sylar.

"Then throw him out," the bartender insisted about Noah, "or I'll call the cops. We'll throw the other one out," the bartender gestured at Sylar, "later." The crowd agreed. Hands moved Noah bodily to the front door, where he lost sight of Sylar.

XXX

Mid-October, 2007

"You were raped," Noah told her. She'd finally consented to talk with him more than a month after she'd kicked him out. He'd been busy chasing fruitlessly after the perpetrator, but there was another clock ticking down inside of her that he had to do something about before it was too late.

Sandra blinked at him across the dining room table. "That's not how I remember it." Fear colored her voice. "You said you wouldn't make me forget things anymore."

"I … didn't." For a heartbeat there, he toyed with the idea of spinning a bigger lie, that she'd been assaulted and he'd had the trauma removed, but there were too many dangling threads to deal with on the fly. "Do you remember Sylar?"

"The one who took Claire's ability in March – the one you said Arthur Petrelli let do it."

Noah nodded. "There are things I never told you about that. He had to cut her head open to do it. She had to die for him to get that ability."

"What?" Sandra's nostrils flared. "Why didn't you tell me? Obviously she didn't stay dead, but as her mother that's something I have to know! My God, Noah! He killed her?"

Noah thought about giving his reasons for protecting her from the information, how he didn't want to have to explain why he'd gone to work for the same tyrant who had ordered that of Claire, but he knew she wouldn't understand. Staying with the Company was one of the most complicated, fraught decisions he'd made in his life – and he'd made plenty of those. This matter with Sylar's baby was simple by comparison. He stayed on point. "Sylar is trying to hurt us again. He came here a few months ago looking like me – that was him with shape shifting. I did some research. He murdered a man named James Martin in Arlington, Virginia for that ability, just a few days before he came here and … saw you."

Sandra frowned. "That was you … in every way. I didn't … intentionally ..."

Noah shut his eyes briefly and bit his lip, knowing the level of intimacy she was implying. "Yes. I know. I've worked with shape shifters before. I … don't blame you."

"Blame me? How could you blame me?" She was on her feet in a second, angry and frightened. "You're the one who works with these people with powers! You're the one who knows what they can do! Cutting into people's heads? Making their wives commit-" She shook her head vehemently. "No!" she said firmly. "None of this matters. It's still your baby."

"No, it's Sylar's baby. It was him looking like me!" He was still sitting while she paced on the other side of the table.

"Don't you try to explain things to me, Noah Bennet! I have a baby inside of me and you are my husband. According to you, I didn't do anything wrong in getting it there. That means it's our baby!"

"If it's mine as much as yours, then I say we abort it."

"It's too late for that!"

"No, it's not."

"No! Not another round of those 'doctors' you said you went to." She threw her head back challengingly. "I'm not as dumb as you think! I figured it out a long time ago, Mister, which one of us had the problem, but when the doctor said I was pregnant, I assumed I must have been wrong about you being impotent. So what if it was someone else? It's still our baby!"

"No, it's not," he insisted, getting angry that this was taking so long to get her to understand such a simple concept. "As long as I live and breathe, a monster like Sylar is not going to father a child in this family, like some sort of god-damned cuckoo bird."

"Oh," she said sarcastically, "and are Lyle and Claire not your children either, then? Just a couple of cuckoo birds?"

He opened his mouth to reply, then shut it. She had him there. Suddenly, he saw what she was getting at. To her, Sylar being the father was as meaningless as Claire's biological father being Nathan Petrelli. "This is different. He really is crazy. Sylar has something wrong with him drives him to kill. He's a serial killer, a murderer who gladly cut into our daughter's head when Arthur Petrelli invited him to and now he's assaulted you. He's a psychopath!"

She frowned. "None of that is relevant to this baby, Noah," she said warningly.

"Yes, it is, because what's wrong with him is connected to his ability. The baby might inherit that ability. You know that's possible. What's certain is that we're not going to be able to avoid his involvement with this family any more than we did with the Petrellis. We've lost Claire. She's one of Arthur Petrelli's soldiers now. They're not letting me spend any time with her. They sent me all over the planet except anywhere I could try to protect her, or you, and see what happened because of it?" He pointed at his wife's stomach. "Claire's probably already killed people, Sandra. I asked someone who could see the future and was told this child will cause the death of two hundred thousand people, right here in Costa Verde." Sandra's eyes widened. Noah nodded. "I don't know how or why, but that's the future. What I do know is that Sylar is not going to leave us alone. Just like the Petrelli's, he's going to make sure that baby, his baby, is the same kind of person he is – the kind of person who violates on command and rapes people to make a point."

Sandra was silent for so long that Noah thought the matter was settled. He was just inwardly congratulating himself when she said, "You've never told me the truth about anything important like this. I don't think you're telling the truth now."

"Sandra ..."

"No." She sounded surer now. "You can't be sure. Just because the father's bad doesn't mean the baby will be. Nathan can fly; Claire can't. It's not always inheritable. I'm not killing an innocent child based on who they're related to or some possible future someone told you about! We saw how those paintings turned out – you died, but you came back, too. You don't know what any of this means!"

Noah grimaced, baring his teeth. "There will come a point where the decision is not yours to make."

Almost whispering, Sandra stood stock still and asked, "What the hell are you implying?"

"If you wait too long, things are only going to get worse."

She fixed him with a stare that was a match for his in balefulness. This time, she didn't order him out of the house. She scooped up her purse and left herself.