Dark Legacy

by Nick Midian

Two years after an alternate ending to Season One, Peter and Claire find themselves on the run from mysterious assassins and trying to uncover the secrets of their pasts. Hold on fast, 'cause it's gonna be a rough ride! Canon Paire, twists & revelations!

4. Chapter Three: Fight or Flight

Chapter Three: Fight or flight

Leaning over you here
Cold and catatonic
I catch a brief reflection
Of what you could and I might have been
It's your right and your ability
To become my perfect enemy

"Passive," A Perfect Circle

Peter Petrelli remembers…

…a sad little smile, and thinking 'she's too pretty to look this sad'…

…saying 'life after high school, it gets better,' even though he doesn't really think that at all, because his own life was and is not better, but he wants to cheer her up, although he doesn't know why…

…crashing against her for the second time, this time seeing her covered in blood and eyes wide in fear, and realizing that she is THE ONE…

…shouting at her to go, because all of a sudden she is no longer this two-dimensional character on canvas, this vague cheerleader he has to save in order to save the world, she is real, flesh and blood, and she is scared to death, and he wants to tell her everything will be alright, but he knows he would be lying if he did that, he knows what it'll take to save the cheerleader…

…taking a leap of faith, falling to his death, but not being scared…

…coming back, regenerating and seeing her and knowing she would be there, being in so much pain it's unbelievable, and his mind is racing in all different directions and he is thinking all sorts of stupid things, and making connections where in the light of the day there would be none. Because this moment is magical, and everything makes sense, understanding that it is not a case of if A then follows B, but A so there can be B, and this is the beginning of something much larger, larger than their lives apart, because she is special just like him, and she is going to be special TO him somehow, and he knows, he KNOWS...

...hearing 'I'm Claire,' from her lips so shyly and thinking how silly it is to remember at this precise moment that of all the classical music he was forced to listen to by his parents when little, the only piece he ever was transfixed by was Debussy's 'Clair de Lune' and, does it mean something? But he asks something different, something stupid like if he has saved the world by saving her, and it sounds crazy even to his own ears, but she just says she doesn't know, she is just a cheerleader, and her face is one of pain, and he wants to comfort her, but it hurts SO much still and there's not enough air coming into his lungs, and Sylar is still around somewhere...

...being lost and alone in jail, interrogated by that cop who seems able to read his mind, and all he can think is of her and if she will be safe, there is so much pain from the howl of the telepathic feedback and he is angry because no one is looking for her nor after her...

...seeing her coming into his cell when he is at his lowest, and God, she is glowing, but she is so young and petite and sweet sixteen and never-been-kissed, but she is alive and safe and everything is alright again, and he puts on a brave face although there's something wrong with him and he knows it, but he doesn't want to scare her away, and he can't stop looking at her, and then he can't look at her because he is sure her father will think he is some kind of pervert, but then he goes away and he can't stop looking into those green eyes, and he died and so did she but it is no big deal, and he is totally her hero, and he won't quit smiling because no one has ever told him anything like that before and actually meant it...

...walking the path of dreams, and the entire city is empty apart from these few strangers he doesn't even know, and this is so much like the prophetic nightmare he'd had the night Nathan and Heidi had almost died thanks to Linderman's goons, and she runs away from him in her cheerleader uniform, and his heart breaks as he explodes...

...plunging to certain death again thanks to Claude, and she is the last thing he thinks of, why, oh why?...

...beating death yet again, and once again she is there with a sharp piece of glass covered in his blood in her tiny hand, and he is not surprised it was she who'd saved him, but then they tell him who she really is and his brain says that now everything makes sense, that this strange connection he feels between them is because she is his niece and blood calls to blood, but a tiny voice inside his heart is screaming that it is not right, that this is NOT how it should be...

...she says she is going away, putting an entire ocean between them, and he doesn't want to let her go, because he knows he'll need her at his side to stop whatever is coming, he knows he won't make it without her, it's not random, it's fate and destiny...

...drying her tears, wanting nothing more than to embrace her and sooth her pain and it's true it wasn't until he met her that he felt that he felt like he belonged somewhere, because he always was the odd one out even in his own family...

...and everything's going wrong, and it wasn't supposed to be like this, but she is there and he finds the strength within himself to tame the wild power, and he fights but he loses, and Nathan saves the day, saves them all, and it is too much pain to bear, and he can't take it any longer so he flies, flies away, from pain, from her...

...Peter Petrelli finally remembers it all.

And it hurts like hell to do so. Like someone is ripping the heart out from his chest.

Like someone is tearing his soul apart.

---O---

Lower East Side, New York.
May, 2009

Claire Bennet had a dirty little secret.

Well, to be honest she had quite a few, the biggest one probably being the fact that she harbored rather inappropriate feelings for an older man that happened to be her biological uncle. And who currently was in a catatonic state with little hope of ever waking up.

But most of the time she was in absolute denial of such a secret actually being true, so she could more or less cope with that one. Even though Claire was sure her mom was probably wondering about the boyfriend situation, and now with college just around the corner most likely her dad was too. They'd probably wig out completely if they heard that particular secret, and Lyle would probably try to blackmail her about it, the little twerp. Good thing she was able to cover these things up like that. Even to herself.

Anyway, the dirty secret Claire was especially ashamed of was embodied by the closed cardboard box laying at her feet, while she sat on the bed of Peter's old apartment in Manhattan.

She had received the keys from the Petrelli attorneys in a thick envelope along with a notification that the rent would be religiously paid in the future from one of the family's numerous bank accounts, the information on her own trust fund – the one that still remained untouched to this day – and the address of the rest home where Peter would be taken to once discharged from the hospital.

Claire had begged her father to drive her there from the hotel they were living in at the time, because Peter would need clothes and stuff that would help him feel more at home now that he was going to spend time in a strange place, something that would help him not to feel alone and lost. And he probably would have plants to be watered or fish to be fed or something, and somebody had to do that.

In hindsight, the blonde teenager knew she had sounded desperate and pleading, and maybe even childish in doing so. But Noah Bennet hadn't argued about it, hadn't protested one bit. He had just retrieved the keys of his rented car and driven through the nightmarish chaos of Manhattan traffic to take her to Peter's place.

The Texan girl had thought at first he'd done it either out of guilt or gratitude, but now she wasn't sure. Maybe he understood she had a connection to Peter Petrelli, she was the only one left now of his biological family. Although, even at the time, Claire didn't think her feelings for him had anything to do with the blood that ran through both their veins.

Or maybe Noah Bennet really was just grateful to the young man for having saved his daughter's life once, and feeling guilty how he could do nothing for the comatose Peter. Her dad's mind had been a complete mystery to her during those days.

The first time she had been to Peter's digs, Claire had been a bit shocked by how un-Peter the apartment actually was. Too dark and somber, she had thought. But later she had started thinking that maybe she was wrong, because she didn't really know him. The image of the heroic savior she had in her head was based on the actions of the guy that had saved her on Homecoming night, of the young man dressed in tan and light colors, of the stranger that had taken a second to try and cheer up a troubled girl he didn't even know.

And maybe Peter Petrelli was nothing like that. Maybe, she started believing as she went through the apartment with her father, he was just as troubled as herself. Maybe there was a meaning to the lack of personal items in the place, to the fact that she was only able to see two framed pictures in the living room – the very same one with Nathan at her biological father's wedding that she had already seen at the Petrelli manor, and an older photograph with all his family. She had taken a few seconds to examine this one.

The brothers - Nathan looked about twenty-something, she guessed, Peter no more than ten - were dressed in suits like they were about to go to Sunday mass. A younger Angela Petrelli, a beautiful if cold woman, and a man whose likeness to Nathan was more than remarkable completed the portrait. She'd realized at that moment that she didn't even know the Petrelli patriarch's first name, and he was her biological grandfather.

None of them were smiling in the picture either.

So many of Peter's clothes were black it was scary. At the beginning she had tagged him as being 'emo' because of his hair, but now he seemed to fit the definition to the letter. The only thing she knew was it was obvious her uncle wasn't trying to make a fashion statement, or going through some sort of rebel phase. He was just a somber, lonely man.

Claire wanted to bring light into his life.

His bed had been unmade, and she knew if her father hadn't been with her at the time she would have laid there, enveloped herself in the covers and tried to win back some of the warmth and scent of him that still had to linger in the tangled sheets.

She was a silly child with a crush, and she'd felt a bit ashamed because of it.

But then, one day weeks later, Claire had come across the box.

That day she'd been on her own. Her father was too busy getting everything organized for her mom and brother to come to New York and she'd had to get a stupidly complicated combination of buses and trains to make it to the apartment. And the one that she would need later in order to go to Peter's rest home was even more appalling.

Miss Bennet remembered having thought at that moment that she would need her own car, because she simply couldn't afford either the time it would require to travel by public transport once she returned to school, or the amount of money to go by taxi. And she planned to go see her hero as often as she could, 'cause she was not going to let him vegetate alone in that place, no matter how luxurious and expensive it was.

Claire had been getting fresh clothes for Peter, blushing a little at the notion that she was actually digging through his underwear and moving it round, when a couple of rolled socks fell off the pile she was carrying at that moment and bounced on the floor to end up under the bed.

She had knelt down to retrieve them and had seen the box.

Her first thought was that it was his hidden stash of porn. And first she had giggled like the schoolgirl she was, but then the image of Peter doing what boys do while watching those kind of movies had crept uninvited into her head, and in spite of being alone Claire had blushed so violently that she was sure her face would have been matching her old cheerleader uniform if she had been wearing it.

No, it couldn't be. No way her Peter would do that kind of stuff.

Only, he wasn't her Peter. And he was a man, after all. And men did that kind of stuff. All the time, too, if what she had heard in the girls' locker room back in Texas was true.

The mental image had refused to go away.

