Elle walked out the front entrance of the former school, files in hand. She left Sylar in the office to pick and choose whatever powers he wanted. Deciding she didn't want him to think it was okay to follow her home, Elle began the short journey back to her apartment.

She was half way home when she heard footsteps rapidly approaching her from behind. Elle didn't even bother turning around. She knew who it was.

"What do you want from me now?" Elle asked, keeping her eyes ahead. She wasn't about to let him pull the same stunt he did in the elevator.

"Are you sure those are all the files in the company?" Sylar dared her to lie.

Elle tried not to smile. "Those are all the Special files I'm in charge of." It wasn't a lie. Just some of the truth. She was in charge of a few Normal files as well.

"Growing to be thirty feet tall? Elastic limbs? Breathing under water?" These have to be the worst powers of all time." Sylar complained. "I was expecting abilities like super strength and making stuff explode, not being able to talk to fish."

"I know." Elle acknowledged, climbing the steps to her front door. "Don't forget the company already thinks you're stealing other lame powers... prehensile tongue, color changing... sexual persuasion."

"Great. So Bennet's out looking for a horny chameleon?" Sylar didn't sound amused.

"It appears that way." Elle stepped inside the building. "I really did you a favor if you think about it." She walked down the hallway to her apartment, Sylar still following. Elle didn't bother telling him not to- if he wanted to follow her, he was going to. "Now they don't know what to expect from you."

"Sounds more like you were trying to make an ass of me." Sylar accused.

"Maybe a little bit of that, too." Elle unlocked her door and stepped inside. She toed off her heels and turned around to look up at him for the first time since they left the office. "Are you coming in?" She didn't want her neighbors to think she made a habit of letting serial killers loom outside her door.

Sylar walked past Elle and sat himself at her kitchen's bar-style counter top. "So why do you want the company to think I have these stupid powers?"

"To have them over-prepare for new, stupid powers, and forget about the other ones you 'already had'. When I studied your file, I noticed a pattern. After obtaining a power from someone, you tend to use it a lot- especially the offensive ones." Elle got a kettle ready to make some tea. "Right now they probably think you're going to turn up somewhere and try to kill someone with your freaky frog-tongue... or turn different colors to blend into your surroundings... or use your charming power to fuck your way through any agent that tries to apprehend you."

"I think you know better than anyone that I don't need an ability to accomplish that." Sylar suggested as he raked his eyes over Elle purposefully.

Elle rolled her eyes. "Don't flatter yourself. I was dead less than twenty-four hours after I slept with you the first time." He almost looked hurt. Good. "And like I said, I don't make the same mistake twice."

"Sleeping together or not," Sylar began, digging through Elle's cookie jar without her permission, "I can't seem to figure out why you want to help me." He pulled out a big chocolate and butterscotch chip cookie.

"The only person I want to help is myself." Elle slapped his hand and put the cookie back. "After I read through my file, the last thing I wanted was any 'help' the Company offered me. I knew they had used the Haitian to erase my memories to make me forget all about the tests and experiments, but I never knew the extent of them."

"What was the extent?" Sylar asked, curious as ever.

"The extent was none of your business." Elle bit out. "All you need to know is that I hate them just as much as you do." Her statement was punctuated with a roar from her stomach.

Sylar's eyebrow shot up. "Hungry too, Elle?"

Elle scowled. "Hope you like leftover lasagna." She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a foil pan.

"I thought you said we were having lasagna?" Sylar asked, the accusatory tone not going unnoticed by Elle.

"We are." Elle confirmed, holding up the tray with the Pizza Hut logo emblazoned across the lid like a scarlet letter.

"You don't buy lasagna. Especially not from that place. It's not Lasagna Hut." Not that he bothered to order pizza from Pizza Hut, either.

"Well, Mr. Food Snob, you don't have to eat it." Elle set the tray in the oven to reheat it. "But it's all I got at the moment."

Sylar raised his hand and watched as all the empty cabinets in Elle's kitchen flung themselves open. His lip curled in disgust. "You live on take-out, don't you?"

"Well, I don't have much time to cook." Elle defended herself.

Sylar smirked. "Lying."

"I just don't really know what I'd make if I had the ingredients-" Elle corrected.

"Still lying." Sylar teased.

"How does that stupid lying power of yours work anyway?" Elle asked, frustrated.

"It kind of tingles a little bit in my ears when it knows I'm being lied to." Sylar replied, pointing to his ear.

"Ah." Elle said. She had an idea. "Well, what if someone lied to me, but I thought it was true, and in turn I ended up telling you a lie, thinking I was telling you the truth... would your Truthiness Tingle work then?"

"That sounds complicated." Sylar admitted. "I've never been in an instance where that has been the case. Why? What are you planning?"

Elle took a deep breath. It was about time she knew the truth, if in fact Sylar's stupid power worked. "Bob Bishop loved me."

Smirk gone from his face, Sylar avoided Elle's eyes.

"What?" Elle demanded. "Did your Spidey Sense tingle? Was I lying?"

The timer on the oven chose that moment to go off, alerting Elle that her lasagna was sufficiently re-heated.

"Well?" Elle asked again.

"The oven-"

"Fuck the oven, Gabriel! Did my dad love me?" Elle didn't notice she had slipped and used Sylar's real name. The name she originally knew him by.

"No." Sylar said quietly.

"That's all I wanted to know." Elle's voice cracked slightly, her eyes glazed over. She took off her oven mitts and threw them on the counter in front of Sylar. "Here, you can take what you want. I'm not hungry anymore." She walked past Sylar toward her bedroom and sat at the edge of her bed, peeling off her socks.

Sylar stood in the doorway of her room, not crossing the threshold. "You're just going to go to bed? With me in the house?"

Elle shrugged out of her blazer and tossed it to the floor. "I'm not afraid of dying," she told Sylar. "I've been dead before. It's nothing." Literally, she mentally added.

Sylar watched as Elle stalked across the room to stand behind her closet door. Her shirt hit the floor, then her skirt. "I can't guarantee you'll survive the night."

"OK. Good night," Elle emerged from behind the closet door in a white camisole and tiny shorts.

"You're not even going to fight me?" Sylar didn't look like he was even in the mood to fight.

Elle walked over to the doorway. She looked up at Sylar like she might've considered his offer and instead shut the light off. "Why bother? My father wouldn't have missed me even if he were alive, I don't think he even LIKED me- between everything I was made to forget, everything I learned..." Elle tried to steady her voice as she climbed into the bed. She looked ahead at Sylar's silhouette, continuing. "I have no one who would care if I died. And it's certainly not like I have a job to go back to. After they review the security tapes tomorrow of me letting you inside, I'm as good as fired or dead anyway."

"Elle." Sylar quietly protested.

"Just let me go to bed." Elle insisted. "I'm so tired."

"I'll clean up when I'm done." Sylar said, then shut the door.

=-=-=-=-

A/N: I'd love some C&C. Am I keeping people in character? Is this story getting boring? I noticed a severe drop in reviews, but I know someone's got to be reading. I'm not 100% sure where I want to go with this fic from this point. Any ideas are really appreciated.