Bone Deep

by Sorrel

You know how they say you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your family? Well, that's crap." Claire/Peter, Peter/Claude, Niki/Nathan, Niki/DL, Matt/Mohinder, Mohinder/Sylar. Post-season one epic. For heroes bigboom.

2. Chapter 2

NIKI SANDERS- NEW YORK CITY

When you were seeing sunrise from the wrong end for the third time in less than a week, it was probably a clue that there was some kind of problem.

Niki lay flat on her back, rhythmically raising and then lower the bar over her head. The air in the garage was cool, the predawn light filtering through the door dim enough that she cast no shadow. This wasn't the first morning she'd spent in the garage, but it was the first since moving to New York, and the first she'd spent lifting weights instead of taking off her clothes.

It was a different garage, all in all, a different situation. It was just that Niki wasn't so sure she was all that different, and that was, most definitely, the problem.

Inside, she could dimly hear the sounds of D.L. waking up and starting his morning routine. Running water, the toilet flushing, the burble of a coffeepot. He wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed first thing in the morning, but eventually he was going to realize that she hadn't just stepped outside to pick up the paper and come looking for her.

Reluctantly, she laid the bar back into its rest and sat up. Only then did she notice that the weights had still been set for D.L.- which was about three times more than she'd ever been able to lift, before. And she'd been out here for- hours, probably, she wasn't sure how many.

Rolling her shoulders and flexing her biceps, she came to an obvious and unavoidable conclusion: she wasn't even tired. She felt as fresh and well-rested as if she'd spent the night snoozing in bed instead of pumping iron. She'd known she was strong; the holes she'd left in the wall completely on accident would have proved it even if she'd doubted, but this was different. This was really accepting her power for the first time in her life.

And if that wasn't a scary thought, she didn't know what was. Because accepting her power meant accepting Jessica, meant accepting the fact that she hadn't gone away, she'd just merged with Niki like that poor doomed shrink had been trying to get her to do, and if Jessica was still there then so were all the problems and complications she'd always brought with her. Not the raging psychopath part, thank God, but all the other things, the more subtle things, emotions and prejudices and experiences she didn't remember having that colored every interaction she had.

Like, Jessica had loved Micah, loved him enough to surrender to Niki for keeps in that room with Linderman, but she hated D.L., and him taking Micah away hadn't sweetened her temper any. Jessica hadn't hated all guys though, hadn't thought they were all dangerous, or pathetic losers to be led around by their dicks- she'd found time to like one guy, during the few short months she and Niki had battled for control of her body.

Which was why Niki was out here in her garage, courting insomnia yet again, listening to her husband make coffee in the kitchen and thinking about Nathan Petrelli. Because Nathan was just as much hers as Jessica's, and she really couldn't say the same thing about D.L.

MICAH SANDERS- NEW YORK CITY

Sometimes, usually about once a week, Dr. Suresh would show up with a big black bag of stuff that grumbled in Micah's ear every time he got close enough. He knew that there were chemicals in there, and needles and stuff, and that the grumbling things were little reader-type machines that went beep, but he didn't have enough medical know-how to get what they did, no matter how hard they tried to explain it to him in their little high-pitched voices.

He did know, because Dr. Suresh had explained it to him, pretty patiently for a grown-up, that he was taking blood samples for a DNA analysis, furthering his study of the genetic marker that gave them all their abilities. Micah didn't know that much about how DNA worked- they didn't really start teaching that stuff until high school- but he watched CSI all the time, even if his Mom said it was too gory. He knew that everyone had different DNA, like a fingerprint, and that you got half your DNA from your Dad and half from your Mom. There was something else about dominant and recessive genes that Dr. Suresh had tried to explain to him with this little grid thing, but it didn't make a whole lot of sense.

All Micah knew was that both your parents had to have the marker for you to have powers, and no one seemed to have the same power. So Dr. Suresh was always taking samples and running tests and talking about his "map" and how he was going to find more of them, and "advance human understanding of evolution by leaps and bounds."

Whatever.

Dr. Suresh always saved Molly for last, because he had to run other tests, to make sure that she wasn't getting sick again. Micah was all about Molly not being sick, but he didn't understand blood transfusions and genetic disorders any more than he understood how their powers worked. But he did know that Molly still hated needles, even though she should've been used to them by now, like the rest of them, and she hated even more having anyone watch when the needles came out, so when it was her turn she and Dr. Suresh went into her room and shut the door.

Bored, Micah wandered over to his computer and logged on. Hana would be there, if she wasn't busy hacking the CIA or whatever it was she did for fun when she got bored. When you didn't have a body to hold you back, she'd told him, you realized the internet wasn't really as big as all that. And she'd been stuck in there for months now.

SAMANTHA48616e61: Hey, kid.
MicahSanders500: Hey.
SAMANTHA48616e61: Molly with the doctor?

He slowly lifted his hands from the keyboard, staring at the words on the screen. That was… scary. Was she spying on him? She couldn't, could she? She'd told him that she could only look through security cameras and stuff, and they didn't have any of those in the house. And she couldn't talk to computers, not like he could; she just squatted on the servers. So how'd she…

MicahSanders500: Yes…
SAMANTHA48616e61: laughs Relax, I'm not snooping. You're just that predictable.
MicahSanders500: What does that mean?
SAMANTHA48616e61: The doctor comes by every Sunday, and every Sunday he and Molly go into her room and you get online and talk to me. I could set my watch by you.
SAMANTHA48616e61: You know, if I had a watch.

He frowned.

MicahSanders500: Not every week.
SAMANTHA48616e61: Every week. Trust me, I'd remember. I've got a lot of memory these days.

He groaned. God, not puns. He'd thought his Dad was bad enough when it came to puns, but Hana, man, she took the cake. It was scary.

MicahSanders500: Ha. Ha. Ha.
SAMANTHA48616e61: Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor.
MicahSanders500: Puns are worse.

Through the wall, he heard Molly's voice rise, almost but not quite loud enough for him to hear what she said, and Dr. Suresh's voice soothing in return. Micah strained his ears, but the voices fell back to murmurs again, and he couldn't catch anything.

Technically, he could ask Molly's computer to see if it had heard anything, because Mom had gotten them both microphones for Christmas, so her computer could probably pick them up pretty easily, if they were on the right side of the room. But that would be… cheating, somehow, or at least misuse of his powers. Mom had been pretty adamant about misusing his powers, as soon as she'd figured out just what his powers were. According to her, messing with the vote had been misusing his powers- not like he hadn't known that, but jeez, what did she expect him to do? That creepy girl was freaking strong for someone so skinny. He already tried to run away once, and that had totally bombed, so what was he supposed to do?

"That's what being a grown-up means," she'd said. Lectured, kinda. "Knowing the right thing to do, and then doing it. You're the smartest little man in the world, remember? I know you can figure it out."

Thanks, Mom, he'd thought. That helps a lot.

MicahSanders500: I think Molly's upset about something.
SAMANTHA48616e61: Probably getting blood drawn. I used to hate it, too, and I was in and out of the Company labs practically every day. Your friend has it easy.
MicahSanders500: Trust me, she doesn't have it easy. Her parents died, she almost died, and she had a serial killer looking to cut out her brain and eat it.

Sylar always had creeped him out. Thank God he was dead.

SAMANTHA48616e61: I was just joking, Micah.
MicahSanders500: Yeah, well, maybe it's not so funny.
SAMANTHA48616e61: And maybe you take things a little too personally where Molly is concerned.
MicahSanders500: What's that supposed to mean?
SAMANTHA48616e61: You don't exactly think about her like a sister.

He frowned at the screen again. His reply flowed into the chat window, faster than his fingers could move- in his temper, he'd accidentally attuned more to the computer than he'd meant, and it was picking up his reply straight from the source.

MicahSanders500: So what's wrong with that? She's not my sister.
SAMANTHA48616e61: She's your adopted sister.
MicahSanders500: Fostered.
SAMANTHA48616e61: It's not a big difference, and you know it. I'm just saying that you might want to pay attention to what you're thinking, because growing up in close quarters like that- it might not end so well. Better get over your crush while you still can.
MicahSanders500: I don't have a crush on her.
SAMANTHA48616e61: If you say so.

He sat back and scowled. Talking to Hana was always like this. Sometimes she'd be on his side, telling him things he wanted to hear, and sometimes she'd smack him down like this, like he was some kind of kid, but she was always giving advice.

Whether he wanted to hear it or not.

MicahSanders500: I don't want to talk about it.

Not that that'd ever stopped her.

SAMANTHA48616e61: Fine.

Well, that was easy.

SAMANTHA48616e61: That tracking program is still lurking. Are you sure it's one of yours? Because it seems to be sticking pretty close to you. And it's trying pretty hard not to let you see it.
MicahSanders500: You sure?

Hana didn't usually make mistakes like that. If she said it was hanging around him, then it was, not following her like it was supposed to. Did the program get confused? He thought he'd been pretty clear.

SAMANTHA48616e61: Yes, I'm sure. It's lurking around almost every time you log on, like it's trying to monitor your conversation or something.
SAMANTHA48616e61: Actually, it looks kind of familiar.
MicahSanders500: Yeah?
SAMANTHA48616e61: Yeah, I swear I've seen it before. The coding just looks like something I've seen before…
SAMANTHA48616e61: Oh, hell, I remember now. It used to follow me everywhere, back when I was with the Com
SAMANTHA48616e61: asdlkfho;jg
MicahSanders500: Hana?

SAMANTHA48616e61 has signed off.

Micah tapped his fingers restlessly over the keys. That was… weird. He didn't think he'd ever seen her sign off before. An away message, sure, when she was off hacking or whatever, but sign off… No. How could she, when she was permanently jacked in?

Maybe it was a glitch, he thought. Squatted in the wrong server, got so caught up in the tracking program that she got caught and had to take off. She'd be back in a little while.

In the hall, he heard Molly's door open, so he signed off too and went to see what was going on. She'd sounded pretty upset in there, and not like she'd freaked out over needles. She might not tell him, but at least he could ask, right?

He was so preoccupied with Molly that by the time Dr. Suresh had left, he'd completely forgotten about Hana, about the tracking program, and about Hana's last words before she'd signed off.

MOHINDER SURESH- NEW YORK CITY

Mohinder carefully settled the slide into place and bent his head to the eyepiece, slowly clicking the magnification up one notch at a time. He held his breath as the image started to come clear to his fiercely squinting eye.

"Aren't you supposed to be home in bed?" a voice said in his ear.

Mohinder almost put his eye out on the microscope. "What on Earth are you- Oh, it's you."

Matt settled one hip against the desk and put two fingers against his temple, screwing up his face in mock concentration. "I think I'm getting something," he said. "Yes, that's definitely a thought coming through. You… You… You wish I'd walk a little louder." He opened his eyes and grinned. "Was I close?"

"Why, you must be psychic," Mohinder said dryly.

"It's the shoes. Cop shoes clomp." He nudged at Mohinder's leg with a sneaker-clad foot. "You get used to making noise whether you want to or not."

"Yes, well, it's something to keep in mind." He glanced at the clock- after midnight. "What are you doing here so late?"

"What am I ever doing here late? I'm rousting you and sending you home. At least you seem to know what time it is, which begs the question."

Mohinder waited, but when nothing more was forthcoming, he said, "Yes?"

"If you know what time it is, then what the hell are you still doing here?"

All of his earlier excitement came back at Matt's question. "I've been comparing the latest round of blood samples I took from the Sanders family," he said. "And I believe I'm beginning to understand how some of their abilities work."

"Seriously? Hey, that's great." Matt's grin was as open and happy as the sunrise. "What'd you find?"

"Out of the four of them, three emit a sort of low-level energy field. The only one who doesn't have it is Niki."

"And what does that mean?"

"That her power is internal," Mohinder said. "It's not something that effects the outside world, only her body. I've taken samples of skin, muscle, and bone, and all none of it conforms to accepted norms. Her bones are far denser than they should for her size, her skin is tougher and less inclined to break or bruise- why, it's almost closer to animal hide than human skin, though the texture remains the same. Her muscles, of course, while visually no different, have somehow been altered to carry more weight- not only to compensate for the increased bone density, as we might see in someone else, but much father than that."

"Enough to swing around parking meters and kick holes in the wall," Matt said.

"Yes, exactly." Mohinder sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I only wish that Claire Bennet hadn't gone back to Texas. Her father wouldn't let me near the girl, and she's the only other one whose abilities should work on an internal frame as Niki's do. Everyone else I know would have to utilize some sort of energy field to create the effect that their powers would have."

Matt tilted his head. "How does that even work, anyway?"

"I'm not entirely sure," Mohinder admitted. "This isn't exactly a well-researched field of science, here. I'm essentially making it up as I go along." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "But the best explanation I have is that most other abilities are external- effecting things outside of the person's body. D.L. walks through other objects- how he does this, I haven't yet the faintest clue, but somehow he uses the energy field to manipulate matter, either in his own body or that of the thing he's phasing through. Micah literally connects with mechanical objects- communicates with them, even. Nathan Petrelli defies the laws of gravity and levitates, not just upwards but directionally, which is how he can fly. Molly uses a type of telepathy- nothing as strong as your own, but instead of picking up localized thoughts, she can search out and identify certain mental signatures, anywhere in the globe." He grimaced. "That's why I believe that Peter Petrelli is dead. If he were alive, Molly should be able to pick him up. He had one of the most distinctive abilities I've ever seen; it stands to reason that his mental signature would be the same."

"Don't let Nathan Petrelli hear you say that," Matt advised. "You know he still asks Molly every chance he gets. He hasn't given up."

"I know. Believe me, I know. I've been very careful what I say to him about the matter."

"Good," Matt said. "The man's got a temper. I'd hate to lose you."

Inexplicably, Mohinder blushed.

Matt laughed, kindly, and flicked one finger against his cheek. "I've never seen you blush before," he said. "It's kinda cute."

Mohinder made himself lean away before he did something unforgivably stupid. "It is not cute," he said with asperity. "Grown men are not cute."

"If you say so." Matt dropped his hand, but he didn't lean away. "So you've made a breakthrough. That's cause for celebration, right?"

Mohinder absolutely refused to blush again. That would just be adding insult to injury. "As you said, it's after midnight," he said steadily. "And the idea of going to a bar appeals to me very little. What, exactly, did you have in mind?"