Curiosity had replaced shame and she had taken the box from under the bed. Yet she had spent the next five minutes with her hands on the lid of the box, unable to open it. There was this warm feeling in the pit of her belly, one that was neither entirely pleasurable nor completely disgusting.

She had had a vague feeling of dread, too. Because, what if she didn't like what was there in the box? What if seeing its contents shattered the image she had of Peter Petrelli, hero extraordinaire?

What if he was into weird stuff like – and here she only had very fuzzy notions of the subject – leather and chains and things?

And, what if he had this huge collection of dirty mags about barely legal cheerleaders?

Claire's blush had been so violent by now that she seemed to be the one about to go into nuclear meltdown.

She had opened Pandora's box.

And of course, there had been no porn in it at all, much to her disappointement and relief. Instead, there had been something much, much worse. Something way more dangerous.

The contents of the box contained Peter Petrelli's handwritten diaries, from age 13 to barely a couple of weeks previously. Tens of near-identical hardcover blue notebooks, stacked into the box side to side and up to the lid. There were no labels on the covers saying 'My Diary' or stuff like that, like in the ones she had been given as presents a couple of times when she was 12 or so herself and which she had only bothered in writing stuff like 'I like this boy, he's so dreamy' or 'I hate that girl, she's a bitch' before her teen-short attention span had flown somewhere else.

No, these notebooks were the real deal. Written front to back with his flowing, elegant scripture. His most private thoughts and feelings poured on paper over the years. His deepest secrets only whispered by the scratch of a ballpen.

They had burnt like red-hot coal on her fingers.

Claire had closed the lid, returned the box to its refuge under the bed and ran away like Sylar himself was chasing her. That first time, she had even forgotten getting Peter's clothes.

The second time, she hadn't even opened the box. Nor the third time. Nor many of the following times she'd visited Peter's apartment.

But she always got it out from under the bed. Always transfixed by its contents.

What right did she have to read them? How would Peter feel if he ever found out? Betrayed? Disappointed? Angry at her?

Sometimes she had managed to open the box. Sometimes she had gone even as far as holding one of the notebooks in her hands. And she had done so reverently, as if they had been alive. As if they had been holy books that held of the secrets of life and God himself.

Claire had never read one of them, though, not until the day a nameless doctor had torn her heart to pieces in the rest home. He had been an elderly man, a grandfather type she had seen walking around and taking care of the patients at the Synger rest home. By then, the young Texan girl was already well known to the rest home workers, the shy blonde who came more often than anyone else to visit the handsome young man with the vacant eyes and the unchanging expression.

She had known the doctor had meant well, but his words had only hurt her in the deepest part of her being. "You're a nice girl, Claire, and I think it's truly wonderful what you're doing for your uncle. But you should start thinking about yourself too, sweetheart, you should start thinking about living your own life. You have to accept that it's been a while and he's obviously not going to be waking up anytime soon, if ever. So don't waste your life in here, I'm sure Peter wouldn't have wanted you to do that. Go out with your friends, live, have fun and be happy..."

The young Bennet girl had cried all the way home, so much that it wasn't until she found herself at Peter's apartment door that she had realized she had gone there instead of to her parents' new home in Queens, like she used to do whenever visiting her uncle.

She had been crying when she'd fallen down upon his bed - for the first time, although she had changed the sheets long ago. She had been crying as she got the box from under the matress, and when she opened it and grabbed a notebook at random.

Claire's tears had only stopped when she began reading.

February 18th, 2000

I told Dad today that I'm going to quit law school. I thought he was going to be angry at me, shout or something, but he didn't. He only got this half-disappointed expression on his face and walked out of the room, as if he had been expecting it all along. I probably shouldn't even be surprised, I don't know why I ever thought he would react otherwise. Nathan was the one who yelled at me, the one that actually acted like he cared. He called me immature and foolish and a lot of other things, told me I had to get my head out of the clouds and enter the real world. I was barely listening to him though, I couldn't stop thinking about Dad's face and his expression. I wonder if he's ever had any faith in me.

Claire had read that entire diary in one go. When she had finished, she had looked out the window and found that it was already dark. Her cell had beeped and, on examination, she had discovered at least ten missed calls from both her parents' numbers. She hadn't even heard them.

Her father had picked her up less than an hour later and taken her back to Queens. Neither of them had spoken a word during the journey. She had held onto Peter's notebook all the way home. Claire had never once let it go while her mother had yelled at her and confined her to her room until she was 30 or so, because Sandra had been so scared that her little girl would be found raped, dead, or something even worse.

Her father, though, he had said nothing.

Claire had neither cried nor raised her voice in protest. She had just gone to her room as told and gotten in bed, holding the diary to her chest like it was a shield.

The next day, it had been her first day at the new school. Her dad had taken her there without saying a word. It had been a horrible day too, new school, no friends, the out of state girl lost in the big city and forced to repeat some subjects because she'd missed too many classes to pass - apparently, saving the world didn't give you any extracurricular credits - Claire had only found strength in Peter's diary, carefully hidden among her schoolbooks in her backpack.

Her father had picked her up when classes were over and, after another half an hour of silence, Claire couldn't stand it anymore and had asked, "Dad, are you still mad at me?"

Noah Bennet hadn't answered. Instead, he had driven into Manhattan. To the door of Peter's apartment building. It was only there that he finally spoke, and only to softly say, "I'll wait here. I'll take you to him when you're finished."

He had understood. Somehow he had, and Claire had kissed him on the cheek before rushing upstairs. She had substituted the diary for another one, gathered what she had needed to take to Peter and then they were gone.

And the ritual had repeated itself for the next few months, until her mother had gotten over her big scare and her daughter was again allowed to come and go without an escort.

To this day, Claire still had no true idea about her father's intentions during that time. She didn't know if he had simply wanted to regain her trust, or if he'd truly understood how desperately she'd needed to maintain the connection to Peter. How desperately she had needed to know that it hadn't all been a dream, that it had all been real.

By now, Claire had read all of Peter's diaries. Out of order, some days a few entries, others a full diary, like she was composing a very complicate puzzle whose final picture she only had a vague idea as it formed in front of her eyes. She had drunk his memories as if she had been dying of thirst. She had soaked herself with them and let them get under her skin.

She had been learning about Peter Petrelli from scratch.

His daily fight to be something more than what his family thought he was. His insecurities about them being proven right in the end. His first loves and his falling outs, his passions and his disappointments, his fears and his joys.

Claire had started getting to know him. Really know him.

After quitting law school, he had taken a sabbatical and had crossed the States in an old motorbike, working odd jobs here and there along the way…

He got his first kiss at 14, but hadn't lost his virginity until 19, he had been in love with both girls, but they had left him shortly after…

At 15, he had tried out for his school's soccer team, following in Nathan's footsteps, who had been his team's captain; he had later returned home with a note from the coach to his parents, telling them his body was way too fragile and he should try something more suited to his condition, like chess or the math club, and he had never felt more humiliated in his life…

Almost six months before crashing into her in the hallway of Union Wells High, he had met Simone Deveaux and fallen for her; he thought it was love, but sometimes wondered if it was just infatuation, if he wasn't seeing in her the kind of woman – intelligent, beautiful, socially adept – that would please his parents…

After a while, Claire was able to discern his moods just by looking at his handwriting, how the various letters were written smoothly when he was happy, how they became completely vertical when upset or worried, how he used only tiny capitals when he was angry.

He could play the piano, and loved motorbikes. His mother had forced him to learn the first and forbidden him to own or ride the second, but to his delight, his hero of a big brother had sneaked him in to take driving lessons when he was 15 and he had bought his first bike - an old Norton Commando - the day he became 18.

He started smoking cigarettes at 16 just to rebel, but Nathan had caught him one day and, instead of telling on him, he had forced him to smoke a whole pack in one go. He had been so sick after that, he had never smoked another one ever again.

Claire's preconceptions had faded away with each new entry she read. Little by little, page by page, Peter Petrelli became more and more real, less of a fantasy. And her teenaged feelings of worship and admiration were replaced by something deeper and more meaningful.

Yet, it was only during the late hours at night, when she switched off the light after having been reading for an hour too long and she could feel herself falling asleep even before she could find a comfortable position in her bed, that society's conventions and values lost their weight and became something vague and stupid, that she would admit the truth of what was happening to her.

It was only in those brief moments before slumber took her away that Claire Bennet admitted she was falling in love.

He had hated and loved his father. He had loved and hated his mother. He had hated and loved, and then loved and hated and once again hated and loved Nathan with all his heart.

And he had wanted to believe with a desperate need that sometimes Nathan loved him back, or that he even hated him. And his father the same. Ditto his mother.

That they had feelings - ANY feelings - for him, that he was not just an...accessory. A mistake that had happened fourteen years after they had produced the son and heir they'd been looking for, and who was so perfect and the mirror image of them that Nathan was all they needed or wanted.

That he was the kind of little brother a big one loves and wants to protect and not the sort that annoys and one wishes he had never been born, because things were perfect the way they were before he'd arrived. That he was not a house guest in his own home.

Then one day Claire had come across the last diary he had written. The one with his dreams of soaring over New York. The one with him jumping off a building, just because he had dreamt he could fly. The one with the Hiro from the future and his orders to save the cheerleader, save the world. The one where everything was coming together at last, after so long.

The one where he had written about her.

Peter´s last diary entry was from a couple of days before he flew all the way to Texas to save her from Sylar, before it had all become so rushed and chaotic he'd had no further chance to put his thoughts to paper before entering coma-ville.

I've dreamt about her again. The cheerleader. I wonder if Nathan's right, if it's becoming an unhealthy obsession of mine. There's this girl that I don't even know, that I've never seen but who was painted on canvas by a junkie who sees things that haven't happened yet. A girl who I was told to save by a man from the future.

