My apologies in advance for this being a rather unexciting chapter. Writing all this angst gave me fits, and now I'm actually looking forward to Sylar making his grand reentrance to spice things up. And Claire too, of course.

Chapter 8: The Gray Area

Peter instinctively ran after her, but Bella had a head start that she lengthened by jumping over several stairs, twice from such a height that he was sure she was about to break her legs, yet somehow she landed on her feet and kept going. They were outside on the street before he caught up with her. "Bella, stop!"

She whirled around, her eyes wide and a little wild. "Why are you chasing me?"

"Why are you running?"

The question seemed to confuse her. "Because I thought… Well, I didn't actually have any coherent thoughts - I just knew I had to get away."

"Because of what happened up there? What did happen, exactly?"

"I screwed up! I wasn't going to use it on people ever again, especially not on you…" Bella ran her fingers through her hair, looking as if she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Peter couldn't understand her behavior; she hadn't seemed this upset even when she described being raped. "Use what? The thing I felt crash into me-"

"Force field. I can generate force fields, and over the last two years I've learned how to manipulate them," she informed him in a flat tone that conveyed no pleasure or pride in her accomplishment.

"You're like me?" This discovery should have pleased him, but all Peter felt was shock and the same sickening sense of betrayal that had hit him like an unexpected punch in the stomach after the campaign fundraiser. Why hadn't she told him? He'd trusted her, told her everything, and she must have known how much it would mean to know another person like himself who wasn't completely in denial like Nathan, or addled by heroin like Isaac Mendez. Maybe he was being too hard on her, knowing what he did about her trust issues, but still…

"No. I'm nothing like you. You're a good person, Peter, and I…I'm not…good."

"That's ridiculous."

Bella slowly shook her head as her eyes grew wet. "I'm fairly certain killing five people makes me a bad person by any standards."

"What?"

"What I told you yesterday wasn't the whole story. Those men didn't just leave when they were done with me; the ringleader said they had to 'clean up the mess'. The others didn't have the nerve to help him - I heard him yelling and swearing at them, and then he grabbed my hair, lifted me up…I felt a blade on my throat…and that's when this-" Curse, her mind supplied "-thing kicked in. I thought I wanted to die, but I guess there was a part of me that wasn't ready to let go yet, because next thing I knew he was gone, and then…then he was dead. I didn't know what I was doing-" She cut herself off then, before she could talk her way out of taking responsibility for her actions. "But I wrapped my force field around him, and I crushed him. Him and the others."

"The other three, right? Yesterday you said there were four of them." Bella nodded. "But just now you said you killed five people, not four."

Bella nodded again, the tears she couldn't bring herself to shed for the other lives she'd taken or even for her own lost innocence finally spilling over and flowing freely down her face. "Mike Newton was the fifth. He wasn't like them - he was just a kid I went to high school with, and he was the closest thing I had to a friend when I finally went back. Nobody knew how to deal with me anymore, what to say or how to act, so for the most part they avoided me - all except Mike. He'd had a crush on me since I moved in with Charlie, and even though I never liked him back in that way, he followed me around the school like he'd made it his mission to protect me. I wished he would stop, but I thought it was harmless…until he touched me."

"I thought you said he wasn't like-"

"Not like that; it was just a friendly gesture, but it was enough to trigger a flashback. I used to be good at repressing unpleasant memories and I'd thought I was on my way to forgetting it ever happened, but all it took was one touch and it was like I was back on that dark street, feeling them touching me again, and I…reacted the same way I did then. I didn't kill Mike that day, but I hurt him badly, and he died less than a week later."

She paused to collect herself as best she could before finishing her speech with the hardest part. "We can't be friends anymore. I don't think we should ever see each other again if we can help it."

Of all the things she'd said since they left the roof, this was somehow the most shocking. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Why do you think I'm so antisocial? It's not because I'm awkward around people…okay, I am, but mostly it's because I'm afraid of what I'll do if anyone gets too close, and I couldn't live with myself if I ever hurt you like I hurt Mike."

"Well, so far so good. I'm still breathing, right? You might even have saved me from taking another nosedive off a roof just now."

"If you were about to fall - maybe you weren't. Even if I did stop you from falling, it was purely accidental; I didn't think about what I was doing, I only reacted, and it was just good luck that I pushed you back from the edge instead of off into thin air! I thought I had better control than that, but you… There's something about you that makes staying in control very hard. I'm sorry, Peter. I really hope saving the cheerleader works out for you." She turned to go.

"Hey, wait." He started to go after her again, because she couldn't simply walk out of his life just like that - only to collide with another invisible wall. She had taken no chances on him following her, and by the time it dissipated she was out of sight, swallowed up by throngs of early-morning commuters, leaving Peter with nothing to do except go inside and figure out what to do next.

###

Locating the cheerleader was high on his list of priorities - her life might be in danger, after all - but before he went to Isaac Mendez's loft to search for a painting he thought he'd glimpsed while struggling to save the man's life in the hope that it wasn't just a figment of his imagination, and that the cheerleader depicted in it was the right one, morbid curiosity compelled him to check out Bella's story, just to see if what had happened to Mike Newton and her other four alleged victims was actually as bad as she'd made it sound. While Peter didn't think she would lie about such a thing - the emotional impact on her was certainly real enough - he had trouble believing Bella capable of such brutality.