"I've got a six-pack in the car," Matt said. "We can head back to your place and raise a few in honor of your accomplishment."

"I still remember the hangover from last time," Mohinder said. "Vividly."

"It won't be like last time," Matt said, and unbidden, a little shiver ran down his spine.

"Is that right."

"Yeah," Matt said. "It is." He smiled, but it wasn't the open, sunny smile that Mohinder was used to. This was more intent. "So. You in or out?"

"I'm in," Mohinder said, before he could talk himself out of it. "Just let me put everything away."

Matt leaned away, finally, and gave an expansive shrug. "I've got time."

Mohinder quickly gathered the notes and printouts that were strewn over his desk and sorted them with efficient hands, filing them away in the appropriate places. That finished, he pulled out the slide and tucked it away in the box with all the others.

"Whose is that?" Matt said, nodding towards the box.

Mohinder had forgotten what he'd been looking at when Matt came in. "It's yours, actually."

Matt went very still. "Really? What'd it tell you?"

"It's very strange, actually," Mohinder said, locking his desk drawers and pocketing the key. "You'd think that your power would need to work on an energy field, just as Molly's does, but as far as I can see it seems to have an internal effect rather than external. The molecular structure is one of the most orderly I've ever seen in my life."

"That is strange," Matt said. His voice seemed kind of flat, and Mohinder smiled at him as he pulled his coat off the hook.

"It is, yes. Don't worry, though. I'll figure it out in the end."

"I'm sure you will." Matt took a step back. "You know what? How about we postpone this celebration till tomorrow. You're right, it's kind of late, and I have to be up early tomorrow."

Mohinder blinked, surprised and not a little hurt. He'd thought… Well. No matter. It was foolishness anyway, and he'd known it. "I understand," he said stiffly. "You'd best be off."

"Right." Matt took another step back, paused, and clenched his hands in the fabric around his coat pockets. Then, without another word, he turned and walked out of the office.

Mohinder took his time turning off the lights and locking up, so as not to be caught in the same elevator on the way out. He couldn't think of anything worse than being trapped in a small, enclosed space with Matt just now.

He had no idea what had happened just then, but whatever it was, it had happened just in time. He'd nearly done something extremely foolish. Matt had saved him from something he'd regret.

That didn't explain why he felt so hurt.

CLAIRE BENNET- ODESSA, TEXAS

Sometimes, whenever one or both of them was feeling especially annoyed and/or homicidal towards the other, Peter and Claude went out to the backyard to "train."

She used the air quotes because she was pretty sure that their little grudge matches had very little to do with actual training, and a lot more to do with beating each other bloody for the hell of it. Claude was more comfortable with his powers than anyone she'd met, and he wielded any kind of weapon- gun, knife, great big stick, you name it- with equal comfort. Peter, likewise, needed about as much training with his powers as a fish needed to be taught how to swim, and he was a weapon. So she was pretty sure they were just doing it for fun, and maybe a little as a way to keep themselves from actually killing each other.

She really didn't understand them. The relationship they had just… honestly did not make sense to her, no matter how much she thought about it. Claude was theoretically Peter's teacher, but again, Peter didn't really need much teaching these days. Claude was charming and antisocial by dizzyingly quick turns, and the only one who seemed to be able to keep up with his mood swings was Peter. Peter would withdraw sometimes, into some black place in his head, and Claude was the only one who could pull him out. Claude had almost come to blows with her Dad a couple times in the last month, and Peter would suddenly be there at his elbow, calling him off with a word. They argued constantly, sometimes about the stupidest things, and she'd been afraid on more than one occasion that they would actually do each other serious harm, but they never quite tripped over the line. One of them would suddenly stop, get this strange smile on his face, and jerk his head towards the door, and the other would mirror back his smile and they'd both go outside.

She couldn't figure them out. But that didn't mean that she'd stopped trying.

She liked to watch them sparring, because they were unguarded then in a way that they never were otherwise. If it was one of those days when they were inclined to explosion, they usually ended up losing their tempers around late afternoon, which was when she was home from school. She was home a lot more often these days- sticking close to her family, some, but also for the much simpler reason of not being welcome at cheerleader practice anymore. Not that she wanted to go and spend time with those shallow, brainless sluts, but… Yeah.

They were both wearing coats today, wrapped up against the chilly February afternoon. Even Texas got cold sometimes. Not often. But sometimes.

Peter's coat was black (of course) with a round, high-necked collar that fell down to his thighs. He didn't bother to button it- him and his freakishly high metabolism- and as a result he looked more like a fashion model on the runway than someone trying to ward off the cold. Or maybe like something out of The Matrix.

She couldn't see what Claude was wearing, because he was invisible. The strangeness of the scene abruptly struck her: Peter with his GQ good lucks and fashion sense, battling it out with what looked like thin air. Every once and a while Claude would land a blow, and a bruise or cut would bloom across Peter's face and then disappear.

If anyone else were seeing this, she thought, they'd think they were crazy. Sometimes she wasn't so sure that she wasn't crazy, that she hadn't hit her head months ago when she'd stumbled down the back steps at their old house. She'd broken her arm, and it had healed, and it had been the first time she'd realized just how much a freak she really was. What if everything from that moment on was just one long, strange hallucination?

No. She watched too much TV. Her life was too weird to be anything but the truth. Her powers, maybe she could come up with that on her own- what teenager doesn't want to be invincible, right?- but the rest of it- no. No. Her real father was a Congressman who could fly, and her mother was a con artist who set things on fire? She was saved from a super-powered serial killer by a cute guy that she crushed on who turned out to be her uncle who died and came back and brought along a strange, misanthropic invisible man who used to be her father's partner at a secret government organization created to deal with people like her?

No one could make this stuff up.

Out in the yard, Claude shimmered back into visibility. He leaned forward, sneering, saying something undoubtedly clever and biting. Peter just smirked and winked out- but Claude reached out and snagged his shoulder, and he blurred back into sight. Claude said something else, not letting go of his shoulder- Peter leaned forward, intent- Wow, they were getting really into each other's personal space- Claude looked like he was about to kill Peter-

And then Peter leaned up and slowly, deliberately, bit Claude's lower lip.

It was a move so unmistakably sexual that even Claire couldn't deny it. She jerked away from the window, her cheeks burning, but she still saw Claude stand there and- do nothing. Peter rocked back onto his heels, looking unbearably pleased with himself, and Claude- Claude-

Claude smiled.

It couldn't be. It couldn't be.

But it was.

Claire whirled away and ran, away from the window, back to her room and safety where her world made sense. She didn't want to think about this. She didn't want this to have happened at all, she didn't want to know, but more than anything, she didn't want to think about it. She just wanted to curl up into a ball and pretend that the outside world didn't exist.

She didn't look back, so she didn't see Claude staring at the spot so recently vacated, and she didn't see Peter, running to the door to follow her.

NATHAN PETRELLI- PETRELLI MANSION, NEW YORK CITY

"Nathan," his wife told him, "I want to talk to you."

He froze in place, caught in the middle of trying to escape quietly up the back steps. "I'm really tired, Heidi," he said, wondering if he could talk his way out of this. "It's been a long day."

"This won't take long," she said, steel in her voice, and he acquiesced with a sigh and followed her into the sitting room, leaving his briefcase sitting in the doorway. To his fanciful, overtired mind, it seemed like marking his escape route.

She waited until he was sitting on the uncomfortably hard loveseat and then said, without preamble, "I want you to talk to Simon."

He arched an eyebrow. "He's not old enough for that just yet, Heidi."

"Not about sex. For Christ's sake, Nathan."

"Well, your 'talk' seemed to have a capital 't' just there, so I think I can forgiven for the mistake. What do you want me to talk to him about, then?"

"He's at an important age, Nathan," she said. "He needs to be forming alliances, making the right sort of friends."

He looked at her with fond exasperation. "He's nine."

"Don't tell me that you weren't playing politics at his age, because I won't believe it."

"Yeah, and look how I turned out. I'm not trying to make Simon grow up to be President, Heidi. Or Monty either, for that matter. I think they've got a little time before I need to start putting on the thumb screws."

"Would you stop cracking jokes and just listen to me for a minute?"

Immediately he made himself look serious, as serious as she apparently was. "I'm listening."

"Simon's at a delicate age. He's just starting to grow out of some of his more childish impulses, and the choices he makes now are going to be the choices he makes for the rest of his life. He needs a firm hand to guide him and make sure that those choices are the right ones, to ensure his future. He needs his father to be there for him, Nathan. And you need to lead by example, because he hero-worships you and you know it."

To be honest, Nathan had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. "What about Monty? Aren't you going to give me the speech about what he needs?"

She sniffed, delicately. "Monty's a good boy," she said. "He does what he should and doesn't let Simon's problems tie him down. It's Simon I'm worried about."

Privately, Nathan made a note to have a talk with Monty, because he really didn't want either of his sons to grow up to be like him, tripping up their brother just so they could push ahead in line. "Then I'll talk to Simon," he lied. "In fact, I'll go talk to him right now."

"Annie's giving them their baths," she said.

"Then I'll read to them once they're in bed," he said. He stood and made himself cross the room to her and kiss her on the cheek. "Goodnight, Heidi."

She didn't move. "Goodnight, Nathan."

He forgot his briefcase on the way out.

Annie had finished with the baths by the time he got upstairs, and had already gotten the boys into their pajamas. Monty was in bed with his handheld when Nathan looked in to say goodnight, and Nathan decided to put off the "talk" because with that thing in reach, Monty wasn't going to pay a damn bit of attention anyway. When he got to Simon's room, though, his younger boy wasn't in bed, waiting for a kiss or a goodnight story.

He was standing in the middle of his room, looking scared and determined, his little chin up in the air in a way that was disturbingly reminiscent of Peter with a confession to make.

"Dad?" Simon said, his eyes wide and dark. Nathan instinctively crouched down, trying to get closer to his level. Simon couldn't have done anything that wrong, not bad enough to put that look on his face. He was just a kid.

"Yeah, what is it?" Is this what Heidi was really talking about?

"I've got something I need to show you."

CLAIRE BENNET- ODESSA, TEXAS

She didn't look up when he came to stand in her doorway. She hadn't known he was following her, hadn't heard him coming up the steps- he could be cat-quiet when he wanted, a learned side effect of invisibility- but as soon as she'd felt the little puff of displaced air that said person in the doorway, she knew it was him. It was inevitable, right? Like a scene out of a cheap romantic comedy.

"Claire," he said.

"Why didn't you tell me," she said, almost despairing. "God. Was it all some huge joke? Let's laugh at Claire, the poor idiot girl who couldn't see what was going on right under her nose?"

"God, Claire, no." He came over to stand next to her, and she finally looked up at him through tear-blurry eyes. He looked alien, completely out of context in her happy pink bedroom. Like he didn't belong in her life at all. "It wasn't like that. I just… couldn't figure out how to say it."

"I guess," she said grudgingly. "But… Claude, Peter? Sometimes I think you two don't even like each other, how could you possibly be…" Dating? Fucking? Performing an ancient rite of mating? She bit her lip to stifle a semi-hysterical giggle. "Together. Like that."

"There's more than meets the eye," he said. That bit of cliché-on-a-stick was almost enough to make her smack him, but not quite.

"Yeah, I got that, thanks. I was actually hoping you could tell me something that meant anything." God. Did it have to be Claude? It wasn't that she disliked him, exactly. More that he didn't seem to care overmuch that she existed in the same universe as he, much less the same house.

Peter looked at her for a long moment, then said, "He saved my life, Claire."

"You?" She hadn't meant to sound quite so scornful, but the idea of Peter needing saving was a little ridiculous.

"Before the explosion," Peter said. "He taught me how to control my powers, back when I was losing it all over the place. I doubt I would have lasted long enough to face Sylar if he hadn't beaten control into me, literally." He sighed and sat down next to her on the bed. "So yeah. He saved my life."

"So this is, what? Gratitude?" She knew she was acting like a brat. She was just too hurt and angry to care.

"It's not like that and you know it."

"So what is it like?" she cried, losing patience fast. "Explain this to me, Peter, because I'm just not getting it and if I'm going to get my heart broken, I'd at least like to know why."

He gave her a surprised look, but she thrust her jaw forward stubbornly. She wasn't sorry she said it. It wasn't like he hadn't known- Jesus, she wasn't exactly subtle, he had to have known.

"I suppose it's because I need him just as much as he needs me."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she said, exasperated. This was what Peter considered an explanation?

"Look, it's like this," he said. "I like taking care of people. I didn't spend all those years training to be a nurse just to spite my brother, no matter what Nathan likes to think. I became a nurse because I knew it's what I was best suited to doing. I don't want to take over the world, Claire, or even a little corner of Manhattan. I'm not my brother, and I'm not a superhero."

"Could've fooled me," she said.

"Won't catch me dead in tights," he teased. "But seriously, that's not me. Anything I do, I do it because I'm looking out for the people I care about. And don't give me that look. That includes you. You know it does."

"I know," she whispered. She might've pretended otherwise, once or twice in the privacy of her own head, but she'd never gotten far. She knew he cared about her. She didn't need him to tell her that.

"But here's the thing. Forget the fact that I'm your uncle, or the fact that you're underage. You've got a year till eighteen and neither of us is going anywhere anytime soon and given enough time we'll find a way to rationalize it, make it okay and it's not. We both know that part already. That's not the biggest thing."

She didn't say anything.

"I need to take care of people," he said. "And Claude needs to be needed. We need each other. And I can't say that about you and me. I may need you, but you don't need me."

"That's not true!" she burst out. "How could you even think-"

"You don't," he said, gently, but very firmly. "Love isn't need, though sometimes they happen at the same time. You love me, I'm family and I saved your life and I like to think my charming personality had something to do with it too, but you don't need me. You're a whole and healthy human being, all on your own."

She opened her mouth to reply, and then closed it, reconsidering. Hadn't she been thinking, just ten minutes ago, that she didn't get the two of them? She'd wished for understanding, and here he was explaining it to her. The least she could do was think about it. Peter sat there silently, waiting with all visible patience for her to reach her conclusion.

And the more she thought about it, the more it fit in with everything she'd already noticed about them. Claude was… broken, she thought. She knew a little of his history with her Dad, and she could make a few good guesses about what he went through, during all those years he had to hide. He lived his life inside-out, mercurial and strange, and only Peter got close because Peter needed him.