I know that if I sat down to think about it, I'd have to agree with my brother. It's madness. So I don't sit down and think about it. Weird as it is, but I'm moving on pure instinct these days, by what my heart and not my brain tells me. And my heart is telling me I have to find her. I have to save her.

I wonder what she actually looks like. I also wonder what in the hell I'll tell her. The truth? Will she think I'm a lunatic? Yeah, probably. But somehow I also know she'll understand. She's special, I don't know how but I can feel it. We're connected in some way that I can't quite grasp yet. Why do I feel like we're the same, and we're destined to do great things together?

She is special…and I still don't even know her name.

And now, two years after she had finished reading the diaries, Claire was back to square one. Sitting on Peter's bed, wondering if she should open the box again or not. But she was no longer the traumatized little girl she had been when first coming across it. She might still be technically in her teens, but in the two and a half years that had passed since the night of the exploding man, she had become a woman. A legal adult. And part of the responsibility for her maturing process was in the diaries kept in that box.

"You can't live always in fear," she whispered to herself.

Claire opened the box and got out the notebook on top. It was that last one. It was her notebook.

Grabbing a pen from her purse, she opened the diary by its last written page and, like maybe thousands of times before, read it again.

…She is special…and I still don't even know her name.

So many times she had wondered what she would tell him if - when - Peter would wake up. If she would confess her sins to him. If she would tell him that she had deliberately violated his privacy, and felt no shame in having done so.

Well, Claire was quite sure she would keep that last part to herself. She had weighed the consequences many times, and besides the most likely outcome was that telling Peter about her feelings would only freak him out and scare him away.

But the diaries? She had to tell him about that, Claire just wasn't sure she would have the guts to do it. So, in order to force herself, she applied the point of the pen to the paper and wrote something down beneath the last sentence he'd ever written.

My name is Claire Bennet. You were right all along. Thank you for saving me, in more ways than you could ever possibly know.

Thank you for making me special, Peter.

The Texan girl sighed and, after caressing his handwriting with her fingertips, she closed the book and returned it to the box. She then put it under the bed and stood up. Another secret swept under the proverbial carpet.

She retrieved her backpack and walked out of the apartment, switching off the lights on her way.

Peter was waiting for her, like he always did.

---O---

They were watching her.

Sitting inside their unmarked 2006 Charger, Ditko and Cockrum saw Claire coming out of the apartment building and cross the street to her parked car. They themselves were parked half a block downstreet, carefully observing all her movements through the deeply tinted windows of the Dodge. The two men in black had been following her all day.

Cockrum whistled in appreciation as the petite blonde bent over in order to adjust the driver's seat. Apparently, the ancient Volkswagen had more than its share of little kinks and faults. "Nice ass."

The older man gave his partner a disgusted look. "Please, she's just a kid!"

"She's over 18, isn't she? Legal in the eyes of God and the government."

Ditko, who was behind the wheel, shook his head in disapproval as he started the engine. He waited for the blonde to venture into the traffic before pulling his own vehicle out to follow her. He left a few cars in the middle, just for safety, but not many. It wasn't good that the Rabbit was yellow in a city where 97 of the vehicles on the streets were cabs.

To be honest, Ditko hated New York City. Hated the sweating crowds of strangers that mercilessly pushed their way past you on the sidewalks. Hated the way in which nobody looked into nobody's eyes. Hated the dirty underground roamed by punks and homeless people. Hated the postcard landmarks brimming with stupid tourists. Hated the seedy sex shops and the prostitutes offering themselves at night.

It was an unclean city that corrupted anyone walking its streets. He felt dirty just by being there.

Cockrum was still talking about how hot Claire Bennet was and what a shame it was that she was going to spend the rest of her life as a guinea pig. He was tired of hearing it. Ditko was tired of so many things that he felt like shooting his partner just to get some piece and quiet around here.

"Who'd you get for the job?" Ditko asked, finally interrupting Cockrum's monologue about what he wished he could do with the former cheerleader. "Local muscle?"

The younger operative nodded. "Westies. Good 'ol boys from Clinton, like we discussed."

The Westies. Irish crime gangs that had ruled Hell's Kitchen until the Seventies, when alcohol and cocaine had splintered them apart and opened the way for the Italians and the African-Americans to take over. They were just a shadow of their former selves now, little more than hired muscle for other groups. But they were still ruthless and brutal, some of the most hardened and sociopathic members of New York's criminal underworld.

Nathan Petrelli had been especially ruthless with them during his time in the DA's office. He had put a lot of them behind bars and been an instrumental figure in cleaning up Hell's Kitchen streets, so it could become the idealized yuppie Clinton neighborhood. There was a lot of bad blood there because of that, and the Irish never forgot and definitely never forgave.

Sure, the two operatives could have snatched the blonde girl themselves at many different times and places, but that simply was not the way they worked. If Ditko's bosses had wanted Claire Bennet publicly kidnapped, bagged and delivered to them, they would have given the job to just about anyone else.

But that wasn't the reason why Caine had assigned the job to them. No, Ditko and Cockrum had been chosen to do it because they were...invisible. It wouldn't be them who would be doing the actual crime, unlike that little song and dance act with the O'Connor's.

Cockrum had hired some Westies. They would hit the scene when the young Texan female was visiting Peter Petrelli, their contract was to kill the unresponsive vegetable and collect the girl. Kill anyone who got in their way afterwards, too. Later, once the goons had turned over the blonde to them, Ditko and Cockrum would lose no time in executing them all.

The police would find the bodies along with the guns used in the hit and think that Peter Petrelli had been the intended primary target, an act of vengeance against his brother or maybe something just to get rid of the only witness to the late Congressman's disappearance. Claire would merely be collateral damage, the Westies were such mad dogs it wasn't unthinkable they would have snatched her in the heat of the moment in order to gang-rape her during some sort of disturbing post-mission party celebration. Her body would never be found, and it would be assumed she had just been dumped in the river afterwards.

Another mysterious vanishing act associated with the Petrelli clan. The papers would no doubt say that the family was cursed, even worse than the Kennedy's.

Claire took the motorway towards Long Island and they followed her, like wolves after their prey.

---O---

Peter lies motionless on the sand. His whole body feels numb, as if he had had a long bath in ice-cold water. He remembers now, remembers everything and wishes he didn't. Because it just hurts so much.

His eyes are lost in the clouded sky, on the sun that so valiantly tries to fight through the clouds to warm him up a little. Charles towers over him, like a silhouette against the daylight. Somehow, he knows the older man is smiling.

"Are you done down there?" he asks. "If you want to throw another fit, I can wait. I'll just sit down for awhile."

The black man's mirth is unsettling and out of place, but at the same time it helps Peter focus. "I think I hate you."

"Well, that's a beginning," Charles chuckles, leaning down and offering his hand.

The boy in white accepts it and lets the older man help him stand up. For a few seconds, they look into each other's eyes without saying a word. Measuring each other, trying to gaze into the other man's soul. Peter is the first one to break contact, he is unable to tell if he is looking into a mirror or not.

"What do you want from me?" he asks.

"I have two messages for you, Peter. One is from me, the second from yourself."

Peter doesn't even try to decipher the man's cryptic remark. He just turns away from him and looks into the horizon, where the vast dead ocean meets the darkening sky. There is a mighty storm coming, indeed. He can feel it now in the very marrow of his bones, in every pore of his skin and every nerve ending of his body. The air is charged with electricity. His heart is beating faster, but not with the crazy gallop of before.

Charles continues, "And I have a piece of advice, too. You have to stop assuming you know yourself, or that you know the whole truth. You don't, Peter. Not even half of it. But you're gonna find out, and you're not going to like what you learn."

"What is the truth then?"

"That is for you and only you to find out. I can only give you one clue, and that's my first message for you. I didn't just die, Peter. I was killed."

Now the boy's stare shoots back to his old friend, shocked. "What?"

Charles' smile is a sad one. "Don't ask me to elaborate any further, 'cause I can't. Just know that I'm not lying, that you're not imagining it, that that part of me that was left in you is telling you the truth. It's not vengeance that I want, though. I'm at peace now, Peter, and I've accepted my end was decided long ago by the choices that I and I alone made in my life. I'm telling you this now, because you need to know if you want to survive the coming storm."

Peter is speechless. It's a whole minute until he is able to regain his wits. "So what's your second message?"

The black man he once loved like a father leans closer to him. He speaks with a whisper into his ear, as if what he is about to say is so secret he cannot risk even the wind to eavesdrop.

"You can't live always in fear."

Charles steps back from him, as Peter gives him a frown, not really understanding that. But it's okay, the black man knows he doesn't, still can't. But he will, soon enough. "And now you can go. You're needed somewhere else."

"But…you can't just leave me like this, Charles. I don't understand…you have to help me!"

The older man is still smiling, as he sits down again in his reclining chair and inspects the fishing cane. "I'm not your Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi, Peter. I've not come to train you in the ways of the Force or anything like that. I'm just a friend, who loves you like a son. Who would have been happy to have you as the father of his grandchildren."

"But I don't want to go back! I'll just fail again!"

Nodding, Charles relaxes back on his chair. He crosses his arms behind his head and props his feet up. He is the image of blissful carelessness. "That's always a possibility, I guess. But look at it this way: if you try, you can either succeed or fail. But if you don't even try, failure will be the only option."

"And then what?" the boy in white demands to know. The faces of all those he has failed in the past are constantly flashing through his mind with stabs of pain in his heart. That's why he came here, he knows that now, to stop feeling that pain. And in doing so, Peter now understands, he committed his final act of betrayal, leaving behind all those he was supposed to care about and for.

"So what'll happen then, Charles? How many lives will be lost this time when I fail?"

Charles tilts his head only for a heartbeat. Then, he makes himself comfortable on the chair, covering his eyes with the straw hat as if getting ready to take a nap. He simply says, "All of them."