An internet search on Mike Newton turned up a handful of articles from the local newspaper of Forks, Washington, which Peter skimmed. Certain phrases jumped out: 'severe trauma', 'deep-tissue contusions', 'strangulation resulting in brain damage due to oxygen deprivation', all of them combining to form an ugly picture. The last article listed in the search results was an obituary, which Peter didn't read; he had seen enough.

A second search on Bella Swan yielded nothing, but by typing 'Port Angeles, WA rape/homicide' into the search engine he was able to find the report on her attack, which only referred to her as 'the unidentified female victim'. There were a lot more details about her assailants, including graphic descriptions of the state they were found in and pictures of the crime scene; the bodies had been removed before it was taken, of course, but the bloodstains on the pavement and warehouse walls were still clearly visible. Those photos had most likely earned the 'disturbing content' warning at the top of the page.

Shit, I've never seen so much blood in my life. Peter closed his internet browser, not wanting to look at the gory pictures any longer. They would no doubt linger in his mind for a long time to come and keep him awake tonight, but for now he was happy to put off giving them serious consideration by throwing himself into hunting for information on the cheerleader.

He started at Isaac's place, wondering how he was going to convince a man who had been unconscious the one and only time they met and therefore wouldn't have a clue who he was to let him in, but Isaac wasn't home. Instead he found Simone there, apparently packing the place up. She told him that Isaac's dealer had disappeared, and with him too weakened from his near-fatal overdose to go out and find another, she had seized the opportunity to force him into rehab.

"Of course I'll have to sell most of his paintings to pay for it; he'd be furious if I footed the bill myself, and honestly, I'll be glad to get rid of them."

"Why? There wasn't much time to look at them when I was here, and I'm no art expert, but I thought they were pretty good."

"Yes, Isaac's very talented - maybe too talented for his own good. Lately he's…well, he's started thinking he can predict the future through his art. I know it's just a delusion caused by the drugs-"

"But what if it's not? What if he can paint the future? I mean, stranger things, right?"

"No, that's about as strange as it gets," Simone said firmly.

Peter was glad then that he'd confided in Bella instead of her, as Simone obviously wouldn't have believed him…not like Bella did… He forced his thoughts off that track, because he'd made up his mind that he wasn't going to think about her right now. Not thinking about Bella was proving harder than anticipated, though. "Well, do you mind if I look around? Like I said, I barely got a chance to see Isaac's work last time I was here, but it's really…impressive."

"Sure." Simone snagged his sleeve before he could wander away. "Peter, I…I don't want there to be any misunderstanding between us about what happened the night of your brother's fundraiser."

"You mean what didn't happen. Or what would've happened if I hadn't run off."

"I think maybe it's for the best that you did. You were upset, my feelings were a mess over Isaac and my father, and sometimes things happen in the heat of the moment…"

"Right. That isn't how I would have wanted to start things with you." He emphasized the words 'would have' just enough for her to hopefully get the message that that was now off the table.

Simone picked up on it but was determined to say it so there could be no doubt. "The thing is, I did feel something for you, but I love Isaac too, and now that there's a chance he could get off the drugs for good, I need to be there for him, completely there-"

"I understand. I hope we can still be friends."

She smiled. "I'd like that."

They shook on it, and then Peter said, "As a friend, I need to ask you something. The drugs Isaac took were illegal; I haven't said anything to the police, but I'm wondering if you would ever have…?"

Simone thought long and hard before answering. "There were times I almost did, when getting him locked up seemed like the only way to help him stop."

"So protecting him was your priority?"

"Yes, although of course Isaac was only hurting himself. If he was putting anyone else in harm's way, I'd like to think I would have turned him in…but things aren't always black and white when it comes to people you love."

"You can say that again." Take Bella, for example - Peter knew for a fact that she had hurt people other than herself, had seen horrifying evidence of it, yet wasn't sure he could have reported her even if he knew how to make the cops believe it. When you took into account what had been done to her, feeling any sympathy for her first four victims was impossible; even Peter, who had never been in favor of people taking the law into their own hands, thought those men deserved what they got.

As for Mike Newton…well, it wasn't like Bella had meant to do that, and Peter couldn't condemn her for it, because he didn't know what it was like to be so traumatized that you automatically lashed out at anyone who invaded your personal space; he might have done the same in her position. Anyone might have. And two years had passed since then - despite her assertions to the contrary, her control had clearly improved. Her power might still get away from her when she was under emotional stress severe enough to crack her rigid self-control, but she didn't automatically crush or choke people anymore; whether the change in her ability's manifestations had happened on its own as part of her healing process or she had worked at it, it seemed to put the lie to her declaration that she was a bad person.

Maybe her opinion of herself would change if she were able to use what she can do for something good…like helping save a cheerleader? The more Peter thought about it, the better it sounded; he didn't know what the cheerleader needed saving from, but if she was so important, surely it was better to have two people there to protect her than one, especially if one of them had fairly reliable control of their power. Now he just needed to convince Bella to go along.