And Peter- how could she have missed it, she'd known he came back different but it hadn't clicked for her, the way he lurked close to her whenever he was in the house. She'd just been pleased that he wanted to spend so much time with her and she hadn't bothered to think about why. Or the faraway look he got in his eyes sometimes- not like he was remembering things, or stuck in the past or whatever weird romance-novel cliché she'd used to explain it, but actually reading someone else's thoughts- hers, or Claude's probably. Peter was incredibly codependent, she'd seen it with some of her friends' high-school boyfriends but she hadn't recognized it in Peter. Of course Peter would attach himself to someone who needed people as desperately as he did. In their own fucked-up way, it was probably a match made in heaven.

"So what do you want from me?" she said finally. He opened his mouth, and she added, "Seriously, Peter. This is cards-on-the-table time, right?"

His smile was almost… respectful, in a way she'd never seen from him. "I don't know, exactly."

"Peter."

"It's complicated, alright?"

She was uncompromising. "Uncomplicate it for me."

"I… need to be close." He twitched, as if he was only getting the words out by force. "I need to be there for you. To make sure you're okay. Kind of all the time."

He needed from her all the things he got from Claude, she thought. But he wouldn't allow her to take anything else in return, because she didn't need him on a deep enough level for him. He'd spend the rest of her life like this, oh-so-close but not close enough, not all the way. He'd take what he needed and go on his merry way, leaving her to get her needs filled somewhere else. If she said yes right now, she was probably dooming herself to an entire lifetime of being never- quite- happy.

"But I know that's totally unfair, and I really shouldn't ask it of you, but I just-"

"Okay," she said. He blinked.

"Okay?"

"Okay," she repeated. "You- whatever, you need from me, Peter. I promise."

The look in his dark eyes was so intense that she shivered. "Promise," he said, slowly. "You're sure?"

"Yeah. I'm sure." She tucked her legs up to her chest and folded her arms around her knees. "You have my promise."

His shyly blooming smile was one of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen. "Okay," he said.

"And now," she said steadily, "if you don't mind, I think I need a little time to myself."

His smile faded a little bit, but not all the way. "I understand," he said.

He really didn't.

"I'll get out of your way," he said. "I just…" He stood up and looked at her, hands thrust into his pockets. "Thank you," he said, finally, then turned and walked out of her room.

She rested her chin on her knees, and did her level best not to feel anything at all.

NATHAN PETRELLI- PETRELLI MANSION, NEW YORK CITY

There was a long, suspended moment where he just stared at his son. He wanted to laugh, or make a smart remark, anything to lessen the tension that was ratcheting ever higher in the room. But this was Simon. Monty, now, with Monty he would have laughed, because Monty would fake a problem in a heartbeat if he thought he could get something out of it, but Simon wasn't like that, and Nathan needed to take this seriously, no matter how childish it might seem to him.

"It's okay, Simon," he said. "Just tell me what's wrong."

"You're going to get mad," Simon said, with all the grim despair he could muster in his little-boy voice. Nathan wanted to smile, but he knew this wasn't a smiling matter.

"I promise I won't get mad." Simon gave him a speaking look that he'd learned right at his mother's knee, and the urge to smile got even stronger. Nathan's lips didn't even twitch, though. He had an excellent poker face, and the fact that Peter used to- that Peter always saw right through it was just a sibling-related fluke. "Well, I promise not to shout too much, anyway."

Simon gave a serious nod, as if to say that this was acceptable, and then took a step back, into the clear middle part of the room. Nathan instinctively leaned away, not sure what was about to happen but worried nonetheless-

-and a pair of wings exploded from his son's back.

"What the hell," he said blankly.

"I told you you'd get mad," Simon said tearfully. Nathan immediately forced himself out of shock, told himself to stop behaving like a jackass in front of his youngest, and reached out, gripping one skinny shoulder firmly and bending his head till he could look Simon in the eye.

"I'm not mad, Simon. I'm just a little… surprised, is all." Understatement of the millennium.

"I'm a freak," Simon said. He shuddered all over, and the wings folded back into nothingness. "No other kids do stuff like this. I'm never going to have any friends."

This must seem like the end of the world to him, Nathan thought. It had seemed like the end of the world to him, and he'd been an adult when he first flew. "I can personally guarantee that at least two other kids can do stuff like you," Nathan said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," he said, smiling. "Micah talks to computers. Molly can find people."

"Oh, Dad," Simon said. "That's not like this."

"Ah, but it is," Nathan said. "Besides, Micah's Dad can walk through walls, and his mom has super-strength." Inwardly, he cringed at the use of comic-book term, but they hadn't yet figured out anything else that fit. "I know lots of people like you." Jesus, Nathan, just tell the kid the truth: he came by his freak gene honestly. Only don't phrase it like that.

"So can you just do wings?" he asked instead, fighting the urge to find a wall and slam his head against it. "Or can you do other stuff too?"

Simon brightened at the idea of someone being interested in his talent. "Not just wings," he confirmed. "Watch this." He held his hands out, fingers spread wide, and a second later they- melted. There was no other word for it. The clear and concise outline of his fingers and palms blurred away into a flesh-colored haze, then resolved again a moment later into a pair of huge, grotesque lobster claws.

Nathan said, "I've got to tell Annie to stop letting you watch Discovery Channel," which was the first thing that came to mind. "Put those things away."

Simon pouted, but a moment later his hands were hands again. "You said you knew a lot of people like me," Simon said. "Like who?"

Nathan wished desperately that someone, anyone else was having this conversation. "Like me," he finally forced himself to say. "I can fly."

Simon was delighted to receive this news. "Seriously?" he said. "Show me!"

Well, okay, that was simple enough. "Hang on a second, let me get into launch position." He unfolded himself from his kneeling position, knees creaking (not as young as he used to be) and, after a moment of concentration, started to hover. He'd never really done this just for the hell of it; every time he'd flown it'd been because he needed to, not because he wanted to. It was surprisingly easy once he just decided to do it.

Once his feet were about eight inches off the ground, he grinned down at his son. "So?" he asked.

"Cool," Simon breathed.

Suddenly, intensely, Nathan wished that Claire were here. He hadn't yet told Heidi, or the kids, that he had a daughter, and not just because he knew that Claire wanted nothing to do with him. He'd avoided talking about it because talking about Claire meant talking about all the other strange and bizarre things that had happened to him in the last six months, all of the people and abilities and how close New York had come to being blown up. He didn't want to talk about it to Heidi because then it would be real. Even after everything, it seemed he still hadn't accepted the truth.

But of course it was real, and here was the incontrovertible truth, right here in front of him. His youngest son could change shapes, Nathan could fly, his brother could do everything, apparently- and would again once Nathan finally found him- and his daughter could heal herself.

To hell with this, he thought. I'm going down to Texas to find her. I'm going to be a father whether she wants another one or not.

He got Simon calmed down and into bed, and after waiting around for him to fall asleep- it only took a few minutes, poor kid had worn himself out- he went downstairs to tell Heidi. He was going to do this right, this time. He was going to take responsibility, and that started with telling his wife.

Except she wasn't there. He searched the mansion, but he couldn't find her.

She'd disappeared.

MICAH SANDERS- COLDWOOD ACADEMY, NEW YORK CITY

"It's cold," Molly grumbled. She was sitting on the stone steps in front of their school, waiting to get picked up.

"Dad'll be here soon," Micah told her. The truth was, he was pretty cold too, not that he was going to admit it to a girl. A man had to have some pride, that's what his Dad always said. So if he kept standing in order to keep his butt from freezing against the ice-cold stone, well, no one had to know why but him. "Just as soon as he gets the car started."

"So, never," she said with gloomy certainty. "Can't you talk to it?"

"It's too old," he admitted. "Newer cars have a computer built in, but Dad's is just a plain engine, and it can't hear me."

"So basically, we're depending on the guys at the garage for our ride home." She let her head fall dramatically backwards. "We're doomed."

Micah wanted to argue- those guys were Dad's friends- but it was pretty much true. "Maybe Mr. Petrelli can come and pick us up," he said, without much hope.

"The driver came by and picked up Simon and Monty half an hour ago," Molly pointed out. "You know what that means."

"He's working late, yeah, I know." Micah gave up on standing and flopped down next to Molly, his arm brushing against hers. "So… I Spy?"

"I Spy, with my little eye, something beginning with a 'C,'" she intoned.

"Car," he fired back, disappointed.

"This is going to be a short game," she said.

"Okay, fine. Maybe you want to talk about why you were so upset last time Dr. Suresh came over, instead." He'd asked what was wrong, but she hadn't said anything, and Dr. Suresh had had that pinched-up expression grownups got when kids didn't tell them what they wanted to know.

"It's nothing," she said, which was a sure sign that it was something. Molly got upset about things that didn't matter. "It's not a big deal."

"You were really crying, Molly. What happened?"

"IthinkI'mgoingcrazy," she said all in a rush.

He paused a second to decipher that into plain English, and then looked at her sharply. "Why do you say that?" he said carefully. If anyone had reason to go crazy, it was Molly, but he'd always thought that she was pretty normal, for a girl.

"I keep feeling like someone's following me," she said.

"Did you tell Mom?" he said immediately.

"No way! They'll just send me off to a shrink or something. I don't want to 'talk' to somebody, I just want to stop freaking out."

"Yeah, but what if you're not imagining things? Mom and Dad should know." He thought back, with a shiver, to waking up in that hotel room and realizing that the woman in front of him looked like his Mom, but wasn't his Mom, wasn't even Jessica, but was someone else entirely. "It's not like it'd be the first time."

Her eyes widened with horror as she looked over at him. "Like the Boogey Man?"

Oops. "No, the Boogey Man is gone," he assured her, as quickly as he could get the words out. "I meant more like people who want to use our powers and stuff. Like how that lady wanted me to change the election."

"Oh." She relaxed a little, but not very much. "So you think that someone might really be following me?"

"Maybe," he said. "We're telling Dad, okay? As soon as he gets here."

She looked scared, but mutinous. "What if he doesn't believe me?"

"Trust me," Micah said, "He'll believe you."

He was suddenly reminded of Hana, of the tracking program she'd said was following him. She didn't make mistakes like that, he remembered thinking, and he'd been right. The tracking program wasn't the one he'd set to follow her- or if it was, someone had reprogrammed it. The tracking program was following him, the same way someone was following Molly. Someone was after them.

…back when I was with the Com-

The Company. She was talking about the Company. He didn't know much about it, but Dr. Suresh had explained a few things, and Officer Parkman had warned them, but they'd never run into anybody, nobody had ever come after them…

Until now.

He grabbed Molly's arm, gripping a little too hard in his panic. "Why don't we wait inside," he said.

She looked very young as she said, "Micah, what's going on?"

She was depending on him to take care of her, but it was too late. The taser was already firing. And Micah wasn't his Dad, he couldn't phase through it, and he couldn't protect Molly at all. He was too late, and they were both in big, big trouble.

The world went black.

NIKI SANDERS- NEW YORK CITY

The moment D.L. walked in the door and shut it behind him, no two small children in tow, Niki knew.

"They weren't there," D.L. said grimly. "I talked to their teacher, he said they'd still been waiting on the steps last he checked, which was five minutes before I got there."

"Someone took them," she said. Not again. God, not again, she can't do this again-

"We don't know that," he said. "They could have wandered off. They could have gotten a ride home with someone and they just haven't gotten here yet." He didn't look like he believed it much either.

"Micah wouldn't just wander off, not even if Molly would let him," she said fiercely. "They're gone, D, someone took them. Someone took my babies."

"You're right," he said heavily. "Fuck, I know you're right, I just-" He stopped. "Last time we knew who took him, Nik. But Linderman's dead. How the hell are we supposed to get them back now?"

"I don't know," she said. "But we've got help this time, okay? It's not just us." She reached for the counter and picked up the phone. "I'm gonna call Mohinder."

"Well, he better fucking pick up," D.L. growled as the phone trilled in her ear. "This is not the time for him to be locked up in his lab."

The phone clicked. "Hello?" said Mohinder, sounding vaguely sleepy. "Niki?"

"Micah and Molly are gone," she said.

"Gone?" he asked, sounding suddenly more alert. "What do you mean, gone?"

"I mean kidnapped," she said. "Mohinder, please, you've got to help us."

"I'll call Matt, he's a policeman, he might be able to help," Mohinder said. "It'll be okay, Nikki," he said, sounding more confident than he probably felt. "We'll get them back."

"We'd better," she said, and hung up the phone. "He's calling Parkman," she told D.L.

"Good," he said. "Maybe the cops can make themselves useful for once." He started towards the back of the house.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to see if there's any surveillance on our house," he called over his shoulder, and disappeared through the back wall.

Left alone in the kitchen, Niki stood with her hand trembling over the phone, knowing that there was only one other thing that she could do. D.L. wouldn't like it, but she was just about past caring what D.L. would or wouldn't like.

She picked up the phone and dialed.

Nathan answered on the first ring, brusque and impersonal. "Petrelli," he said shortly.

"Someone took my kids," she blurted, then held her breath, waiting. She knew he wouldn't but somehow, she was terrified that he'd hang up on her- they were past that, it wasn't like that anymore, but she was still so, so scared that he wouldn't care enough to-

"I'll be there in two minutes," he said, and the phone crashed down on the hook.

Gingerly, she hung up the phone on her own end, then just stood and breathed, one hand pressed to her chest to keep from sobbing with relief. Nathan was coming. Nathan was coming, and he'd make everything all right.

MOHINDER SURESH- NEW YORK CITY

Matt didn't answer. Of course he won't answer, that just makes this evening perfect, Mohinder thought. He sat for a moment, not entirely sure what to do, then took a chance and called the local police station. Perhaps Matt was still out on call, and they would be able to reach him.

"Hello," he said, when the lady answered. "My name is Mohinder Suresh. I'm trying to reach an officer Matthew Parkman? He's not answering his cell, and I thought that he might still be out on patrol. Is there any way that you could reach him for me?"

"Sir, that's not really my job," she said gently.

"It's something of a family emergency." Molly wasn't technically Matt's family, but then again, she wasn't technically Mohinder's either. It was close enough.

"Alright, well, I'll try," she said. "If you'll just hold on for a minute," and before he could answer in the affirmative there was a beep and then the incredibly awful hold music that seemed to be universal.