It feels to Peter like he has just been kicked in the stomach. "All my friends? All my family?"

"No, Peter," the black man answers calmly. "I meant all human life, everyone everywhere on the face of this planet."

---O---

Long Island, New York.
May, 2009

They were still watching Claire when she arrived at the rest home. Carefully following each and every one of her steps as she parked the tiny Volkswagen and got out of it. Eyes like hawks' set dead on her petite frame, as she nimbly walked into the building.

"I'll give her five minutes before we make the call," Ditko said as he retrieved a sliver of nicotine chewing gum from the inner pocket of his jacket.

Cockrum arched an eyebrow at noticing this. "You still trying to quit?"

"Yeah," the older man groaned. "Marisa is driving me crazy about it. She's in one of her healthy life phases."

His partner chuckled. "Man, if you're going to die of something, it's gonna be her cooking. I've never had a stew worse than hers, and I was stationed in Iraq for three years."

"Hey, watch your mouth when you're talking about my wife," Ditko said, dead serious. "I have a gun, you know."

As his partner laughed good naturedly, the older man in black began to chew nervously. He was craving a cigarette so bad he could have murdered for one. "I don't like this, you know."

"Like what?"

"This whole assignment," Ditko fumed. "I don't like it in the least. It's, I don't know. Way too far off of our standard procedures."

"I don't see how, it's not the first time we've retrieved a subject for examination." It was easier to say 'subject' and 'examination' than 'girl' and 'vivisection'. What they did might be for the good of the world, but some pills were easier to swallow when coated in sugar.

"Screw that horse hockey! I'm worried about something else," the gray-haired man grunted. "I'm telling you, partner, that's Noah Bennet's daughter we're gonna grab here. Do you have any idea how many different kinds of fans the shit will hit, if he ever finds out we put her in a Company lab? And terminating Angela Petrelli's son? I don't even want to start thinking about the repercussions of that."

"Last I heard, Bennet was working solo these days and the Petrelli woman had vanished off the face of Earth." Cockrum shrugged. "Doesn't sound like much of a threat to me."

Ditko gave his partner a sideways look. "Oh, to once again be that young and naïve…"

As he looked outside, checking that the Bennet girl hadn't unexpectedly come out of the building, Cockrum gave his partner the finger. The older man chuckled again, and continued speaking, "I saw that. But seriously, this stinks. And the worst part of all this is having to deal with those Westies scumbags. They're nothing but animals."

"Well, think of it this way," Cockrum said, producing his cell phone – a pre-paid, disposable, untraceable unit – and dialing a number. "You only need to look forward to the moment we kill those assholes."

The line was picked at the other side after a couple of calling signals, and a rough voice answered. "Yeah, this is Tommy Gunn."

Cockrum rolled his eyes, he could almost smell the whisky though the phone. But he said cheerily, "Hey, my main man Tommy! Are you cool to roll, already?"

"Yeah, just waitin' for ya call. My arse is gettin' flat, man," the thug groaned.

"Well then, my Irish friend, the wait is over. You can start whenever you want."

"'Bout time, mate!" the gangster laughed. "I've seen that pretty blonde gal, this is really goin' ta be fun!"

The younger man in black hung up without waiting for the other man to say anymore. He exhibited a disgusted face as he looked at his partner. "You know what? You were right about the 'animals' thing. And I'm REALLY going to enjoy terminating those morons."

Ditko shook his head. Looked at the rest home with intensity and, without deviating his eyes one iota, he obtained a new piece of nicotine gum and put it into his mouth. This assignment really sucked.

Big time.

---O---

It was worse than murder. Worse than genocide. Worse than the seven plagues of Egypt all wrapped into one with a nice little bow on top.

Claire stood in the doorway of Peter's room, transfigured by a rage that was beyond anything she had ever believed she could summon within herself. She could feel her face turning crimson red, her lungs filling and emptying with ragged breaths and her eyes so wide open that her eyeballs threatened with popping out by themselves. There was also a vein beating in her temple, but she was barely conscious of that because, to be honest, all her attention was currently focused in trying to hate the nurse called Samantha to death.

"What. Have. You. DONE?!" Miss Bennet yelled, at the top of her lungs.

The buxom nurse was standing right behind the Texan girl's immobile uncle, a pair of scissors in one hand, a hairbrush in the other and a shocked look on her face. The young man was wearing a long towel around his neck, covering the combination of dressing gown and pajamas with which he was usually wore at the rest home.

The towel, and the floor all around him, was covered with hair. His hair.

Samantha had just dared to cut his hair off, and now Petrelli's silky emo bangs had all but completely disappeared. In their place, he wore a slicked back conservative look that didn't suit him at all. And what was more, it only helped to accentuate the gauntness and paleness that had overcome his body after spending more than two years with no more physical exercise than the therapeutically needed and being tube fed through his nose.

Peter Petrelli seemed sickly now, more than ever. Like a refugee from some Nazi death camp that had lost all will to live.

"Honey, I don't understand…" the nurse started saying.

Claire didn't even let her finish. "You…you…you…BITCH!!!"

Samantha was taken aback by the pure hate in the young girl's voice and could do nothing but to recoil in fear as the blonde advanced into the room with angry steps. But Claire's target wasn't herself, as she went straight for Peter and, kneeling down in front of the young man, cupped his face with her hands.

Regaining some of her authority, the red-haired nurse straightened and looked at the Texan from above. "There's no need to be so upset, Claire. This was something necessary, in fact it should've been done a long time ago. All that greasy hair was nothing but an incubator for lice-"

Claire stood up very slowly. Her fists were clenched so tight her knuckles had turned white. She advanced on the woman and, in spite of her smaller frame, the nurse found herself once again retreating. "His hair was not greasy, I was looking after it myself," the blonde whispered in barely suppressed rage. "There was no danger of lice, cooties or anything like that!"

"Claire, please calm down. I really think you're making a mountain out of molehill here," Samantha tried to direct her steps towards the room's alarm. This kid obviously was obviously not wired together properly, and she wasn't being paid enough for this. "Now, why don't you relax and we'll discuss this rationally, alright? Do you want some tea or something?"

She was being quite irrational, Claire was conscious of that herself. It was only a haircut, nothing that time would not repair, and that was exactly all that Peter had. Time.

And that was what pissed the blonde Texan off. The impotence she felt for not being able to help him. The fact that no matter how much hope she managed to muster every single day before going into that room at the Synger rest home, by the time she left it that very hope was crushed a little more than the previous day.

The one-time cheerleader remembered a story from the Bible. She was not particularly religious herself but her adopted mother, good Southerner that she was, had always ensured that they went to church on Sundays and both Claire and her brother had attended Sunday school.

The story, anyway, was about a man - she didn't remember if he was an apostle, or a prophet or what - who was trying to understand God's will while he walked down a beach. He then came across a little kid who had dug a hole in the sand and he was running from the shore to the hole, getting water from the sea with his hands and pouring it into the hole. The man asked him what he was doing and the boy told him that he was trying to get the whole ocean into the hole. When the man told him that was impossible, the little kid answered that it would be easier for him to succeed in his task than for the man to understand God's reasons for His plans.

The thing was that Claire didn't identify with the man. She sometimes felt like the boy, trying to fill a little hole with all the water in the ocean. She was simply overwhelmed by the impossible task she had appointed herself with.

It was also a piece of music she had no idea how to play. She was trying to play it by heart, but most of the time Claire felt that she was missing more notes than she actually managed to hit.

The blonde girl knew that she was now venting all that frustration and confusion on the nurse, who didn't deserve such a diatribe for trying to do her job. But frankly, Claire was beyond caring at this point. All she knew was that her eyes burnt with unshed tears. That she was tired, too tired of fighting every fucking day for an impossible dream. That no matter how hard she tried, she always crashed against the same wall made of live rock.

Peter Petrelli rock, to be exact.

She had nearly cornered Samantha when it occurred to her the futility of her anger. What was she going to do? Scream at Samantha until her fake boobs exploded? Beat her until she was black and blue? Rip the scissors out of her hand and stab her in the eye?

Her homicidal fantasies spiraled out of control, growing into a bubble of soapy water until it simply popped. Plick! And Claire felt herself deflating, the air rushing out of her lungs in a pained whistle. Drained, her knees weak, Claire had to sit down on the bed as her body was wracked by sobs.

Samantha stopped dead, her finger on the alarm button but yet to push it. The Texan girl was hiding her face between her hands, now crying openly.

Sighing, the nurse moved her hand away from the alarm and gently sat down at her side. She carefully put an arm around the younger girl's shoulders and let Claire lean on her. "It's alright, honey," she soothed her distraught companion. "It's alright."

Neither of them noticed Peter's right index finger twitching on the handrest of his wheelchair. Once, only once.

---O---

Thomas 'Tommy' Gunn was 26 years old, of which he had already spent twelve of them housed by the state either in a reformatory or prison. When he walked into the reception area of the Synger rest home, actually, he had enjoyed barely seven months of freedom after completing a 5-year sentence at Riker's Island for beating a man into coma after an alcohol-fueled, football-related argument.

More than one person would argue that Tommy's behavior was nothing than another spin of an endless vicious circle. He had grown up in a rough environment, where violence and crime were not only considered acceptable, but a way of life. Many would say he had only become a reflection of all that he had been exposed to ever since he was a baby.

And maybe they would be right, but that didn't change the fact that Tommy was a mean son of a bitch who enjoyed hurting people, for fun or profit. The list of his crimes practically covered the whole of the U.S. criminal law code. Extortion, drug dealing, grand theft auto, assault with a deadly weapon, organized gambling and prostitution, contract murder…you name it, and he had surely done it at one time or another.

It was only street smarts and luck that he had never been caught for the worst things he had ever done, or by now he would have already been given 36 consecutive life sentences or the needle itself.

Luck for him, of course.

