Author's Note: Yeah, I know it took me awhile but you wouldn't believe how busy I've been. Suffice it to say that I was busy. Yeah. Anyway, hope you like this chapter.

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He trembled for her. He wanted her. He needed her. Like he'd never needed anything or anyone is his life. Except possibly his father's love, but that had been impossible to gain.

She was the reason he was here, in this time, in this place.

She was the reason for his madness.

And she was the reason Peter Petrelli would die.

***

If you had asked Peter if he was afraid he would have said, hell yes. He didn't know why, though. It was a pretty simple mission: follow the map to the place Rachel had marked and then retrieve the object. Apparently he'd know what it was when he saw it. He decided to worry about that later.

Of course he fully expected Galahad to set up obstacles for him. This was part of the problem. He was almost half way there and nothing had happened. Absolutely nothing. It creeped him out. It also made him just a smidge more suspicious than he would have been normally. But then he'd left normal behind long ago.

"Do you have any food to spare for a frail old lady, deary?"

Peter looked up to meet the rheumy gaze of, naturally, a frail old lady. Peter, although immediately suspicious of any person who refers to themselves as a 'frail old lady,' nevertheless was a kind soul. For all the hardships he had lived through, Peter had never lost that part of himself that would think nothing of giving food to people who ask for it.

Without thinking he handed the frail old lady a piece of bread and cheese. Within seconds she had devoured the lot and yet still looked far too hungry for a woman of her advanced years. So he gave her another piece. Thankfully whoever had packed his backpack had included food enough to feed an army. Thus he could give the frail old lady more than enough to satisfy her hunger and still have enough for the journey.

She devoured the rest of her food and spent a good minute licking her lips and picking her teeth. Finally, just as Peter was getting ever so slightly impatient, she glanced up at him and said, "Thank you kindly, deary. It's not every day that someone is kind enough to give me some food."

Peter smiled.

The frail old lady and Peter each went their separate ways. The frail old lady had only travelled a few feet when she stopped and disappeared into thin air. Peter, having realised the time, had hurried on before he could see what had just happened.

Peter soon forgot about the old lady and began thinking about something he really shouldn't even have been contemplating. But he couldn't help himself. The thing about Sylar was that he was just so frustrating! On the one hand he was Peter's arch-nemesis and thus to be hated.

But then on the other hand there was just something about him. Something that made Peter blush to the tips of his dark hair. Something that made him stutter and stammer whenever his name was mentioned. He knew he had been so very obvious. Claire had once pointed it out to him in the confused way she said everything nowadays. As though she didn't understand what she was seeing and thus had decided to ignore it.

"Excuse me, sir? Sir?"

Peter looked up to see a very thin waif in front of him, pleading silently with large, dark eyes.

"Yes?" Peter asked kindly. He probably wanted food, Peter thought. He certainly looked like he needed it.

"Please, sir..." the boy said softly, his eyes immediately filling with tears. "Please, something terrible has happened. I need your help..." He promptly burst into tears.

Peter patted the boy awkwardly on the shoulder until he was merely sniffing dejectedly.

"Now, tell me what's happened and I'll see what I can do," he told the boy gently.

The boy sniffed and rubbed his nose on his sleeve. "There's something in the woods, sir," the child replied. "Something horrible. It's attacking people..." The boy's eyes filled with tears. "I think it's got my father..."

Peter sighed. Yet another delay. Oh well. It wasn't as if there was a particular time limit to his quest.

"Do you know where this creature is?" Peter asked and received an answering nod from the boy, who took him by the hand and led him off the path and into the woods. Belatedly Peter thought that maybe that wasn't a good idea. Oh well, he was too far into it to back out now.

The boy led him to a cave. Peter had not expected there to be caves out here. But then, he reflected, what was a terrible creature without a cave-type lair?

The boy pointed at the cave and said, rather unnecessarily, "It's in there, sir." The waif's lip wobbled. "Please save him, sir. Please..."

Peter told the boy to stay put and inched his way into the cave. He knew, through his frequent TV watching, that caves tended to be just slightly slippery. And he was right to be cautious.

The creature leaped out of the shadows and, with a roar, pounced. Peter did not get a good look at it; or at least the best look he'd got had left him feeling mighty confused. The creature was a giant black cat. Not a panther. A giant black domestic cat. But it couldn't be.

Using his super-strength Peter pushed the giant cat creature off him. He glanced down at himself, as the creature collected itself, and winced. The giant cat had clawed most of his flesh off. If he had not had the power of self-regeneration he would most certainly be dead.

The creature blinked at him. For some reason it seemed confused. "What?" it said, stupidly.

Peter's eyes widened. A giant talking black cat? What was next? A walking, talking banana?

"You...can talk!" Peter exclaimed in absolute shock.

The giant cat smirked. "And you can heal, if I'm not mistaken." It sniffed. "Who sent you here?" it demanded suddenly. "Was it Colin? 'Cause I swear I'll pay him back as soon as I can. You can't rush these things."

The giant cat saw from Peter's highly confused expression that he had not been sent by Colin. "Well?" it asked. "Who sent you?"

"Uhhh," Peter mumbled. "This boy said that there was something terrible attacking people and that it'd taken his father. I was, uh, trying to help him."

The giant cat blinked at him for a full minute before spluttering with laughter. "You mean," it said through spurts of uncontrollable laughter, "that you actually believed him?"

Peter did not like being laughed at, as Sylar well knew. He'd learnt his lesson years ago. "Yes, I did," he said coldly. "Why is that a bad thing?"

The giant cat saw that it was making no friends with its laughter and abruptly stopped. "I'm supposed to tell you that the one who seems forever lost can be saved by three words," it recited in a sing-song voice. "Oh, and that if you ever need me just call my name."

It turned back to its cave. A minute later it came back. "What are you still doing here?" it demanded grumpily.

"You haven't told me your name," Peter replied, trying to hide a smirk at the embarrassed expression on the giant cat's face.

"It's Sedosipe," it said grudgingly then trudged its way back through the caves.

Peter shook his head. His life was naturally weird but that had just been something completely different.

He quickly found his way back to the path. The boy had disappeared. Peter felt slightly stupid for believing such an obvious ruse.

In no time at all he found himself almost three quarters of the way there, at least according to the map.

Thankfully he wasn't thinking about a certain someone or he would have missed it. A quiet mewing sound emanated from some nearby bushes. When Peter went to investigate he found an injured squirrel.

He picked it up gently and gazed down at it. "You're not going to start speaking, are you?" Peter asked the wounded animal. It gazed dumbly back at him, its eyes dull with pain.

He decided to get cracking. Using the healing power he'd acquired off a British girl he'd met while searching for a way to save Caitlin, he knitted the skin back together.

He fell back slightly as the squirrel bounded away, completely fine. Healing, at least this sort of healing, always took it out of him. However in a few minutes he was as fine as the squirrel appeared to be.

He continued on his way and arrived at the place where he was supposed to find the object. The end of his quest was almost anti-climactic. He entered the apparently abandoned hut and saw the object he had been searching for almost immediately. It was an incredibly plain wooden goblet. He was rather disappointed.

That was when something attacked him.

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And ooh! What will happen next?

Virtual cookies for anyone who guesses where I got the idea for the giant cat's name. Review please.