She came back a minute later, sounding worried. "Sir, there's no Officer Parkman working in this state," she said. "There was an Officer Parkman who worked in Los Angeles, but he went missing a month ago and his body turned up in the Manhattan Morgue. He's buried out in LA, if you want I can find you the graveyard information-"

He clicked the phone off, then pressed it to his pounding heart. He started dialing again immediately, Matt's cell phone number again, praying that he'd answer, that he'd have an explanation. Because he was thinking something so terrible, so impossible and wrong, that he hoped like hell that Matt would pick up the damn phone and tell him that none of it was true.

MICHAEL DUPONT- NEW YORK CITY

Distantly, Michael heard the phone ringing. He knew he should pick it up- it was Mohinder, it was important- but he couldn't move. His hand was moving busily over the page, his eyes wide-open and distant, as all the possible futures came together into one, shining truth that exploded from his hand onto the page:

The man in blue was coming. He was finally coming home, and things were going to change.

CLAUDE RAINS- ODESSA, TEXAS

That old adage about eavesdroppers not hearing anything good of themselves still held true, Claude thought.

Claude needs to be needed.

Trust Peter to boil it down like that, he grumbled, almost amused. To take years of isolation and betrayal and a complete inability to connect to another human being in any way that meant anything and cut it down to one single, devastatingly accurate sentence.

He was surprised at the level of self-awareness that Peter seemed to have, though. Claude wouldn't have thought that Peter understood just how fully fucked-up he was, but apparently Peter knew full well- he just didn't care. He accepted his problems as just another quirk of his makeup and went on like nothing was wrong.

He had to get that from his brother, Claude thought. That blithe acceptance that hey, I'm not a good person and that's okay as long as I mostly don't screw with other people, because Nathan Petrelli seemed to have that in spades. Not that Claude had met him. Not that he'd had to. It was all right there in that smug, deceptively open grin that had been plastered all over New York. Claude understood the Petrelli family from the distance, which was where he liked to keep them, mostly. Peter was the exception. Then again, Peter seemed to be the exception to all of Claude's rules. He still wasn't sure how he felt about that, but he'd figure it out eventually.

"So Claire seemed to handle that pretty well," Claude opened. The two of them were in the backyard again, technically for a sparring session, but they'd both known it was more of a gossip session. (Not that Claude ever used that word, not unless he was being sarcastic. There were some aspects of humanity that just creeped him right out.)

"She's a tough girl," Peter said. Almost lazily, he ducked away from the swing Claude took at his face. "She's different from the other girls her age."

"Well, yeah," Claude said. Punch, punch, block. "How many teens you know can take a walk off a tall bridge for the hell of it?"

"That's not what I meant," Peter said reproachfully. "She sees things differently. She's more mature."

"And you don't think that has anything to do with her power," Claude said flatly. He took the opportunity to punch Peter in the face, because that's what they were here to do, at least in theory.

Peter shook off the blow, the red mark forming and fading on his cheek in the space of a breath, and looked thoughtful. "Some of it," he said. "Some of it's just because she's Claire."

Claude gave up on hand-to-hand and picked up the pole that was sitting next to him. "You're a nutcase," he said, testing the bend and give of the bamboo. Peter didn't have any problem with his telekinesis, but it was still a fun exercise, and Claude liked to hit things when he was frustrated. Whether the thing was Peter or a wall of Peter's power, he didn't much care. "You're asking her to give up any chance of ever moving on and getting over you, just because you're messed up in the head."

"No I'm not," Peter said.

"Yeah, you are." Claude shoved the end of the pole against the ground and leaned on it. "You're you. And you'll flit around like it's all a great lark, popping in and out of her life without any warning, and she'll look forward to you showing up and hate the thought of you leaving and you'll just do what you always do, no matter what she wants. And she promised you, because she's young and stupid, and she'll just take it and be miserable the rest of her life."

"It doesn't seem to make you miserable," Peter pointed out. He looked calm, like he wasn't bothered by what he was hearing, but Claude could see the sparks in his eyes. Peter was pissed. "And you've never had any trouble walking away when you've had enough."

"I'm not seventeen years old, you twat," Claude said. "I'm not related to you. You give me what I need just the same as I do for you. It's balanced. You're asking her to have a relationship without her gettin' anything out of it but a lot of heartache."

He didn't have anything against the girl, but he thought it was damn stupid what she'd done the day before. You should never make promises you can't keep- and you should never keep promises that break your fucking heart, and that's exactly what she'd done. She'd live out her life just exactly as he'd told Peter, and that wasn't right. That wasn't right at all.

What he didn't know was if she understood what she'd promised. He tended to think not. She was still just a kid, no matter what Peter seemed to think. Peter was an idiot when it came to Claire, and she didn't seem to have much common sense around him either. So it wasn't that he didn't like her- he just thought she'd done something she'd regret for the rest of her life, and there wasn't a damn thing any one of them could do to change it, because Peter was who he was and you could walk (or run) away from him, but you could never really leave. Claude had learned that the hard way.

"It's going to be fine," Peter said, but the look in his eyes said that he wasn't as confident as he sounded. "Trust me."

He did trust Peter. He just thought Peter was an idiot sometimes, no matter how powerful he was. If he couldn't avoid trouble, then Claude liked to go into it with his eyes wide open, and Peter, for all that he was basically a good person, would never be anything but trouble.

He didn't get a chance to say any of this, though. Through the whole conversation, Peter had been holding his "ready" stance, relaxed and waiting for anything that Claude could throw at him, but suddenly he jerked all over, like the beginning of a seizure, and his eyes went wide as dinner plates, going hazy and unfocused and twitching this way and that, following something that wasn't happening. Claude had seen Peter see the future, and it didn't look anything like this. His eyes went milky white when he was having a vision, whereas this was more like he was looking through someone else's eyes, seeing something that wasn't right in front of him.

After a moment, it faded, and he refocused again, looking at Claude. "It's started," he said, and headed for the house.

Claude stood for a moment, gobsmacked by the sheer, useless ambiguity of it. "What the hell does that mean?" he shouted, but Peter didn't slow down, so he had to run after him. Boy could really move when he was in a hurry.

Peter went straight to the kitchen, where Claire was sitting at the island, working on something out of a textbook. "What's up?" she said, and then seemed to catch the sense of urgency that soaked into the air. "Peter?"

"We've got to go to New York," he said. "I found Linderman's silent partner. And she's taken some of us."

"She?" Claire asked, completely confused. Claude was right there with her. That sounded as if Peter-

"I know her," he said grimly. "She's a clairvoyant, and she's got help. She'll know we're coming. She'll be ready for us."

Claire understood at the same moment Claude did. He wouldn't be this upset if the lady in question weren't family, and Peter had always wondered just how far in his mother really was. "I don't think she's going to be ready for this," she said, and jumped off of the stool, reaching out to wrap one hand around Peter's wrist with a white-knuckled grip. "Because I'm going with you."

"Claire-" Peter started.

She didn't give him a chance to finish his protest. "Don't argue," she said. "You'll need all the help you can get."

Maybe she really did know what she was doing, Claude thought.

Peter could have ripped her away from him as easily as a thought, but he didn't. He looked down into her blue eyes and nodded.

She just grinned fiercely and reached out to grab Claude, completing the circle. "Are we ready to go or what?" she said, and Claude couldn't help but admire her in that moment, and he realized, with a sinking sensation, that he was going to like her after all.

NIKI SANDERS- NEW YORK CITY

It was a little closer to five minutes when Nathan landed in their backyard, skidding across the grass and stumbling to a halt by her back steps. That's going to be a bitch to replant, she thought distantly, looking at the carnage of greenery he'd left in his wake. He could land properly, she'd seen him, but he was in too much of a hurry to bother now.

"I had to make sure Simon and Monty made it home," he said, panting as he leaned against the porch railing.

"Did they?" she asked. She hadn't even thought about that. Nathan usually had some extra security in place when he wasn't driving the kids himself, but then again, the school the four of them attended was supposed to have some hefty security measures as it was, since it where the children of billionaires and politicians attended. Just how had the kidnapper gotten in far enough to take Micah and Molly?

"No, they made it home safe," Nathan assured her. "But Heidi is missing."

"Your wife?" Of course she knew that Nathan was married, she'd even met the woman in question, but Nathan seemed pretty distant from her. "She's not one of us. Why would they take her?"

"As a hostage? I don't know." He shook his head. "She was gone last night, but we'd, well, we'd just had a fight, so I thought she'd gone off to my mother's to sulk. But she hasn't come home, and Harrison doesn't remember her leaving."

She'd met Nathan's butler, as well. If Harrison didn't remember her leaving, she hadn't left through the front door.

"So it's my kids and your wife," she said through numb lips. "I thought this was about their powers, like before, but it isn't, is it? They're taking hostages from us. They want something for us."

"Well I for one don't intend to give it to them," Nathan said grimly. "We're taking them back, now, today. I want this over with."

She sometimes forgot that underneath the oily politician and the sneaky lawyer, he was a man who was raised to privilege, power, and command. She was remembering it now.

"And how the hell do you propose to do that?" D.L. said, hearing voices and coming out to meet them. "It's not like we know where hey went."

"I know where Heidi is," he said. "They're probably being held in the same place."

From the angle of D.L.'s jaw, he didn't like being upstaged, or whatever the hell macho thing was going on in his brain right now. "And how do you know that, huh?"

Nathan looked about as sheepish as she'd ever seen him. "After everything that happened last time, I had tracking chips put in the both of us, and the kids, too," he said. "I thought something like this might happen again."

D.L. looked like he wanted to say a few choice things about that, but restrained himself. He wanted their kids back, she knew. If working with Nathan was the fastest way to do that, then he'd be able to put everything aside and do it. A pragmatist, that was D.L. She was the same way.

"Then where are they?" he rumbled.

"Warehouse downtown," Nathan said. "We can be there in half an hour if we leave now."

"Wait a minute," she said. "Let's not rush off unarmed, yeah?"

D.L. just smiled and flexed his fist, as if she'd forgotten the look on his face when he'd pulled out part of Mr. Linderman's brain through the back of his skull. "I'm always armed," he said. "And so are you."

Nathan just lifted his battered-looking suit jacket and showed the lethal-looking pistol holstered at his waist.

She didn't even want to know what his life was like if he was carrying concealed. "Okay, fine," she said. "We gotta call Mohinder, though. He lives near there. He can help."

"Call him on the way," D.L. suggested, and tossed her the keys.

MOHINDER SURESH- NEW YORK CITY

He arrived at the warehouse at approximately the same time as the others, though he'd come on foot. "They're somewhere in there," Nathan said, nodding towards a cluster of three of the larger warehouses, huddled together. He tapped the screen of his little handheld grimly. "Can't get any more specific than that."

"That's plenty good enough," D.L. said. "If we split up, we can search pretty fast." He gave it a judicious look. "They're not that big."

Niki twisted off the lock of the first door. Instead of a huge storage space, it'd been partitioned off into what looked like dozens of rooms and criss-crossing hallways.

"Definitely split up," she said, busily breaking the locks on the other doors.

"Mohinder can't go on his own," Nathan said.

"I beg your pardon," Mohinder said, offended. "I'm hardly a child."

"You're also not like us," Nathan said patiently. "We've all got something that we can use to defend ourselves. Do you even have a gun?"

"No," Mohinder admitted. He was a doctor. He'd been raised believing that it was anathema to take another life. He liked to think that he could defend himself, but bitter past experience had proved him wrong. "All right, that's sensible," he finally said. "Who am I to follow?"

"D.L. would be best, I think," Nathan decided. "You can go through walls if there's trouble," he said to D.L.

"Yeah, fine with me," D.L. said with thinly disguised patience. "Can we just get the hell moving? My kids are in there."

"And my wife," Nathan said. "Alright. Niki, you want the one on the left?"

"On it," she said, starting off.

"We'll take the right," D.L. said.

"And I'll take the middle," Nathan finished. "Yell if you find them." He started off in his chosen direction.

D.L. grinned fiercely at Mohinder. "Here we go, Doc," he said, and disappeared through the wall on Mohinder's right. Mohinder hesitated a second, then set off down the hallway.

Here we go indeed.

NATHAN PETRELLI- NEW YORK CITY

It didn't take him all that long to find the kids. Some of the doors were locked- he'd have to get Niki or D.L. in here to check those, since unlike Peter, he'd never dipped into his criminal side and learned how to pick locks.

(He didn't know for sure, about Peter. But when they were younger, Peter had had a disturbing knack for getting into his locked room every time he was home from college, and he'd assumed that Peter had learned it from the rough crowd he'd hung around with. Despite the fact that he disapproved, Nathan had never told their father. He still didn't know why.)

Five minutes into the search and he happened onto a large storeroom, mostly empty except for a few shelves bolted onto one wall in the corner. He stuck his head in and almost passed on by, but at the last minute he turned around and went to investigate the shelves. There might be a trapdoor or something hidden in the shadows, he figured.

There was something a lot better than a trapdoor hidden in the shadows. Micah and Molly were tied to opposite sides of the shelf, their heads lolling slackly to the side. He immediately went to his knees next to them, shaking fingers checking for a pulse, but they were both alive, just unconscious. The tiny pairs of marks on their necks suggested a taser. When he got his hands on the bastards that did this…

Well, he'd hand them over to Niki. She'd make sure that the men who took her children were appropriately punished. The thought cheered him right up, and after yelling for one of the others- no answer- he started tugging at the knots that held them to the steel shelving.

A minute later, he was cursing the fact that he didn't carry a knife, because those knots were tied by someone who knew what they were doing, and Nathan couldn't get them loose. He was debating the choice of leaving the kids temporarily alone to see if he could find one of the others when Niki came running in, leaving the choice moot.

"I heard you yell- Oh, thank God, you found them," she said, and crossed the room so fast she practically left skidmarks. She landed jarringly hard on her knees next to him, but she didn't seem to notice as she reached out and checked their pulses the same way he had a minute earlier. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," she chanted, and on the last repetition she leaned over and kissed him square on the mouth out of sheer relief.

He kissed her back. He couldn't help it. She'd gotten close and he'd gotten a half-familiar whiff of her soap-and-sweat smell, and then her soft lips were on his and he was lost in memory, remembering the feel of her toned, curvy body gyrating against him, pressed over him in the dark. He could resist anything but temptation.

There was a second of surprised stillness where he might have been able to get ahold of himself, pull back, and apologize- but then she kissed him, too, and all of a sudden the kiss was somewhere completely different from where it had started. Nathan wasn't ashamed to admit that Niki was the one who found the self-control to pull away. Both of them were breathing hard.