And maybe the worst part about the situation that evening when he walked into the rest home was that, out of the two men who crossed the threshold, Tommy was the nicer one.

His partner was Patrick O'Leary. He was older than Tommy, well in his thirties, and a very silent man who unlike the New York-born and raised younger gangster, had been born in Dublin. He had been a provo, a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in the Nineties and a very active one at that.

O'Leary had been responsible for no less than thirty military actions against the British, with a body count that ascended well into the fifties. He had bombed military and civilian installations alike, murdered soldiers and political figures and generally done his best to spread chaos and terror in the name of his twisted idealistic version of Ireland.

Until he had grown disenchanted with the peace negotiations between Sinn Feinn and the British government, which had led to the 1997 ceasefire and the 1998 Good Friday agreement.

Yet, unlike most of his former allies, who had either accepted the terms of the agreement and gone into a peaceful retirement or joined split, continuant factions of the IRA, Patrick - and in this he was much like Tommy - simply enjoyed hurting his fellow human beings too much to quit or to keep going with what was now an obvious lost cause. He had emigrated to the U.S. and reinvented himself as a mobster.

Sad as, but there was simply too much of a large market demand for somebody of his talent and skill not to find employment straightaway.

They were as different physically as they were equally rotten on the inside. Tommy was a burly guy, short and broad shouldered with dark hair and dead blue eyes. He favored leather jackets, thick gold chains and sported a collection of tattoos on his arms and shoulders that reached up to the base of his neck. Patrick was skinny and tall, lanky like an elm tree, with balding reddish hair that he perpetually covered with a flat tweed cap. His green eyes, however, were as dead and emotionless as his partner's.

They had backup outside, two guys from Tommy's gang waiting in his Cadillac DTS with heavier weaponry than the pistols they carried themselves. But neither man thought they would need them. After all, this was just a little girl and a useless vegetable that they had to take care of, right?

A walk through the park, on a sunny say.

Martha, the motherly African-American caretaker who was Claire's friend, was on desk duty again today, and she instantly frowned at seeing these two men. By no means did they seem the type of visitor the rest home usually had. "Can I help you, gentlemen?"

"Yeah, luv, can you point us to Peter Petrelli's room?" Tommy asked, flashing his best reptilian grin.

Peter's last name tasted truly foul and bitter in Gunn's mouth, it should be noted. The man's older brother had personally prosecuted his own older brother years ago, and shown no mercy with him. The elder Gunn had gotten the needle after a building he had burned down in order to collect the insurance payment had happened to house several homeless persons that had died in the fire.

Nathan Petrelli had argued that Tommy's brother had known of the homeless people's presence and hadn't cared, that day he had gone for capital punishment and won. The fuckin' spaghetti bastard.

In Tommy's opinion, killing Petrelli's little brother was going to make his day. The money they would get paid for the job was only the cherry on top.

Martha didn't seem to be eager to collaborate. "I'm sorry, gentlemen," and the word sounded like anything but what it actually meant, "but only family members are allowed to visit."

"But we are family, luv! We're Peter's cousins from Ireland!"

The caretaker's eyebrow shot up. "I thought he didn't have any cousins. But it doesn't matter; visiting hours are over, anyway."

Tommy looked at her for a few seconds and then sighed and shrugged in defeat. He looked around, it was already late in the evening and there was no one else around. "That's a shame, luv. Pat?"

The former terrorist pulled out a silenced 9mm pistol and shot the motherly woman twice in the heart. Martha died almost instantly, barely having enough time for her face to register the shock and surprise as her body was pushed backwards by the force of the impacts. She crashed down behind the desk, as O'Leary circled it. Casually and cold-bloodedly, he shot her again in the head just to be sure. He then tucked the gun in his trousers and proceeded to check the reception computer.

"Second floor, Room 12," he said curtly.

Tommy nodded and drew out his own pistol, similarly equipped with a silencer. "Let's go."

---O---

Claire was a bit better now, or at least calming down, when the assassins walked to the door.

"I'm sorry," she apologized to Samantha as she dried her tears with a Kleenex offered by the nurse. "I feel so stupid right now."

The redhead managed a sympathetic smile. "It's okay, dear. I understand - hey, who are you guys?"

Frowning, the young Texan turned her head to the door. Two mean-looking men had materialized in the doorway. She felt her blood running cold. It was obvious that Samantha was surprised by the presence but not worried, in spite of their thug-like looks. She was, like any regular person was wont to do, just looking at their faces.

But Claire was the daughter of a secret agent, and one of the first things Noah Bennet had taught her in order to protect herself was to always look at the whole picture. She flickered her eyes from their faces to their feet and all the way back up in a second, drinking in every single detail of them in one swift sweep motion.

She noticed their right hands, hidden behind her backs and immediately turned to Samantha. "Hit the alarm!"

"What?!" the nurse looked at her like she was crazy.

Claire was already standing up, placing her body between the men and the most vulnerable victim in the room, Samantha. Life went suddenly into slow motion. She heard herself shouting again for the nurse to push the alarm, but it was like it was somebody else was screaming, from far away.

The strangers pulled their guns up and took aim. 'Not at me,' Claire noticed. She got her backpack from the bed by its strap and slung it around, throwing it at the gunmen.

Adrenaline was rushing through her veins. Her heart was beating at 100 miles per hour. She was on fire, but focused like a gun's laser sight.

The backpack crashed against the gun of the shortest man, the one with the leather jacket and the tribal tattoo near his neck, and spoiled his aim as he fired. The taller one, though, didn't waver as he pulled the trigger.

There was a muffled sound, half-metallic, half-whisper. Claire felt the rush of air as the bullet zipped past her cheek, and instinctively turned her head around, her blonde curls whipping madly, just in time to see Samantha falling forward and away from her. A bloodstain was growing right in the center of her back.

The nurse crashed down on the little bedside table on which the alarm button was located, but Claire didn't wait for her body to settle down on the floor. She knew she only had a heartbeat of time before they went for her. She had to act, and fast.

Now, she had only two options, and both were dictated by the most basic of instincts, one that was common to all living creatures when facing danger: flight or fight.

The window was only two steps away. She was fairly sure she could reach it before the two armed men managed to grab or incapacitate her. It wouldn't be the first time she'd crashed through one or fallen off a building to escape a dangerous situation, and surely the fall from this second floor would hurt less than when she'd jumped out of Linderman's office in Kirby Plaza.

But then, if she did that, Claire would be abandoning Peter to these men's hands. She knew any kind of hurt they could inflict on him, she could heal by being physically close. But she had no idea of what would happen if she wasn't. Unlike her, Peter had to consciously call for his powers to act when he wasn't near their source, and in his current state there was no guarantee he could form any conscious thought at all.

Plus, Samantha could be dead, or she could be just wounded. And there were other people in the rest home that might be in danger. She couldn't abandon them to their own fate.

So, no flight. She would have to fight her way out of this.

Instead of turning to the window, Claire moved forward. The corner of the bed was between her and the men, and she leaned on it to prop herself forward and leap onto the two killers.

It was a crazy move, she just hoped its unpredictability would take the men by surprise. Amazing, she thought idly as she crossed the air, how she had just gone from weeping lovesick teen into fighting lioness in one second. If it wasn't because her reflection in the mirror never talked back to her, she would have believed she also had a deranged alter ego like Niki.

Claire fell onto the tall man while she raised her knees, slapping his armed hand away and crashing onto his chest. They flew into the outer hallway, the man fell to the floor on his back and the Texan girl's weight on his chest made him expel the air from his lungs in a pained explosion of breath.

She closed her tiny hand into a fist and slammed it onto the man's face with all her strength, not with a punch but using it like a mace. The assassin's nose broke, spurting blood down onto his mouth and chin and blinding him with pain and shock.

"Aw, fuck!!" was all that the former terrorist could scream as Claire rolled aside from him, over his extended arm, and tried to wrestle the pistol out of his hand.

Tommy was in complete shock. This was supposed to be a nice and easy job. This was supposed to be some airhead blonde cheerleader. What this was not supposed to be was bloody Buffy, the vampire Slayer!

The Irish thug turned around and aimed at the girl, he was about to pull the trigger when it dawned on him that the second part of the job was to deliver her alive. He couldn't risk wounding her too seriously, so instead of opening fire, he spun the pistol around on his finger and grabbed it by the barrel. Leaning over the struggling duo, Tommy traced an arc with the improvised blunt weapon and struck the blonde across the face with its butt.

Not dead, not even seriously wounded, but nobody had said the package had to be intact and functional.

Claire's jaw snapped with a loud crack and she found herself rolling away from the tall man. The Texan girl groaned as, standing on all fours, she brought a hand to her face and rotated her shattered jaw to put it into place. The man she had downed was pretty much doing the same, although she was willing to bet it hurt more to him.

Her powers, on top of the tissue regeneration, included a higher threshold of pain tolerance than a regular human. That meant that even though she felt the pain, it didn't bother Claire as much any other regular Joe.

She hadn't managed to take the pistol away from him, and O'Leary leveled it at her head. Shit, she would be of no use with her brain destroyed by a bullet. Claire remained still, waiting for the men to make the next move.

"Take care of this bitch," the man still standing told the other one. "I'll get rid of the vegetable."

Claire felt like fainting, but didn't let herself drown in fear. Of all the dirty little secrets she had – her feelings for Peter, her reading of his diaries, and more – there was one she was actually quite proud of.

One of the first things that Noah Bennet had done after the family had moved to New York, was to ensure that his daughter could defend herself in case the Company ever tried to make a move on her again. The fact that she was well nigh indestructible didn't mean she couldn't be incapacitated and taken away. Because her father couldn't just lock her up at home for the rest of her natural life, Bennet had sought to give her a set of tools that she could use to minimize the chances of something like that happening.

Claire had felt a little bit like she was attending spy school as her father had spent uncountable hours passing onto her his own experience and knowledge on counter-surveillance and evasion techniques. And the coolness factor had hit the ceiling on the day he had told her that, now that she knew how to identify a threat and escape from it, she needed to learn how to face such a threat if running away was not an option.

D.L. had taught her how to properly use a gun. She had trained in self-defense with Niki, learning stuff like Israeli Krav Maga and Korean Hapkido. Martial arts that were fought up close and personal and where she could use her smaller frame and shorter reach, and be vicious enough to incapacitate an aggressor with a couple of well-placed strikes.

Of course Claire hadn't turned into some one-cheerleader-army or anything like that, she was far from being Jet Li with pom-poms…yet. But she was no longer a defenseless little girl, although she took advantage of other people perceiving her like that.

Like now.

Claire made her face into a mask and raised her hands in surrender as the taller thug stood up and advanced on her. With fake tears she pleaded with fake fear, "No please, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it, please don't hurt me!"

"You goddamn little whore," O'Leary grabbed her by the hair and yanked at it to force her to stand up. "I'm going to make you pay for this!"

Clenching her fists, the Texan shot them out at once and punched the man in his throat. His Adam's apple crushed, O'Leary released her by instinct to hold his own neck and the blonde took the opportunity to brutally kick him in the groin. The former terrorist bent over with a whine and she grabbed him by the collar of his jacket. Using his own momentum, Claire pulled with all her strength and made Patrick O'Leary crash face-first into the doorframe.

The former terrorist fell down to his knees, losing his grip on the gun, and Claire finally took hold of it. Like she had been taught, she quickly checked the safety and the hammer and lost no time in bursting back into the room.

Peter continued sitting on the wheelchair, like the living dead. The other killer was standing right in front of him, between the young Petrelli and the window, his handgun leveled at the boy's head.

Everything happened very fast. Claire brought her stolen pistol up, feeling it heavy and cold in her petite hand. She didn't hesitate, the paper targets with which she'd practiced didn't bleed.

But O'Leary had recovered quicker than she expected, and he leaped in right after her. The lanky man tackled her just as she pulled the trigger and the shot went too high, missing the mark by just two inches.

The man crushed her onto the floor, one knee on her stomach, and slapped the gun away from her hand. Claire tried to fight back, but with no space to move, she was at the mercy of the man's superior strength. He punched her in the face with rage, nearly rendering her unconscious, and then wrapped her throat with one hand.

As he choked her, O'Leary looked at his partner in crime over his shoulder, "Kill him already, Tommy. And let's get the fuck outta here!"

Claire's stomach flipped painfully, and not just because of the pressure exerted by the man on top of her. She couldn't do anything as the assassin in the leather jacket aimed again at Peter and, from less than five inches away, pulled the trigger of his pistol. All she could do was scream, "PETER!!!"

---O---

It is getting dark, way too quickly.

Peter feels the darkness approaching, a shadow falling on this land of dreams without mercy. He sees it devouring the sand and the ocean, obliterating them from existence, and turns around as his lifts his eyes to the sun.

He isn't expecting to see an eclipse.

"Time's up," Charles says. "You have to go back."

"But…" He is still ruled by his insecurities, doubting even the power of his feelings.

"No 'buts' anymore, Peter," the older man says. "It's time to either put up or shut up. It's time to face the storm."

Peter stops looking at his friend to once again gaze at the sun. It's half covered now. A sense of absolute dread creeps over him and his heart once more goes from trot to gallop.

Claire. She is in danger. He can feel it, although – like so many other things about his niece – he can't explain how he knows it. He just does. It's their connection, still strong even through time, space and the dimension of the soul.

"How do I do it?" he asks, suddenly in a hurry to get away from here. To go back to Claire. "How do I go back?"

Charles' smile is a knowing one. "Click your heels three times and say 'there's no place like home'?"

The boy in white has to make an effort not to tell him off. His older friend can't help laughing. "C'mon, Peter, you have to make an effort here. I can't simply give you all the answers."

"All the answers?" he growls to himself, turning away from him again. Has he actually given any, or simply just raised more questions? He faces the sun, which is three quarters covered in darkness now.

Claire. He has to get to Claire.

And Claire...is the sun.

Peter falls to one knee and forces himself to remember Nathan. Pride and pain become bundled into one, filling his mouth and his heart with the bittersweet memories of his brother. The sand ripples around him and all of a sudden he rockets into the air, leaving a trail of condensed steam in his wake and quickly getting lost from sight.

Charles follows him with his eyes for a few seconds, until he is so far away he is not even a little point in the sky. Smiling, he recovers his fishing cane and relaxes back into his reclining chair. He hums, "We have all the time in the world…"

The boy in white flies up into the sky. Fast. Faster…

His dark eyes are set on the eclipsing sun, watching it grow larger and larger as it becomes darker and darker. In this dimension of dreams and memories nothing is as it should be, and soon he is so close that it's only darkness he sees.

A circle of darkness, and nothing else.

---O---

A circle of darkness, and nothing else.

Then an explosion in its very core, and a big lump of metal moving forward, pushed by the expanding gases of the conflagration. Spinning around, advancing towards him. 185 grains of lead and steel becoming larger and larger, until they engulfed all that was the world.

Time slowed down, as if everything that moved did so through quicksand. The bullet left the barrel of Tommy's Beretta and made its way towards Peter's forehead inch by agonizing inch.

Five inches. Four inches. Three. Two…

The projectile stopped mid-air. Time resumed its normal pace. But the bullet stood still, deprived of all kinetic energy.

And so did the four people in the room. Three of them could move, but they were too astonished to do so. Tommy and O'Leary could simply not process what was happening, it was an event too alien to their limited world-view for any sort of comprehension.

Claire Bennet was too scared to move. Scared not of the men with the guns, but afraid that if she moved, if she said anything, the spell would be broken, and the hope she felt growing within her chest would be washed away by a wave of cold harsh reality.

"What the fuck-?" the thug in the leather jacket frowned, his gun hand falling at his side as he reached for the immobile bullet with his other.

He yelped in pain when his fingers brushed the still hot metal, but he had no trouble retrieving the projectile. Tommy bounced it on the palm of his hand until it cooled down enough for him to hold it without getting burnt. He examined it for a couple of seconds, but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary with the metal slug. He turned to his partner with a puzzled expression in his face.

O'Leary turned back to Claire, who he was still pinning down onto the ground, and aimed right at her face with his weapon. The blonde was smiling from ear to ear, with a 'oh boy, you're so deep in shit' grin. "Knock it off. You have five seconds to tell me what's going on here before I blow your pretty brains out, lass."

"That's funny, 'cause you have only three seconds to let her go before I rip yours out," said a raspy male voice from behind him.

O'Leary's head whipped around towards the source of the sound and Tommy's went up to stare back at the young man in the wheelchair. He was still in the same position as before, not having moved a hair's length. But his eyes… His dark eyes, which were lost and vacant mere seconds ago, were now gazing straight at him.

And his lips, they were forming a crooked smile full of mischievousness. The same almost evil mischief that pearled his voice when Peter said to him, "Boo."

Gunn raised the pistol again. It wasn't exactly the smartest action of his life.

It was as if a giant invisible sledgehammer had hit Tommy all over his body at once. He was shot backwards, bones snapping everywhere until he crashed through the window. The TK blow impacted against the entirety of the wall like a tsunami, blowing it outwards into a fireless explosion of brick and mortar. A second later, there simply was no wall and Tommy's corpse landed with a dull thud on the ground outside, large chunks of concrete raining around and onto him.

Speechless, O'Leary moved his pistol away from Claire's face to aim at the no-longer-catatonic young man as he smoothly stood up from his wheelchair, with a grace that belied the fact he had just spent more than two years without moving a muscle. "Hold it right there, you son of a-"

"Time's up," Peter growled, sweeping the air with his hand and making the pistol fly away from the assassin's hand. He then shot his other hand forward and the Irish killer found himself flying up from the ground and away from the blonde girl until he painfully crashed into the ceiling and remained pinned there.

Claire rushed to her feet so fast that she felt lightheaded. Or maybe the rush of blood to her head was caused by very different reasons, by the fact that she was witnessing a miracle, by the fact that her hope wasn't being swept aside by reality, but rather becoming reality.

"PETER!" she shouted again, but this time with joy instead of fear. The young Texan rushed to her uncle and enveloped him in such a huge bear-hug that he was about to fall. "Peter! Peter! Peter! PeterPeterPeter…"

She just couldn't stop repeating his name over and over. She couldn't stop holding him, didn't want to let him go for fear he would vanish if she did. Claire just wanted to embrace him so strongly that he would sink under her skin.

But he was not hugging her back, she realized. Peter was stiff-backed, she noticed when the shock and wonder of his sudden recovery started to fade away. And he felt cold, as if there was nothing but ice underneath his dressing gown and pajamas.

Feeling her smile disappear, Claire took a step back. He wasn't even looking at her. Actually, Peter seemed completely oblivious to her presence. His eyes were only focused on the assassin pinned to the ceiling like an overgrown butterfly. And they were eyes full of hatred, so intense they didn't seem to be his.

Claire had seen those eyes before, but in a different man. In a man full of hate and madness.

"Peter…" she whispered, her hands leaning on his narrow hips.

"Time's up," Petrelli repeated again, ignoring her. He then did something that turned her blood into a river of glacial water.

Peter raised his right hand, the index finger fully extended and aimed at the man's head. Mechanically, he said for the third time, "Time's up."

He slowly started to move his finger from left to right and a bleeding gash begun to form on O'Leary's forehead, mirroring the motion of Peter's index. The former terrorist screamed at top of his lungs, the pain unbearable as he was scalped alive.

"PETER!!" Claire roared after shaking herself of the stupor caused by her uncle's actions. "What are you doing?! Peter!!"