"This is bad," she said, and he couldn't help but agree. Sure, he'd thought about it, but it's a lot different when it's not in the privacy of your own head, when it's out there and it definitely happened and this time both of them remembered everything.

"How about we just get the kids out of here and find Heidi," he said, and she nodded. She snapped Molly's ropes one-handed and he scooped the little girl up into his arms, turning to leave as she did the same for her son.

He stopped as he saw Heidi standing in the doorway, a man with a jackal grin and a skinny teenage girl behind her, neither of whom he'd ever seen before, surrounding her. "Heidi," he said hesitantly. He wasn't exactly sure what was going on here- were these people others who'd been taken? "I'm so glad I found you. We're just about to find Mohinder and D.L. and get out of here."

"I'm sorry, Nathan," she said, and the hell of it was, she really did look sorry. "But I can't let you do that."

Behind him, he heard Niki's breath catch in her throat, and his heart sunk right down to the bottom of his chest.

Well, fuck

MOHINDER SURESH- NEW YORK CITY

Things went quicker than he could have expected, thanks to D.L.'s presence. Most of the doors were locked- which was only to be expected, as this did seem to be some sort of storage space- but locked doors were hardly an obstacle for a man who could walk through walls, and they went through the assorted hallways of the large building at a cracking pace.

Finally they got to the final room, near the back, and stopped. "Well, I guess they're not here," D.L. said, sounding for all the world as if this were a personal failing on the part of the kidnappers, not putting the children where he could find them. "We should go back to the front, meet up with the others. Maybe Niki found them." Mohinder couldn't help but notice that D.L. didn't include Nathan in that possibility.

"Maybe we should check out back," Mohinder suggested, tapping the wall with his fingers. "Nathan's receiver only said that they were in this area, correct? They aren't necessarily being kept inside one of these buildings."

"And this is why you're the smart one," D.L. "Hangon a sec, lemme check it out." He put one hand on the wall and then flowed through, Mohinder watching with fascination. It never got old, seeing D.L.- or any of them, really- doing what they did. He liked to think that he'd helped them somewhat in the past few months, not just with blood tests and microscopes, but by suggesting training exercises and such that he'd found in the pile of his father's notes. But the truth was, by the time he'd come along they'd all known how to use their powers, and most of what he did was secondary at best.

D.L. came back through a moment later, shaking his head. "Nothing," he said. "It's a parking lot. I had a look around, but…" He shook his head. "Wanna head back?"

"I suppose we should-" Mohinder said, and then blinked in astonishment as a lean young man seemed to sprout from thin air next to D.L., who looked fairly surprised as well- especially when the stranger took advantage of his shock and promptly bashed him over the head with the bat he was holding in his left hand. Mohinder turned away to run, but not before he saw D.L. crumple to the ground.

It wasn't fast enough. The last thing he saw before he hit the ground was the shark-like grin on the young man's face.

MICAH SANDERS- NEW YORK CITY

"You were the one who took the kids. Why? Why would you do that, Heidi?"

Micah regained consciousness slowly, the sound of voices far-off in his ears. "Oh, Nathan. This is what I do, Nathan. Did you really think that I spent all my free time being a politician's wife?"

The first thing he did, before he could even open his eyes, was to check around him for Molly. There- he could feel her small body curled against his back, relaxed in a way that she only ever was when she was truly asleep. Still knocked out, then, but alive. He could feel her radiating warmth that combated the chill of the cold floor they were lying on.

"I'm going to kill you," he heard his mom saying, his voice low and scary like it got when she was Jessica. He didn't think she was Jessica now, though. Just really, really pissed.

"You can try," the strange woman said. "I think, though, that you'll find you won't succeed."

"I was wondering why you kept spending so much time with Mom, when you never seemed to like her," Mr. Petrelli was saying. "You were working for her."

"No," the woman said. "I was working for Mr. Linderman- at least until his death last year, when I stepped into his place. Your mother was simply familiarizing me with some of his projects that I had lost track of."

Mr. Linderman. Micah went cold all over at that name. He remembered Mr. Linderman, remembered the last time he'd been taken, by a woman with his mother's face, and what she'd made him do. She hadn't hurt him, not really, but she could have, if he hadn't thrown the election. And she would have done it because she was loyal to Mr. Linderman.

Mr. Linderman was dangerous even after he was dead.

"Mom introduced us," Mr. Petrelli said. He sounded almost as mad as his Mom did. "I'd forgotten that. Was this whole thing planned from the start?"

"Yes, though I wasn't supposed to step into Mr. Linderman's shoes for another ten years or so," she said. "He wasn't supposed to die yet. I hear I have you to thank for that, bitch," she added, apparently to his Mom. "And I haven't forgotten."

That's it. He had to do something, or this woman was going to kill his Mom.

He reached out with everything he had and latched onto the building's security system, trying to use it to piggyback out to the internet. He needed to get to Hana, he needed her help, he wasn't even awake yet, couldn't even move, how could he possibly do anything on his own? Please, Hana, he begged. Please.

She didn't answer. She wasn't there at all. He was on his own.

No you're not, someone- no, something whispered back, it was the security system. It was reaching into his head and seeing what was happening, and for a moment he was both himself and the system, seeing all the rooms in the building prismed against the backs of his eyelids, and then it focused and he could see what was going on.

He was lying in the middle of the room- it was really creepy looking at his body lying there like that- with Molly behind him. His Mom was standing over them, with Mr. Petrelli next to her, and just inside the doorway there was a pretty woman and a mean-looking man and a girl all standing together and looking threatening.

Micah focused on the woman. He recognized her, finally- it was Mr. Petrelli's wife, he'd seen her on TV- and he knew that she was the one who was doing this. She was the one who'd hurt Molly. She was the one who wanted to hurt his Mom.

Them, he thought, and just as the mouth of his body on the floor curved into a smile, the doors slammed shut, locking everyone in.

Thank you, he thought, and the security system purred as he slid away.

He went back into the dark of his own body, but he could hear shouting and the the wet, pulpy sound of flesh hitting flesh, and he knew his Mom was fighting back. He'd done what he could, and she'd take care of the rest. Everything was going to be okay.

And then he passed out again.

MOHINDER SURESH- NEW YORK CITY

Mohinder regained consciousness with a screaming headache, and the realization that he was tied up in a dark room and as close to alone as he could be with a large man unconscious at his back. He spent a useless few minutes trying to pull at the ropes, but whoever had knocked him up and left him here had known what he or she was doing, and he wasn't going anywhere any time soon. He turned his attention to D.L., because if he could get D.L. to wake up, D.L. could phase through the ropes like they were nothing and then they could get out of here. He wasn't going to hold his breath waiting for Nathan or Niki to rescue him, not considering how fast the- whoever it was- had taken the two of them out.

There was an inherent danger in being tied up, he reflected. It meant one of two things: the person who did the tying was planning on coming back, in which case they probably didn't have the best intentions, or they weren't planning on coming back at all, in which case you were left to starve to death if you weren't able to free yourselves. Neither option was particularly palatable.

Oh, cheer up, he told himself. You'll die of thirst long before you die of starvation.

Such a ghoulish line of thinking wasn't doing him any good, but it was hard to turn his mind to positive things when the man behind him was his one chance for freedom and couldn't be woken.

"This wasn't how I planned my life to go, you know," he said conversationally. "I'm a scientist. I did my research and I taught my classes and that was it. I had an admittedly brilliant but crazy father, and even I thought his theories were ridiculous. That certainly goes to show how much my judgment can be trusted, doesn't it?"

There was no response, but of course Mohinder hadn't expected one. Sometimes one just needed to speak, whether or not someone was listening.

"But then, we all know that my judgment is less than stellar, don't we?" he continued. "Look at what I've managed to accomplish since I've come to New York. I practically sold my father's research to some very dangerous men for the change to stop Sylar. I almost got myself killed, more than once. I almost handed over my father's research to the killer in question, and I even thought he was a friend." He laughed, bitterly, and the laugh turned into a couch that made his head hurt even worse. "It can be said that the one useful thing I've done in my time in this country is to save Molly's life. At least that's worth it, right? I hope so."

The darkness around him pressed close, as if it were listening. Mohinder closed his eyes, letting what little he could see disappear. "At least I didn't love him," Mohinder said. "I liked him, and I trusted him, and I thought I'd found someone who could understand, but I didn't know him long enough to love him. That would have been so much worse in the long run, really."

He didn't think about Matt. He'd have to, eventually, but right now he couldn't face even the idea of him.

"It's a shame he turned out to be evil after all," Mohinder mused. "Zane, or Sylar, or Gabriel, or whoever he was, could have been one of the most important people on the planet, if he hadn't tried to destroy part of it. He's just like Peter, really." If Peter were still alive. "Only he's evil. It's a shame," he repeated, blankly. He felt like he was starting to lose his mind.

He didn't like the dark.

Suddenly, there was someone behind him. Mohinder didn't know how he knew; there had been no footsteps, no sound of someone approaching, but he'd felt the displacement of air or perhaps sensed the hovering feel of another human being in his space, and he reacted by opening his eyes and trying to pull away- but of course he couldn't, not with his wrists and ankles tied together and tethered to D.L.

He couldn't see who it was. The room was too dark, and the man- somehow Mohinder knew it was a man- was standing directly in his blind spot, just far enough behind him that no matter how he twisted, he wouldn't be able to catch a glimpse. There was a brush of air over his face, like a hand skimming a centimeter of his skin, and then it was gone. Mohinder strained to hear something, anything.

Without any warning, the ropes fell away. He whipped around, already reaching out-

But whoever it was, was already gone.

NATHAN PETRELLI- NEW YORK CITY

When the security system suddenly engaged and the steel door slammed shut between them and freedom, Nathan knew that this was the best chance they were going to get. The noise and suddenness of the door surprised the others, and he hissed "Niki, now," but of course she was already moving, because she wasn't just beautiful and dangerous, she was smart, too.

She lunged forward and socked the stranger in the jaw, hard enough to break it except his face seemed to ripple, absorbing the blow, and he turned around with a sneer. Nathan reached down and grabbed both children, holding them awkwardly against his sides as best he could, and started to edge around the action. If the door opened again, he needed to be in a position to run.

Heidi spotted him, though, her beautiful face swiveling around like a predator's to fix her cool eyes on him. "Nathan," she chided, just as she did when he came home late or left his briefcase at the office, and he knew that he was sunk.

"Heidi," someone said behind him, sounding immeasurably sad, and Nathan almost sprained something turning around because that was Peter's voice.

There he was, his little brother, in the flesh, a jagged scar across his face and a smile just below it. Peter, he thought, and despite all the confusion and the general hopelessness of their situation, for one moment he couldn't feel anything but relief. Peter was alive.

Behind him were Claire, who had one hand on Peter's shoulder and the other wrapped around midair, like she was holding onto someone that Nathan couldn't see. Invisible, Nathan thought immediately, remembering Peter's disappearance in his office that day, and he knew that he'd finally met Peter's mentor.

"Hey," Peter said, just as if he'd gone around to the corner store to buy some milk. "Need some help?"

Nathan choked on a laugh. "You could say that," he said. In the center of the room, Niki was doing her best to beat Heidi's thug brainless, but he just absorbed every blow like his body was made of Play-Doh, and she was having a hard time of it. Nathan shifted to get a better grip on the unconscious children, and immediately there was someone standing next to him, a tall, scruffy-looking stranger that faded back into visibility as he scooped Micah out of Nathan's grip. "We gotta get them out of here," the man told Peter, who nodded.

"I've got it," Peter said, and he took a step forward. The teenage girl Heidi had kept next to her reacted by throwing up a large glowing bubble around herself and Nathan's wife- force shield, no wonder Heidi had kept her close. Peter ignored her and instead reached out a beckoning hand towards the heavy security door, which groaned, bulged, and then split open down the middle, sagging away on its hinges.

From outside the door, a blur shot through and resolved itself into another young man as he cannonballed into Peter, knocking him down. Peter reached out to knock him aside, but the boy was gone again before Peter had a chance, moving so fast that he seemed to disappear.

"Get out of here, I've got this," Peter called, and Claire reached out and grabbed Nathan's arm, tugging him sharply towards the door.

"You heard the man," she told him. "Go with Claude and get those kids out of here."

Nathan assumed that Claude was the invisible man who even now was waiting impatiently, Micah cradled in his arms like he weighed nothing. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to watch the door in case any more surprises come through," she said.

"No way," Claude snapped, before Nathan had a chance to do the same.

"They're out for blood," Nathan added, because he had no doubt that Heidi wasn't planning on letting any of them out of this warehouse alive. Claire didn't seem to care about the warning, though- just tossed off a reckless, gorgeous grin, Nathan's grin, damn it, she was so much his daughter, and said-

"What are they gonna do, kill me? Get out of here!"

Nathan went. He held Molly's lax little body close in his arms and followed Claude's back out of the door, trying to ignore the sounds of fighting behind him. Peter could handle himself, Nathan thought. If Peter could survive a nuclear explosion, Peter could handle a teen speedster.

But he couldn't help but think about the way Claire's smile had disappeared when she turned back to the fight, and he thought- when this is all over, I'm going to be her father whether she's ready for me or not.

NIKI SANDERS- NEW YORK CITY

Once the kids were safely gone, Niki was finally able to bring all of her focus to the man in front of her. He was grinning at her as she tried to attack him and failed, since fighting him was like fighting a pillow, and the grin made her madder and madder. She was going to take this man out. These people thought it was okay to take her kids. They deserved to die.

Off in the corner of her eye, she saw Peter (Peter!) having his own problems with the other guy. Peter's opponent seemed to have some kind of super-speed, and Peter couldn't lay a hand on him.

"Stop trying to punch the guy and just knock him out!" a female voice called from the doorway, and Peter seemed to get what she was saying because a second later, the blur that was the boy in motion halted, and he crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

That's right, Niki thought. Peter had telekinesis.

"David!" her opponent cried, going absolutely solid for a pivotal moment, and without letting herself think, Niki reached out and snapped his neck.

He fell dead on the floor, and she looked down at his body, trying to dredge up some kind of horror or regret, but she felt nothing but satisfaction. This is the first person I've killed, she thought, but it was hardly Jessica's first, and she was Jessica too, now. Jessica thought that this was right.