The petite Texan yanked at his arm and forced him to look down at her. Claire commanded with all the strength she could summon, "Peter, damn it, listen to me! STOP! What the hell are you doing?"

Petrelli shuddered and blinked as his sight cleared up and focused. He seemed to be coming out of a spell and a bit drowsy as he shook his head. It was like he was seeing her for the first time. "Claire? Is that you?"

His knees buckled and the blonde girl had to support him so he wouldn't end up on the floor. His concentration gone, O'Leary fell off the ceiling and crashed down, moaning in pain but still alive.

"Oh Peter," Miss Bennet finally allowed herself to smile again, cradling his face. "Are you alright?"

"Claire…" he managed a weak grin. "Where am I? What's going on?"

"You're safe now, okay? You're with me, I won't leave you alone." She looked around. The tall Irishman looked like he wasn't going to be any sort of threat for the moment, and the other one…well, the Texan woman didn't think that guy would be a threat to anyone else, ever again.

But Samantha was lying on the floor, deadly quiet. "C'mon, Peter, stay with me, alright? Don't let go."

The young man only groaned unintelligibly as she helped him to the bed, half dragging him, half letting him support himself on her. It was like all that strength he had made a show of when getting up from the wheelchair had been siphoned away.

Maybe by the use of his powers. Or maybe because of something entirely different.

Claire let him rest on the bed and quickly rushed to the nurse's side. The bloodstain had extended all over her back and, when the petite Texan turned her around, she felt a chill down her spine. Her pupils were rolled up into her eye sockets and a thin line of blood flowed out of the corner of her mouth. She checked the pulse on Samantha's jugular, but wasn't surprised when she didn't find one.

Closing Samantha's eyes, Claire swallowed the lump in her throat. Like before, it was her father's voice in the back of her brain that set her in motion. She would have time for guilt trips later, now there was only space for one line of thought: survival.

She stood up and returned to Peter's side. He was on the verge of unconsciousness. "No, no, no…don't fall asleep. Stay with me," she cupped his jawline with her tiny hands and made him look into her green eyes, scared that he would fall back into his catatonic state. "Peter, listen to my voice, okay? You have to stay awake. You have to hold on!"

"I'm tired…" he yawned. "Everything's so confusing…the beach…Charles…"

'What?' Claire thought, but didn't ask it aloud. It was pretty obvious that Peter was very confused and she didn't want to upset him anymore than she had to. There would be time for that later.

"Yeah, right, the beach," she grunted, lifting him from the bed and wrapping one of his arms around her neck so he could lean on her. "We'll go to the beach later, okay? We'll swim and sunbathe, I'll even help you build a sandcastle."

"Claire?" he groggily asked.

"Yeah?"

"You're talking nonsense."

The Texan couldn't help but chuckle as both of them stumbled more than walked around the bed and towards the door. Neither of them saw O'Leary crawling on the floor and regaining his pistol.

The former IRA activist was so enraged that he couldn't see straight. And the fact that he had a bleeding three-inch gash on his forehead was not helping at all. He couldn't care about the contract job anymore, he just felt hurt and humiliated and wanted payback.

O'Leary lifted the 9mm with shaky hands and, half blinded as he was, aimed at the bulk of the two figures retreating from the room. He pulled the trigger twice and sent to silent bullets into the air that impacted against Claire's back and pushed her forward like she had just been kicked by a mule.

The uncle-niece duo went tumbling into the hallway, the Texan's lungs on fire as she breathed her own blood. "Claire!" Peter yelled, his arms tightening on her so she wouldn't fall.

"I'm alright!" she choked and coughed, red foam forming in her lips. "Let's just get outta here!"

Claire hated bullet wounds. Hated the burning stab of the entry, the uncomfortable sensation of the metal slugs inside her body as this one fought to expel them away. Above all, she hated to have been so stupid as to believe the other killer was no longer a menace just because he was wounded. Her father had taught her better than that.

They stumbled their way down the corridor, Claire leaning with one hand on the wall, leaving a red imprint wherever her fingers touched the plaster, Peter doing a great impression of a drunk epileptic as he held onto her with the little strength he could summon from within himself.

"We need to call…the cops, somebody. You need a hospital," he said worriedly.

"No…" she grunted. One of the bullets was lodged inside her right lung and she could feel it moving towards her breathing channels as the wound sealed up by itself and the lung re-inflated. "Don't worry about me…I'm…indestructible, remember?"

O'Leary came out of the room, his feet no faster than theirs, his hand uselessly wiping off the blood pouring down his face and onto his eyes. There were too many blood vessels in the head, and he was bleeding too copiously for him to clear up his eyes. He squeezed a couple more shots in the general direction of their voices but he missed this time.

Peter's head was a whirlwind. He remembered only fragments, like his recent memory was a mirror and somebody had smashed it with a hammer. Everything was there, but mixed up and overlapped. He wasn't sure what was real and what was a dream.

But Claire was real, in his arms. Stronger even after being shot than he had ever felt. And he was drained. Oh God, so tired.

The escaping duo reached the top of the staircase leading down to the first floor, O'Leary barely meters away from them. The assassin roared gutturally as he fired again. This time, Peter's shoulder exploded into a thin cloud of blood and bone fragments, the sheer force of the impact making the both of them spin around by 180 degrees.

They were facing the Irish killer and losing their equilibrium at the same time, about to fall backwards down the stairs. Peter's mind was screaming in pain. His power mimicry apparently could mirror Claire's tissue regeneration, but her high tolerance to agony was something that was beyond its ability. His instinct kicked in and he tapped into his telekinesis, pushing the Irishman away and sending him flying backwards.

They fell.

His arms wrapped around Claire's petite frame. Peter closed his eyes and breathed in. He heard her calling his name.

There was no impact. The young man dared to open an eye and he saw they were floating, gently moving down the stairs until they were on the ground level and he allowed them to safely regain their footing. Peter was still holding Claire so tight she was probably having trouble to breathe.

Peter dared to loosen his grip on his niece and looked down at her. The Texan's green eyes were so big and amazed that she seemed like an anime character. "Oh…wow."

Peter couldn't help to smile. Wow, indeed.

"Let's move," Claire added, fully healed and hearing the footsteps of the assassin upstairs. There was also the noise of people coming out of their rooms and asking what was going on, and she didn't want any more innocents getting caught in the crossfire. She grabbed Peter's hand and practically dragged him towards the exit. "My car's outside."

"Your car?" he inquired, puzzled. "You drive now?"

It had gotten dark outside. The belt of his dressing gown had loosened and the clothing flapped behind him as they ran on the gravel of the entryway towards Claire's parked Volkswagen.

"Drive?" Miss Bennet asked rhetorically, as she extracted the keys from her pocket and opened the door. "Nah, I race."

In spite of the situation, Peter found himself releasing a dry bark of a laugh. He circled the car, leaning on the hood for support, and went to the passenger's side. The door was stuck.

Cursing, the blonde leaned over the seat to open it from inside. Yet another kink from the moody Rabbit. "Sorry about that," she apologized while Peter got inside and she started the car. "Been meaning to fix it for ages."

Claire's side window exploded and shattered glass rained over her. The assassin was running out of the house, wildly firing his pistol. "Fuck! Mind my car, you asshole!" she angrily shouted at the man, as she slammed her foot on the gas.

The yellow Rabbit roared – as much as its tiny four-cylinder engine allowed it to, anyway – and the front wheels spun on the gravel until they gained traction and propelled the car forward with a bone-shaking jerk. O'Leary was running towards them and managed to get in their way as he continued firing his pistol until the clip was depleted.

The windshield didn't shatter like the window had, but the impacts of the subsonic bullets traced large spider-webs on its surface, blocking Claire's view.

"I can't see!" she screamed, as she gunned the car towards the exit gate. She was about to run over the assassin but he rolled aside, dodging the oncoming Volkswagen by mere millimeters.

Peter punched the glass with his bare fist, ripping it off its frame and clearing the Texan girl's line of sight. She changed gears up and drove out of the entry gate and into the road. The car spun so hard as she changed directions that the broken fragments of glass went flying and rained down on the tarmac into a smooth arc.

O'Leary was already up and running, releasing the empty clip of his Beretta and driving a fresh one into the pistol's grip without slowing his pace. He only managed to squeeze a couple of shots before the yellow Rabbit was on the open road and driving away.

By the time he did the same, his backup had already realized something was not going according to plan and they had pulled out Tommy's Cadillac from its parking space. The large sedan rushed to the entrance of the rest home, the passenger's side door opening even before it stopped. The Irishman dived inside and the car jerked forward, its Northstar V8 engine pushing its 4000-pound body like it weighed nothing.

"Get that bitch!" O'Leary roared at the driver. "Run her off the road!"

"What the hell's going on here?!" Peter screamed inside the chased yellow car.

"You asking me?" Claire looked at the Cadillac, getting dangerously closer in her rearview mirror. "Fifteen minutes ago you were in a coma, and now you're up and we're in the middle of a fucking Jason Bourne movie!!"

"What's with the cursing?" Peter admonished her. "Don't make me wash your mouth out with soap!"

The blonde Texan gave him a stare as if he had lost his mind.

---O---

They'd seen the side of the building exploding outwards with no more noise than the one of concrete breaking and crashing down, and known that things were not exactly going to plan.

They saw the Volkswagen driving out of the parking area, wildly swerving as it went into the regular road. They saw O'Leary running after it pistol in hand and then jumping into the silver Cadillac to give chase. And they knew it was all going to shit.

Ditko started the engine of the Charger while Cockrum put voice to his thoughts on the matter.

"Well, fuck."

---O---

The Caddy only needed the length of the street before it caught up with the Rabbit. Its forward bumper made contact with the yellow car's rear and slammed it ahead, disfiguring the rear end like it was made of paper instead of sheet metal.

Claire had to fight with the steering wheel as the Rabbit jerked and went sideways, so it wouldn't completely turn around. The wheels skidded against the road, the car positioned diagonally with respect to its motion, and the blonde girl counter-maneuvered with one hand as she geared down with the other and slammed down on the gas.

This was not something she had been taught, but something she was, surprisingly, quite natural and adept at. Claire just loved cars.

The German car shook like it was being rocked by strong crosswinds, but it quickly regained its straight forward direction. In the rearview mirror, the Cadillac had lost some ground. Its left headlight was smashed and the large sedan seemed like a Cyclops stalking its tiny defenseless prey. Claire knew it wouldn't be long until the killers would catch up again with them.

"We have to do something," Peter said, pointing the obvious.

"Hold on," the Texan girl calculated the distance and the speed, one eye on the mirror, the other on the road. She placed her hand on the handbrake and waited until the silver sedan was almost upon them again.

Then, Claire slammed on the clutch as she pulled at the lever while wildly spinning the wheel. The Volkswagen spun 180 degrees into a tight skid and missed the ramming Cadillac by mere inches. Claire stepped on the gas and forced the Rabbit to go forward at the top of its speed. Behind them, the silver sedan was already turning around.

"That'll give us a few seconds, but there's no way we can outrun them in this car," she said, darting a look at her uncle. She noticed Peter staring at her with eyes as wide as saucers. "What?"

"Nothing," he croaked in a high-pitch tone. "I was just trying to remind myself that the family name is Petrelli, not Andretti."

Claire was about to giggle, but her laughter was cut short as the car started to be hit by automatic gunfire. Behind them, O'Leary had his arm out of the window and was firing his pistol as fast as he could while from the backseat, the second of his two-man backup crew did the same with a compact Czech-made Skorpion submachine-gun.

Bringing his head down instinctively, Peter tried to think what to do. Claire was swerving the car from side to side of the road, thanking God for the lack of heavy traffic, and doing as many dodges as she could to keep a decent distance and give the enemy the least possible target to aim at. She told him, her head equally as downcast as his, "If they hit a wheel, we're as good as gone. We need to do something!"

The young Petrelli looked over his shoulder and through the ripped plastic rear window. He took a deep breath and made a decision. Reaching up, he started manipulating the canvas roof. "How do you open this thing?"

"You can't, it's stuck!"

Peter frowned at his niece. "Does anything actually work in this piece of junk?"

"Hey, don't diss my car, alright?" Claire angrily shot back. "It's kept us alive so far, hasn't it? Shut up and do something to help!!"

"Fine," he grunted, once more tapping into his telekinesis to rip the roof hatch from its attachments.

As soon as the rusty bindings went off, the force of the wind did the rest and the whole canvas top was completely ripped off from the bodywork and flying away. "What are you doing?" Claire screamed as he jumped into the backseat.

"I'm doing something!" Peter yelled back over the howl of the wind and the blast of the gunfire as he dodged the roll bar and leaned one foot on the rear side of the damaged bodywork.

The young man clenched his teeth and then jumped up into the air. Claire saw him through the rear view mirror and couldn't help but to turn her head around.

A-friggin'-mazing.

Peter was not flying as much as he was floating in the air, suspended by invisible wires with his dressing gown flapping behind him like a cape. He let the Rabbit move away and waited only one second until the Cadillac was about to pass underneath his levitating body. He then plunged down, at the same time he remembered the blonde woman back in Kirby Plaza, the one who so effortlessly had ripped the parking meter from Sylar's hand and used it to beat him up.

He crashed down head-first against the sedan's windshield like a meteor, effortlessly shattering reinforced glass and bending metal as he went through it.

The Cadillac's driver lost all control of the vehicle and wildly swerved to the side, colliding with the row of parked cars by the sidewalk. The sedan's nose caught the rear end of a station wagon at nearly 80 miles per hour and flipped along its longitudinal axis, taking off as it spun around before finally landing down on its roof.

Metal smashed and bent with an animalistic shriek and glass went flying everywhere. Sparks rained as the sharp edges scratched against the pavement, while the car slid to a halt. Claire braked hard and her tiny Rabbit skidded for a couple of meters before halting as well. She had to wait for a few seconds and breathe deeply until her heart calmed down enough for her to do anything without suffering a massive stroke.

Putting the car in reverse, Claire drove back to the upside-down Cadillac and quickly got out of her Rabbit. "Peter?!" she called for her uncle as she knelt down by the driver's side window. "Are you there? Peter?"

Inside the car, everything was a mess of tangled bodies and blood-tainted broken glasses. It was too dark to see anything clearly. Weakly as she peered inside on all fours, she called again, "Peter?"

A bloodied hand shot from the darkness and grabbed her wrist. She couldn't help but to unleash a little yelp of surprise.

"C'mon, don't be such a scream queen and help me outta here."

Claire sighed with relief and held Peter's hand with both of hers. Yanking at his arm, she helped her uncle crawl out the crashed car. "That was the most stupid thing I've ever seen."

"But it was cool as hell, wasn't it?" Peter grinned weakly. His face was covered in bruises and cuts, and there was so much blood on his skin that there were barely any clean patches left at all.

The Texan girl helped him to his feet, noticing how his other arm hung limply at his side and the way in which his right leg awkwardly bent in two different places where there were no bone joints. He groaned as the wounds started to knit themselves and the fractures rearranged and healed.

She helped limp towards the smashed Rabbit, whose engine was still idly running. "What about those guys? Are they…you know…"

"Dead?" he shook his head. "Unconscious, I think. But I hope you don't mind if we don't stick around until they wake up."

"Not at all," she agreed, easing him into the passenger's seat. "We'll call the police from home."

Home? That sounded pretty good, but Peter had no idea right now where that was.

"Don't you have a cell phone?" he asked as she drove away. Adrenaline was finally ceasing to pump through his system, and once again Petrelli started to feel groggy. "I thought kids nowadays were genetically engineered not to walk around without one."

Claire let the 'kids' wisecrack pass because he obviously had knocked his head pretty badly. "I have one in my backpack. Which happens to be back in the rest home."

"Great timing," he chuckled.

They remained in silence for the next couple of minutes while Claire drove the stuttering Volkswagen towards her parents' home. Out of the blue, Peter turned to her and with a soft smile said, "Hey, thank you."

"What for?" she gave him her trademark small and sly grin.

"You know. For saving me again and all that."

Claire nodded, her eyes going back to the road. "You're welcome."

After another whole minute, which he spent looking at her profile, seeing how her face had definitely matured without losing any of her fresh young beauty, Peter frowned. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"I saved you too. Couple of times, to be exact."

The blonde arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "You think that's impressive? Please, Peter, I go through stuff like this every day."

"You're joking." At her deadpan expression, the young Petrelli's brow shot up. "Oh, my God. You've gone and done it, haven't you? You've become a real-life version of a comic superhero. Do you have a costume, or a superhero name?"

She couldn't resist his childish excitement and burst out laughing. Peter's eyes became slits and he had to make an effort not to tell her off. "Ha, ha, very funny. Must be amusing making your old sick uncle look like a moron."

Shaking her head - and trying not to think about the words 'sick' and 'uncle' - Claire just reached for his hand with her right one. Peter didn't resist her touch and his fingers interlaced with hers naturally, resting on his lap.

"Thank you," she finally whispered softly, no trace of humor in her voice now. Only something deep and meaningful that neither she herself nor Peter dared to examine too closely.

He smiled too, finally looking forwards through the non-existent windshield. "You're welcome."

Absent-mindedly, just by pure custom, Petrelli moved his right hand to brush his hair. He frowned, puzzled.

"Claire?"

"Yeah?"

"What happened to my hair?"

---O---

O'Leary was slowly coming back to his senses, still fighting nausea and the cobwebs of unconsciousness when he heard the car stopping nearby and the sound of a door opening.

He was still too confused about what had just happened. Half, or maybe three quarters of what he had just witnessed over the last few minutes was simply too incredible to believe. Maybe he was just waking up in his bed and it had all been a dream. That made more sense than reality, anyway.

The sounds of shoes stepping onto broken glass made him turn his head towards the smashed window at his side. The world was upside down outside and he was in an awkward position. The driver's body was half inside the car, half fallen through the windscreen. He could hear moans in the back seat, coming from the second man in his crew.

A face appeared in the side window. A young man, in a black suit. He examined the interior of the crashed car and whistled. "Dude, you've gone though some serious shit here."

O'Leary grunted. "Help me, please."

"Don't worry, man," Cockrum grinned. "We're here to help. You alright? Anything broken?"

"My legs," the Irishman grunted through clenched teeth. "I think I broke 'em both."

The young man nodded, seemingly considering what to do. "Alright, I'll tell you what we'll do. I'll call for an ambulance, okay? And meanwhile, I'll give you something for the pain."

"Whatever…"

Cockrum stood up and, from the pocket of his jacket, took out a pineapple-shaped M61 hand grenade. He pulled the safety pin out and kneeling down again, smiled at the Irishman. "There you go, pal. This will make you feel all better."

The man in black tossed the explosive device into the rear area of the car - its safety handle flying away as it left his hand - and he stood up again.

O'Leary started screaming as the man walked away. "No, wait. NO!! NOOOO!!!"

He was still yelling for help as Cockrum sat down inside the Charger and Ditko drove it away. The older man in black had a cell phone in his ear and was talking into it. "Yes, sir. I'm afraid the first retrieval attempt was a complete failure…I understand that, sir, but if you'll recall I warned you…no, of course not…"

The Cadillac exploded behind them, leaping several feet into the air as a big fireball enveloped it before it crashed down again. Neither man in the unmarked Charger flinched or even looked back at it.

Ditko sighed, tired. "Yes, sir. Proceeding with the alternate plan as ordered."

---O---

To be continued…