Pretty much, so did Niki.

Opponent gone, she slowly turned around, bringing her focus to bear on the woman who was responsible for all this. Heidi Petrelli was still hidden away behind her little force shield, and she looked about as unworried as it was possible to be.

Niki planned to change that.

She collected herself, preparing to leap forward and beat the woman's brains in, but Peter's hand curled around her arm and she realized that she wasn't going to be able to break his grip. "I've got this," he said.

"She took my kids," Niki growled.

"She's family," Peter said sadly, and with a spasm of horror Niki thought, Nathan. She didn't even want to think about what must be going through his head right now. His entire marriage (his very happy marriage, her brain supplied) was a lie, and his wife had just betrayed him in the worst way possible. But she somehow knew that despite all that, Nathan wouldn't want her dead.

For Nathan, she turned away and left Peter to deal with his brother's Judas.

"Heidi, Heidi, Heidi," Peter said sadly. "Why'd you do it, Heidi? Was Linderman's big dream really worth this?"

Next to Niki, a blonde teenager that Niki remembered was Claire said, "We came as soon as he figured it out. Sorry we were almost too late."

Peter was just in time, as far as she was concerned. "How'd he even know?"

"He says Heidi's a clairvoyant," she said. "He finally managed to use her own power to track her."

Behind the force shield, the woman in question just smiled and said, "Oh, yes. Nathan may have stopped you from exploding, but the world can still be fixed. It just needs the right hand to guide it."

"Nathan didn't stop me from exploding, Heidi," Peter told her. "He just kept me from destroying New York. He knew that there was no good reason to kill that many people, that there wasn't anyone who deserved to gain power from that kind of act. You're not the right person for power, Heidi. Neither is Nathan. You're just a self-deluded pawn in Linderman's twisted game."

"He loved me," Heidi flared. "I owed him everything. He saved me."

"He paralyzed you, Heidi," Peter said. Claire sucked in a surprised breath. "He was the one that caused your accident. He put you in that wheelchair."

"I always knew," Heidi said, "that he was going to heal me." She had the beautiful smile of a politician's wife. Her eyes were absolutely insane. "He promised."

"You're a clairvoyant," Peter said. "You were keeping tabs on us the whole time."

She nodded. "Up until you died," she said. "I lost track of you then. How'd you disappear?"

Peter didn't answer her. "You shouldn't have done it," he said. "You had a chance to get out when Linderman died. You should have taken it."

She shook her head. "I couldn't."

"That's really too bad."

She seemed to read something in his voice, some new determination that hadn't been there before. "Do you hate me, Peter?" she asked, coming close to the inside edge of the bubble and looking into his eyes. "I was just doing what I had to do. I'm saving the world. You of all people should understand that."

"The world doesn't need saving," Peter said, and he wasn't smiling. He wasn't smiling at all. "And I could forgive you that. But you betrayed Nathan. And that I can't."

Heidi drew away from the edge, back towards the center of the bubble where it seemed safer. "I'm not going to go quietly," she warned.

"That's okay," Peter said. "I'm not a big fan of quiet, myself."

"Uh-oh," Claire whispered. "He's going to be nasty." And Niki, who didn't really know Peter at all, had to agree.

Peter reached out and laid his palm against the curved edge of the force field. It hissed and spat sparks of electricity, but Peter didn't move his hand, even when the smell of burning flesh filled the air. He closed his eyes for a long moment, while the girl's face went slack with terror, and when Peter's eyes snapped open, they were the exact same green as the wide, frightened ones on the inside of the circle.

"Got you," he said with satisfaction, and began to glow.

Niki had seen him glow before, and she had to force herself to keep still, because this was different. It was almost worse to watch Peter's own force shield slowly grow away from his body, pressing, pressing, pressing against the girls till the first one began to shrink.

In a matter of seconds, it barely covered both Heidi and the girl, and Heidi looked at Peter, looking frightened for the first time. "Please," she said.

Peter just smiled, and the girl's bubble collapsed with a soundless pop. The girl collapsed with it, and Peter let his own shield fade.

"I'm sorry," he told Heidi, and then he stepped forward, and held her struggling body close to his own, and disappeared.

Beside her, Claire looked very, very pale, her mouth drawn down tight at the corners. "Let's just find the others and get out of here," she said, and Niki couldn't agree more.

MOHINDER SURESH- NEW YORK CITY

It took hours before Mohinder was able to tear himself away and head for home. Molly, in particular, was clinging to him like a little monkey, refusing to let him out of her sight. Not that he blamed her, honestly. She'd had enough losses for one short life, and tonight had been far, far too close. If it hadn't been for Peter Petrelli's timely arrival and intervention, the outcome of their attempted rescue could have been very different.

Micah was the one who finally coaxed her away and into Niki's arms, leaving him free to make his hasty apologies and escape. He looked back over his shoulder as he left and saw her, Niki kneeling beside her, deceptively strong arms wrapped around her, D.L. with his hand on Niki's shoulder and Micah with his hand on Molly's. It was a moving and oddly revealing family portrait, and not for the first time Mohinder knew that there wasn't really much place for him there. Off to the side of the picture, perhaps, the honorary uncle, but never really part of the family unit.

Well. Molly was better off.

He hadn't brought his car, as the warehouse where the children had been taken was actually quite close to his run-down apartment building, but now he was wishing that he had, since he was quite dreading the silent walk home. He needed to in bed now, to let the kind oblivion of sleep steal away the morass of doubts and suspicions and fears that would not abate, but he had several blocks before he'd be home, and until then he was stuck with his thoughts.

After a moment, he realized that the sound behind him was footsteps, and he paused, his heart beating a little fast. Surely someone wasn't following him, surely it was just his imagination-

The footsteps stopped when his did. He swallowed hard, and slowly turned, half-wanting to give him pursuer a chance to hide. He did not want to have the confrontation that he suspected was coming, not here, not like this. Not ever if he could have his way, but definitely not now.

Whoever it was didn't hide. Instead a dark shape seemed to melt out of the shadows, resolving itself into a tall, dark-haired man.

"Sorry," Peter said. "Didn't meant to scare you, or anything."

"It's quite all right," Mohinder said, trying to get his heart back out of his throat. "I merely thought you were someone else."

"Yeah, I figured," Peter said, and Mohinder wondered what, exactly, he meant. "I just came to walk you home. Figured we can't be too safe just now."

"I'm fairly certain that you have vanquished the most pressing of our enemies," Mohinder said, but he stepped sideways, making room for Peter to walk beside him. Peter needed no other invitation and immediately joined him, striding beside him in easy silence for the short walk to his building.

Peter even walked him up to his door, despite his protestations that it was quite unnecessary. "Can't be too cautious."

"Shouldn't you be getting back?" Mohinder grumbled. He wanted to be left alone. "It's your brother's life at stake."

"Nah, he's safe enough," Peter said amiably. When Mohinder had left, a blonde teenager that he vaguely remembered as Claire and a tall, unkempt man he didn't recognize had been bickering fiercely, with an overwhelmed-looking Nathan stuck in the middle. Mohinder had assumed that Peter would step in and mediate, since it was his best guess that the two newcomers had arrived with Peter, and therefore he must have some degree of control over them. "He survived my high school years; he can handle Claire and Claude." Briefly Peter looked doubtful. "Probably."

"I'm sure he'd be glad to hear you say that," Mohinder said dryly. He stopped at his front door and held up the key. "And here we are, with me home safe and sound."

"I wasn't just walking you up for your protection," Peter said gravely, and Mohinder closed his eyes, wishing with all his might that he wasn't having this conversation just now. He didn't want to think about it. He couldn't think about it. "You've already figured it out, but Sylar's here. In New York."

Mohinder opened his eyes. "Yes," he said. "I know."

"You do know he's not a threat, right?" Peter grabbed his upper arm when Mohinder would have stepped away. "I'm serious. I got clairvoyance from Heidi, and Sylar's power helps me master all my powers quicker. I've been using it to keep an eye on him for months. He's not the same person, Mohinder. You of all people should have figured out how he reacts to near-death experiences- complete and total personality shifts, right? He's not Sylar anymore, or Gabriel Gray. He's someone completely new."

Mohinder opened his mouth to object, then took a deep breath and closed it again. This was Peter. No one was as strong as Peter. His father never could have dreamed that someone like Peter existed- this powerful, and this honorable. He could trust Peter.

"Are you certain?" he said.

"I'm absolutely certain," Peter said. "He doesn't even remember being anyone else- or if he does, he doesn't seem to associate it with himself. I've been looking through his eyes for three months, Mohinder. And the only person that he's seeing? Is you."

"I- Thank you," he said. "I'll certainly take that under advisement."

Peter gave him a worried look from under his lashes. But, "Please do," was all he said, and then he gave Mohinder's shoulder a reassuring squeeze and vanished- not the blinking-out of a teleport, but the slide-to-nothing disappearance that meant he'd gone invisible. He was probably halfway down the stairs, by now. Mohinder felt foolish, standing in the hallway alone and staring at the spot where Peter had been, so he unlocked the door and went inside.

Matt was sitting in his living room, Mohinder's clock face-down on the table in front of him. The back had been taken off, and Matt was holding a tiny screwdriver in one hand.

Matt said, "I fixed it for you."

His mind absolutely blank, Mohinder replied, "I wasn't aware that it needed fixing."

"Just a few seconds off," Matt said, "But I could tell." He slotted the plastic backing into place and carefully screwed in the tiny fastenings, then got up and hung it back in its accustomed place on the wall. Mohinder watched him in absolute silence, unable to think of a single thing to say. He couldn't think at all.

Finished, Matt slid the screwdriver back into his pocket and turned around to face Mohinder. He smiled, a little shyly, sweet and earnest and Oh God, that was Zane's smile, right there on his best friend's face. That was Zane's smile.

"Be seeing you, then," Matt said, and crossed the room to let himself out. He passed quite close to Mohinder, who didn't move, didn't even twitch, until he heard the door shut and click, as if it had been locked, but of course Matt was on the wrong side and didn't have a key-

He ran to the window and looked out, standing quite still, breath bated, until the front door creaked open, several floors below. Matt had taken the stairs, then, the elevator always took forever.

Sylar stepped out, an unmistakable dark shadow against the ill-lit street. He looked up, once, and then turned and walked away.

Mohinder forced himself to breathe.

MICAH SANDERS- NEW YORK CITY

For the first time that night, Micah was completely and totally comfortable.

He was sitting on the couch with Molly next to him, and both of them were tucked under a huge blanket that Dad's friend Dave had given to them for Christmas a couple months ago. Dave's wife had made it, which was a totally alien concept to Micah, whose mom had never even had time for arts and crafts stuff, but it was warm as anything and didn't scratch like some blankets did. Plus, Molly, and they weren't unconscious and kidnapped and stuff anymore. It was a pretty good end to the day.

He could hear his mom and dad arguing in the kitchen- not loud, he couldn't hear what they were saying, just the whispering that grown-ups did when they didn't want kids to hear, but he knew they were arguing. He wasn't really sure what they were arguing about, but for the first time he really didn't care. He had other things on his mind.

"I'm sorry I didn't stop the gun," he told Molly.

She knew what he meant. Tazers ran on electricity, unlike real guns, and if he'd known it was coming, he probably could have connected enough to stop that freak from shooting them. He should have known. He should have been paying attention. He had to watch out for Molly, that's what his Mom and Dad said, not like they'd had to tell him that. He always looked out for Molly, but this one time, when she'd really needed it, he hadn't.

"It's okay," she whispered back. "I didn't stop it, either."

He must have looked skeptical, because she got this bossy look on her face and said, "I could have known someone was coming for us, you know. If I'd looked. But I didn't." Her face softened, and she reached out to give him a hug. "You don't have anything to apologize for."

Best. Day. Ever.

His other hand was resting possessively on his laptop, because the first thing he'd done when he got home was make sure the tracking program was gone. (It was.) Hana hadn't shown up as being online either.

Then he heard, Kid, you didn't need me, and he knew that Hana was there. She hadn't abandoned him. She'd been looking out for him the whole time, but she was right. He'd reached out and connected with the building security and made it close down. It was the biggest system he'd ever controlled, but he'd done it. He'd managed it all on his own.

"You don't either," he told Molly, and the smile she gave him was the best thing he'd ever seen.

NIKI SANDERS- NEW YORK CITY

"Our kids get taken and who comes to the rescue? Nathan Petrelli's younger brother." D.L. was not in a good mood. "All I was good for was getting a good knock on the head and snoozing away all the action."

Unconscious with a bleeding head wound was hardly "snoozing away," but it was pretty clear that he wasn't interested in listening to reason. Niki wasn't able to do any more than just stand in the kitchen and listen to him rant, paralyzed with guilt for kissing Nathan back there in the warehouse. Kissing Nathan! She should have grown out of this kind of idiocy already, shouldn't she?

Not that Nathan would expect anything. He hadn't even pushed her even when she'd come up to his room and drank his wine and flirted with everything she had, and that was when Niki realized that there was a real person, a good one, under all those hard edges and politics that she knew he wore as easily as he did his expensive suits. He was ruthless, killer instincts and all that, but was also, oddly, a gentleman.

Until he found out she'd stabbed him in the back. He didn't take too well to that.

She hadn't just betrayed Nathan, today, but her husband. And herself. What was she thinking? She was married. She'd married D.L. right out of high school, crazy in love with the bad boy with straight A's in class who looked at her like she was precious and didn't think that she was the class slut because she was poor and let her quarterback boyfriend talk her out of her clothes one night in the backseat of his car. She'd never once cheated on him, never even thought about it, not even when he was in jail the first time, and they'd raised a brilliant, wonderful little boy together. And then Jessica had come along and everything had gone to hell.

"Nik? Are you even listening to me?"

"Did I ever tell you that Jessica was the one who framed you?" she said, out of the blue.

"What? No." He stared at her for a long, long moment. "Why?"

"I was fine for a while," she said, not answering. "My whole life, I didn't remember. And I was fine like that. Maybe sometimes I wondered why everything had to be about my looks, why I always felt like I had to flirt to get my way, why I was always drinking, but- mostly, I was fine."

"So what happened?" he said. He didn't seem angry anymore. He looked worried.

"My Dad came back," she said. "I didn't remember what he'd done to me, what he'd done to Jessica. I couldn't remember." She shivered. "God, I still can't, mostly. But he came back, and the memories were going to come back too, so my mind just- split. It's like the doctor told me," she said, not wanting to think about the doctor and what she'd done to her, her wide dead eyes staring back up from the floor. "There was something I couldn't deal with, so I made up Jessica, and she dealt with it for me."

"Baby," he said. She ducked away from his reaching hand, not quite ready for him to touch her yet.

"All the things that were complicated in my life, she took care of them for me," she said, talking very fast now. "We were barely talking any more, and I thought we were going to lose our marriage, so Jessica stepped in and made sure it happened fast, made sure that I would think it was your fault we weren't together anymore. When those thugs attacked me, Jessica killed them. When Linderman pulled strings, Jessica was the one who made sure we danced. When Linderman stepped over the line, Jessica was the one who knew we had to make him pay." She tried to appeal to him with her eyes. "Don't you understand? Jessica always thought she was taking care of me. But she loved Micah, D.L., he was her son too, and when it came down to her or Micah, she chose Micah." She turned away, blindly facing the wooden face of the cabinets. "She was psychotic, and she didn't care about anyone but me or Micah, but she wasn't evil," she said. "She was just doing what she had to do."

"And now she's gone," D.L. said behind her.

"And I don't have anyone to take care of me anymore." She turned back around, only distantly surprised to find him suddenly very close. "There's just me. And I love you. I married you, damn it, and I take those vows seriously. And maybe you don't want them anymore, maybe you don't want a wife, but I-"

She was cut off by his mouth on hers. She let herself cling to him, losing herself in the kiss as best she could, letting him wipe away that lingering feel of Nathan's kiss. This was D.L., she thought. This was the man she'd fallen in love with. He was still right here.

"You don't need anyone to take care of you," he told her when he pulled away. "You do just fine on your own."

He believed it, she could see that much, and therefore so did she. They'd be fine. "I know," she said, and smiled.

NATHAN PETRELLI- NEW YORK CITY

"You left me with them," Nathan said. You left me, period.

Peter just grinned at him, making himself comfortable on the couch. "You can handle it," he said. "You're a politician. That's what you do."

"They're like a pair of junkyard dogs, Pete. There is no handling those two. They hate each other. They hate me."

"They don't hate you," Peter said. His dark eyes seemed sharper, somehow, as they fixed on Nathan's hands pouring their drinks. "Claire's pissed because you saved me before she could, and because you almost let me blow up New York. I think tonight sort of redeemed you in her eyes. She'll get over it."

Nathan didn't want to think about it, didn't want to consider tonight in any way, shape, or form. He didn't even know where Peter had taken his wife, and he was pretty sure he didn't want to know. "Your invisible friend still hates me," Nathan pointed out.

Peter held out a beckoning hand, and the glass jumped neatly across the distance separating them, nary a drop spilling over the perfectly steady edge. "Claude hates everyone," Peter told him, but under the surface amusement he was peering at Nathan, waiting for his reaction. Nathan didn't give him one. He didn't care what Peter could do. "Don't take it personally."

"Well, he certainly seems fond of you," Nathan said. It came out a lot more bitter than he intended. Peter didn't miss it, but he just took a sip of his drink, his eyes glittering over the rim of his glass.

"Claire's not the only one who's angry," Peter said. "You think I should have come to you after I regenerated, don't you?"

"Well of course I think so," Nathan exploded. "Jesus, Pete. I just about went out of my mind worrying. I wake up in my own bed two days after everything with no memory of what the hell happened or whether you're alive or anything and I'm supposed to just go on with my life? What the hell did you expect from me?"

"I didn't take your memory, Nathan," Peter said earnestly. This was the Peter Nathan knew, the one who sat there and talked himself hoarse trying to get Nathan to understand. Not the cool-eyed stranger who'd strode into that warehouse and stopped his wi- stopped the enemy when the rest of them couldn't get close. "There's a man, used to work with Bennet, owes his loyalty to Mom- and Heidi, I guess. He takes memories. I didn't have anything to do with it." He set down the glass and got up, crossing the room to put one hand on Nathan's arm. "I thought you'd remember," he said. "I thought you'd know that I was okay. That I was doing what I had to do. I told you, after the explosion. I told you I'd be fine."

"I didn't know," Nathan repeated inanely. "I didn't remember."

"I know that now, and I'm sorry," Peter said. His hand slid up to Nathan's shoulder, squeezed. "I wouldn't have done that to you, Nate. You know I wouldn't. I thought we were okay."

"Alright," Nathan said. Peter's hand didn't move. "Alright, I get it. But you still could have come back before now, you know," he said. He knew he sounded plaintive- like Peter used to, when he wanted something Nathan didn't know how to give. "I'm not exactly hard to find."

Peter sighed, his hand dropping away at last. As soon as it was gone, Nathan missed the pressure and heat of his palm. "I couldn't," he said.

Nathan gaped at him in disbelief. "What do you mean, 'couldn't?' New York is not exactly long distance for someone who can teleport."

"Not that kind of couldn't," Peter said, fondly exasperated. Nathan couldn't shake the feeling that somewhere along the line, they'd switched roles and he hadn't quite been paying attention enough to notice. "You know how you and Mom always used to talk about how I needed to get out on my own and learn some independence? How I needed to grow up and stop dreaming?"

Nathan didn't say anything. Peter leaned in close and whispered in his ear.

"I'm not dreaming anymore."

Nathan recoiled away violently. "Jesus wept," he said. "You think this is what I wanted?"

"Maybe not," Peter said. "But it's what I needed, isn't it? Everyone always said so. Turns out they were right."

Nathan looked at him for a long, long time before he spoke. He was realizing that the little brother who'd looked up to him and followed him and loved him even when he was better off on his own was gone forever. All of that beautiful idealism and unbelievable stubbornness had been burned off in the blast. It was enough to break his heart, if it hadn't been broken a few times already. Instead it just hurt, a dull ache in the place that only Peter had ever been able to call his own.

"Peter," he said. "How long were you gone?"

Peter's open face suddenly snapped closed and he grinned, bright and nervous, a boy with a lie hidden behind his teeth. "Well, it's been a couple months since the blast, right?"

Not an answer. I taught him that, Nathan thought. "I think you were gone a little longer than that," he said steadily. "Where'd you go, Pete?" He paused for effect, then added, "Or should I say, when did you go?"

Peter was up and across the room so fast that he practically gave Nathan whiplash. Speedster, he thought automatically, and he knew that Peter had absorbed that boy's power back in the warehouse, just like his and Claire's and all the rest. "Claire was really great back there, wasn't she?" he said quickly. "She's grown up pretty fast."

There was something in his voice, some bit of uneasiness that didn't have anything to do with his extremely clumsy subject change, something that caught a little on Claire's name. Nathan decided not to push it. They had enough problems in this room.

"She's brave," Nathan said steadily. He couldn't follow what Peter was thinking. He didn't have a single, goddamned clue. All he could do was roll with the punches as best he knew how. "You've been staying with her?"

Peter relaxed fractionally when it seemed like Nathan was accepting the change of topic, and started drifting back across the room, touching things as he went. He looked like he was relearning foreign territory. "Me and Claude, yeah," he said. "Bennet was trying to topple the Company and I'd already been taking out some of the goons they sent after me, so we decided to join forces. She's really different, Nathan. She's not like the rest."

The rest of what, Nathan wanted to ask, but that was another question he knew he wasn't going to get answered. "She's staying here for the next few days, till we can get her on a plane back to Texas," he said. "It's just as well it's a Friday, or she'd be in a lot of trouble with school."

Peter shrugged. "If it came down to that, I could take her back," he said. "Not like it's out of my way."

"I think we can afford the plane ticket," Nathan said dryly. "Hey, I've been wondering," he said, as if the idea hadn't just occurred to him, "why didn't Molly find you? I've been asking her to look ever since you disappeared, but she could never find you."

"The thing about being a Finder is that it's a form of telepathy," Peter said. "It works by reaching out and picking up the mental signature of a particular individual. You can't just tell her to find an Empath, because that's a trait, not a person. Tell her to look for Peter Petrelli the Empath and she'll have a lot more luck. People like us are even easier for her than everyone else, because our brain waves are so distinct.

"But the problem there is that any good telepath can block off signals as well as receive them, and that's what I did. As far as Molly was concerned, I didn't exist."

"I still believed you were alive," Nathan said. The past tense was deliberate. Peter didn't seem to hear it- or if he did, he didn't understand.

"I came back eventually," he said. "And I always will." He set down his drink and reached out, one hand cupping Nathan's shoulder tightly. "I'm sorry about your wife, Nathan," he said, and then his hand dropped away, and he turned and left the room.

"It's okay," Nathan said into the empty room. "I got you back. That's almost like an even trade."

PETER PETRELLI- NEW YORK CITY

When Peter left Nathan's study, he made a beeline for the spare room where Nathan had stashed Claire and Claude. Nathan hadn't told him which suite they were in, but he knew. His fingers itched for a map, but the knowledge was there even without a visual outlet. He went upstairs and headed left.

He made himself invisible as he went, out of sheer force of habit more than any desire to sneak up on the two of them. Claude could always see him when he was invisible, anyway, and he suspected that Claire knew when he was in the room whether she could see him or not, so it wasn't like he'd actually succeed on any major spying expedition, but still. He'd spent a lot of time in the Bennet household invisible, and after a while he just got used to it. For the first time, he was really starting to understand how Claude felt.

He paused in the open doorway and just watched them for a minute. They were in Claire's room, on the couch in front of the TV, bickering.

"Give me the damned remote."

"Not a chance. Stop your whining; it's not like there's anything good on anyway."

"I dunno how you can bloody tell. You're flipping channels so fast, you're like to give me a seizure."

"Baby."

Listening to them, anyone would think that they hated each other's guts, but their body language was saying something different. They were right next to each other in the middle of the couch, instead of spread to the separate ends, and she was leaning against him with her head drooping towards his shoulder out of exhaustion, and no matter how caustic he sounded, Claude was looking down at her like she was something precious. He'd finally realized just how special she really was, and Peter couldn't help but grin in satisfaction. In all the time they'd stayed with the Bennet's, Claude had managed to avoid Claire pretty completely, also, incidentally, avoiding any chance to getting to know her. Peter bet that Claude was realizing what he'd missed. That was a good thing. It meant that Claude was finally starting to understand.

So yeah, they argued, but it was the same way that Peter and Nathan always argued, where it was just another line of communication. Or that's how it used to be, anyway. He wasn't so sure about them anymore, not after that conversation downstairs. He hadn't listened in, that would be rude, but Nathan had never had much of a poker face for his brother, and Peter knew that there were all sorts of thoughts teeming around in that twisty brain of his, and he knew that not all of them were happy.

He was sorry for that, a little. But Nathan had finally gotten just exactly what he'd always asked of Peter. He didn't understand what Nathan was so upset about.

"God, no, not this swill! It's not even music!"

"It is so music. You're just old."

"You impertinent little brat."

Everyone he loved was in this house. His Dad had never counted among that number, which was an old hurt he'd never understand, and his Mom had betrayed him, and Simone was dead. Only Nathan was left, and Claire and Claude and Simon and Monty (who'd missed him, apparently, you'd think the Beatles had come back they way they'd mobbed him). This was what was left of his family, and he was pretty happy about that.

Claire's going to be graduating high school soon, he thought. He wondered about the odds of her going to college in New York, and thought that they were pretty good. Until then, well, he could always teleport. And wherever he went, he knew with absolute certainty that Claude would follow, and vice versa. And Claire was here, finding her way again with Nathan, and Claude was in there with Claire, making friends, and oh, it was all coming together, finally. He had a family again. The best of the old, the best of the new, and Peter knew that this was what happiness was.

"Kids, don't make me turn this car around," he said, going back to visible, and they both turned around, murder on their faces.

"Where the hell have you been?" Claude demanded, and "You dumped us on him," Claire said, and he just threw his head back and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

"He's finally snapped," Claire said to Claude.

"Finally? That boy lost it a long damn time ago."

He knew exactly how this was all going to end, and it was going to be a happily ever after for everyone. Just watch.

MOHINDER SURESH- NEW YORK CITY

Mohinder was on his way to the Sanders household for a "thank God we all made it through alive" dinner when he heard footsteps behind him.

He'd taken a taxi for most of the way, and if the tip he'd left had wiped out the last of the cash in his wallet at least it had put a smile on the driver's face, but he'd chosen to walk the rest of the way in an attempt to clear his head. Niki and D.L.'s neighborhood was admittedly much nicer than his own, and he wasn't overly concerned about muggers. It wasn't as if he had anything left in his pockets to steal.

He did, however, know of one person who'd have good reason to be following him. Despite the fact that it was the last person in the world he wanted to talk to, he turned around. Because this had to be done sooner or later, and it might as well be now.

There was Matt, following a few paces behind, keeping mostly to the shadows. He wasn't wearing his uniform, which was at least one lie that he'd shed. It was an improvement.

Mohinder swallowed his anger and went back to talk to his worst enemy.

"Hey," Matt offered, and Mohinder almost choked on his rage.

"You're not him," he said. "Drop that appearance right now."

Matt shrugged affably and then shifted, like an image on a computer screen. In his place stood a skinny, freckled, red-haired young man with dreamy blue eyes and Matt's same jeans-and-t-shirt combination. The t-shirt even said NYPD across the front, but Mohinder decided not to say anything. It was good enough.

"Is this better?" Sylar asked.

"It's still a lie," Mohinder said.

Sylar shook his head. "This is who I am now," he said. "I'm not him anymore."

Not Sylar, Mohinder translated. "How does that work?" he snapped. "You just forget everything and think it all goes away? Life doesn't work like that."

Sylar looked, abruptly, much older than the twenty-some years his young face proclaimed him. "I have perfect memory," he said sadly. "I remember everything he did. I have these dreams… But it's not me," he said with renewed strength. "It's not. I'm not Sylar anymore than I am still Gabriel Gray."

"You are still Gabriel Gray," Mohinder said. "Your genes mark you as surely as any brand. You are still the man who fixed watches for a living, and you are still the man who killed dozens of people because you thought you deserved what they had. It doesn't go away just because you want it to." He looked away, not able to stand the sight of the earnest blue eyes looking back at him. "What happened to Matt?" he said. "Did you finish him off? Did you take his brain like you did all the rest?"

"Officer Parkman was gone before he even reached the hospital," Sylar said. "I didn't touch his brain. I didn't take his ability." He smiled, tentatively. "I can't read your mind, Mohinder."

"But you can change your appearance," Mohinder said. "Niki told me about the girl who took her son. Did you kill her too?"

"She was dead already," Sylar said. "Someone had hit her hard enough to shatter her skull. I simply took her ability and hid her body." He frowned, his fiery eyebrows contracting in thought. "She was much heavier than she looked."

Niki, Mohinder thought. Niki killed her. It wasn't as much of a surprise as it should have been. She'd killed that boy, back in the warehouse. He remembered that Peter had come back to take care of the body, but he didn't know what had been done with it. She was like a mother lion with her children, and she literally had the strength to back up her threats.

If he told Niki that Sylar was still alive, Niki would kill him for real without a moment's hesitation.

The idea hung in his brain for one shining moment, and then everything in him rebelled against the idea. Sylar was his. His to kill. His to destroy.

Or his to save.

"Are you always going to be following me like this?"

"I'll stop if you want me to," Sylar said honestly. "But I won't stop watching out for you."

Sylar had been the one to save him back in that warehouse. Had Sylar been listening the entire time?

He wanted to be embarrassed, but instead all he could feel was a sort of resignation. Of course Sylar was listening. This was what he did, who he was- he knew the way things worked, and he pulled the one thread to unravel the whole tapestry.

"You wanted me to be something different," Sylar said. "So I am."

He remembered saying that in another life, Sylar could have been the most important person in the world. Well, his wish was granted. Here was Sylar, living a whole second (or third) life. It'd be funny if it weren't so terrifying. Sylar had all but said that he was placing his fate entirely into Mohinder's hands. It was exactly what he'd wanted, only now he wasn't sure what to do with what he had.

"Well, it's easier to keep an eye on me if you stick close, isn't it?" he said finally. It wasn't a promise, it wasn't anything really, but Sylar smiled at him, and it was Zane's smile, sweet and true, and Mohinder thought, I think he's actually been telling the truth about himself.

He turned away, ready to have done with this and lose himself in his friends, and then behind him, Sylar called out in his light-tenored new voice-

"By the way, the name is Michael now." Mohinder turned around, and Sylar smiled, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jeans. "Michael Dupont. It's nice to meet you."

It was startlingly easy to think of this new-old man as Michael- not Zane, who was never real to begin with, or Sylar, the man who killed his father, or even Matt, who was just as false as Zane had ever been, but Michael. Michael was someone new. Michael was the man who'd been his friend these past few months. Michael was the one who looked out for him, a guardian angel. Michael, he could deal with.

With Michael, he could start over.

"Hello, Michael," he said, and wondered why he was smiling. It felt almost foreign on his face. "It's nice to meet you."

Then he turned around and walked away, listening to the steady beat of footsteps as Michael followed him, falling into stride easily at Mohinder's side as easily as if he'd always been there.

CLAIRE BENNET- NEW YORK CITY

A cookout in the middle of February, Claire thought. This must be what going crazy feels like.

In their (collective) defense, however, it wasn't quite as miserable as it sounded. Niki and D.L. had a pretty good-sized porch (a pretty good-sized house, actually, Claire suspected Nathan's "helping hand" in this one, too) and they'd dragged out a couple of space heaters. Peter was keeping all the warmth from leaking to the great outdoors with the use of his newly acquired force-field powers.

They probably would have been more comfortable at the Petrelli mansion, and Nathan had certainly offered, before Peter had gotten a chance to nudge him about it, even. But Niki had insisted and D.L. had been quick to back her up, so here they were, the whole ridiculous lot of them.

Niki and D.L. were just outside the barrier, taking care of the actual cooking out portion of the cookout. She could hear them bickering even from her spot in the doorway, apparently over how to properly light the grill. D.L. was of the "pour lots of lighter fluid on it" camp, while Niki thought that was pointless pyromaniac overkill.

"If it doesn't burn hot enough when I light it, it won't stay lit!"

"Oh, please. You just like watching it burn as high as your head."

"You want to do this?"

"Oh no, feel free. But if you burn your eyebrows off, I'm just going to laugh. And laugh. And laugh."

Despite the apparent annoyance, both of the squabblers were grinning at each other. Claire rolled her eyes. Get a room already, guys, she thought, but her inner romantic, despite several month's worth of efforts at squashing it, were cheering for them. Her mom and Dad sounded exactly the same when there was some dinner-related disagreement.

Mohinder came out onto the porch, his new "friend" Michael in tow. "We were just about to start the salad," he said. "About how long on the main course, do you think?"

They all watched with bated breath as D.L. lit the grill… and as it promptly died out a second later, killed by a stray gust of wind before it had a chance to really catch.

"This may take a minute," Niki said dryly. Mohinder chuckled.

"I suppose salad can wait a few minutes then," but he went back into the kitchen anyway, the still-silent Michael close on his heels. If they weren't making the salad, then why the pressing need to be alone in the kitchen? Claire rolled her eyes again. If Mohinder thought he was being subtle, he was a little off the mark. He looked at the telekinetic like an unexpected gift, awed and suspicious. It was more like a schoolboy just realizing that he has a crush than a scientist with a brand-new subject.

Out in the yard, uncaring of the little drama centered around the grill, the kids were running around like little maniacs, bundled up so tight she had to rely on the color of their coats to figure out who was who. They seemed to be playing some sort of tag, but it was hard to know for sure since they didn't seem to be playing with any kind of actual rules. As far as she could tell, tag had turned into Micah and Simon teaming up with Molly to chase Nathan's eldest around the yard.

"Slow down, for God's sake," Nathan yelled, sounding exasperated, "are you trying to give me gray hairs?" Molly- at least Claire thought it was Molly, none of the boys had hair long enough to braid- giggled, and dove right back into the fray. Nathan sighed and leaned back into his chair, exchanging a "what can you do?" look with Peter, sitting next to him.

Nathan and Peter had swiped lawn chairs and dragged them onto the porch, where they sat clustered around the largest space heater, looking pretty pleased with themselves. (Weirdly so, since for the first time since she'd known them, they actually looked like brothers. Normally the only physical resemblance was their coloring, but the identical smug grins on their faces was proof positive that these two had grown up together.) Claude was hanging over the back of Peter's chair, sneering down at Nathan. "You wouldn't think native New Yorkers like yourselves would be so thin-blooded," he'd needled, but he'd been quick enough to huddle up against Peter's chair, and she suspected that the quake in his shoulders wasn't suppressed laughter. Peter had just grinned indulgently up at him and pulled off his scarf, passing it back without bothering to look if Claude was reaching out to take it- which, of course, he had been.

"I hate to break it to you, Petrelli, but you've already got gray hairs," Claude pointed out. "It's what happens when you start getting up into your forties, old man."

"Is that so?" Nathan said politely. "Then you must be spending a great deal on hair dye, since you're no spring chicken yourself."

Claude's lip curled. "Unlike some people, I've aged gracefully."

"'S just because you're clean-shaven," Peter pointed out amiably. "You looked like a homeless person till I made you shave."

"Made me-!"

Peter laughed softly. "Persuaded?" he suggested.

"Coerced?" Nathan put in. Claude snarled at them both.

Claire was abruptly hit with a wave of homesickness so thick she could barely breathe. She missed her family. She missed her Dad, and Zach, and her silly Mom and Jake and even Lyle, for God's sake. She wanted to go home. She'd called her Dad, first thing after getting back to the Petrelli mansion, and he'd told her to stay a week- probably part of his ongoing plot to help get Nathan into her favor, and how weird was that?- but she wasn't sure she wanted to. Maybe after she finished her senior year she might be able to tackle the thought of living in New York, but until then she wants to go home. Everyone else- well, they have each other, their own families. She wanted hers.

After checking to make sure that no one was paying attention, she slipped inside and pulled out her cell phone. She wasn't going to interrupt Peter's evening to take her home, even if it would only take like ten seconds for him, but she had to talk to her Dad, like, right this second.

He answered on the second ring. "Hi, honey," he said.

"Hey, Dad," she said, and sat down on the couch, her legs abruptly watery with relief. For half a second there, she'd been worried that he wasn't going to answer. It sounded silly, but-

"You're lucky you caught me. We were just about to sit down to dinner."

-her Mom made everyone turn their cell phones off during meals, and she hadn't thought to call the land line at home, because she'd just wanted to talk to her Dad. Not that she didn't want to talk to anyone else, but- Well, it was her Dad, and he'd been through things with her that even Zach didn't quite understand. She'd always been her father's daughter, but it wasn't until now that she was understanding exactly what that meant:

"Sorry to hold up the meal."

"Don't worry about it. There's a reason I bought your mom those fancy plate-warmers."

It meant that family came first. Always. And the only person who could tell you who your family was, was you.

Maybe Nathan was starting to understand that too, or maybe he had his own rules about family. She remembered how loyal Peter had seemed to Nathan, senselessly loyal, she remembered thinking. Peter had betrayed her by trusting Nathan past the point of reason, but in the end he hadn't betrayed her at all, not really. He'd been right. Nathan had come through in the end, had saved the day when she hadn't been able to pull the trigger.

She must have been silent for too long, because her Dad said, "What is it, Claire?"

"Just talk to me, Daddy," she said, and even to her own ears she could hear how desperate she felt. "Just talk to me."

"Okay," he said easily, and started talking about his latest efforts in home repair- the old shed on the backside of the garden, which was practically falling down, to hear him tell it. She choked on a laugh and sat back to listen.

She didn't fool herself to think that Nathan's decision had anything to do with her. Another girl might, might have thought that he was trying to spare her the pain of shooting to kill, that he was trying to step in and play the knight gallant.

No, Nathan had known her better than that. He was astonishingly blind when it came to those close to him, but he could read strangers like a book- he had to, he was a politician. He'd known that she would hate him for stepping in. He'd also known that she couldn't pull the trigger. So he'd done what he had to, not because of her, but because of Peter. Because Peter might have survived the explosion, but he wouldn't have survived knowing that he'd caused all those deaths. He'd done it for his brother, as plain and simple as that.

She might not have forgiven him otherwise, and she hadn't, not for a long time. But she'd seen them out there- the easy bump of their shoulders as Peter leaned in to tease Nathan, the way Nathan would sneer at him, a hidden smile lurking around the edges of his mouth. She'd been holding onto her anger for a long time- because he'd betrayed her, betrayed New York, because he'd saved Peter when she couldn't, because Peter had disappeared and she'd blamed him. But he'd done the right thing in the end, and he'd done it for the right reasons.

You can pick your friends, she thought, and you can pick your nose, and if you were a Bennet girl like her, you could sure as hell pick your family. She'd thought that the only Petrelli included in that was Peter, but there was room for more in her family. There was room for Nathan- not as her Dad, maybe, but as her father. And he'd introduced her to his kids, who'd been thrilled to pieces at the thought of having an aunt.

So she could have three parents, and an uncle and some nephews and a couple damn good friends and whatever the hell Claude was going to turn out to be. So what if it wasn't exactly normal? She was a freak, for crying out loud. She didn't have to play by the conventional rules. Not anymore.

"-so I go out there, tools in hand, and you'll never believe what I find when I open the damn door."

She blinked, coming back to herself. "What's that?" she asked absently. He was still talking about the shed, right?

"Zack and Jake were in there, and I'll be damned if they weren't halfway to something an old man like me shouldn't be seeing."

She cleared her throat. "So let me get this straight. Basically, you caught them making out in the shed?"

"You got that right. Should have seen the looks on their faces when they saw me standing in the doorway."

The tickle in her throat became uncontrollable, and when she opened her mouth she realized it was laughter. Her Dad waited it out, till her giggles had subsided, and then said, "Feel any better?"

"Yeah," she said, still grinning. "Yeah, I feel a lot better. Thanks, Daddy."

"Anytime," he said, and she could hear him smiling too. "I'll talk to you later, okay honey?"

"Tomorrow," she promised. "You go eat dinner now, before mom takes the phone away from you."

"I will. Love you, Claire-bear."

"Love you too, Daddy."

She tucked the phone back into her pocket and went back out onto the porch. Peter tipped his head backwards over the edge of the chair and peered around Claude's shoulder. "Dinner's almost ready," he told her.

"Good," she said, and realized that it was. "I'm starving."

She smiled at Peter, because she was there and she was happy, and he smiled back. "Monty, Simon, get your butts back up here and dry off!" Nathan bellowed, and then shot a rueful glance towards Claire. "Going to catch their death of colds," he grumbled, but he was smiling too. She knew it.

She fingered the key around her neck, the one that Nathan had given her. It fit the front door to the mansion. He'd taken her straight to the kids' room, to meet his sons, and when they'd finished climbing all over her and gone to bed, he'd taken her into his office and he'd handed it to her. "Welcome to the family," he'd said, and for the first time she'd honestly believed that he meant it.

"You coddle them too much," Claude told him.

"Just because my kids didn't grow up on the streets-"

It was enough, she thought. She was content.

HIRO NAKAMURA- TOKYO, JAPAN (PRESENT DAY)

Hiro Nakamura blinked back into the present day in the middle of his father's busy Tokyo office. He got a lot of strange looks, but that was to be expected, as he was wearing armor, with Kinsei's sword slung comfortably across his bad, his long tight braid wound around out of the way of the scabbard. When he twisted around, his seeking gaze scanning the crowded faces for one in particular, the scar that Peter had healed pulled uncomfortably taut on his chest.

He saw an endless sea of people in suits, a whole row of curious, or frightened, or bored faces turning towards him, but he ignored them all and looked for the one person who looked at him with something else- recognition, and the beginnings of joy.

Hiro looked past all of them, and saw Ando.

And smiled.

---

Change is inevitable. The circumstances that make up life on this Earth are not static. Every person encounters something every day that changes their opinions, their mood, and sometimes even their outlook on life. Every person you meet, every relationship you form, changes you. Sometimes for the worse, and sometimes for the better.

The challenge in life is to find the people who change you for the better, and to keep them by your side. It is to find the people who would change you for the worse, and help them to change for the better. Evolution does not occur on an individual level. For the human race to move to the next level, requires one to extend a helping hand to guide others upwards to the next rung.

Families are important. Friendships are important. Our children are absolutely vital. We can change the shape of the world just by the people we love, the people with whom we choose to share our lives. Change is inevitable, and change is necessary. Change, if handled with care, can be beautiful.

The choice is ours.

---

.end.