This chapter was meant to have more Peter/Bella-ish interaction, which sadly had to be postponed until the next one or this would be way too long! On a more positive note, I like this one much better than the last – there's some important character development-centered stuff here, and even a bit more action (albeit unintended). Huge thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter without hauling me over the coals for it, hope you enjoy this one as much, or more if you thought ch13 could've been better.

Chapter 14: Test of Friendship

Hart insisted that he hadn't been in contact with the speedster, Daphne Millbrook, since his escape from Primatech and had no idea where she was or for whom she might be working now; Peter telepathically cross-examined him and confirmed that everything he said was true, so Hiro and Ando decided to leave, but not before they both thanked me profusely for pulling Hart off Ando.

My eyes dropped to the ground and I mumbled a nearly inaudible 'you're welcome'; I was accustomed to thanking someone else for saving me, not vice versa. In this abrupt reversal of my usual situation, I had no idea what to do.

Hiro tilted his head, meeting my downcast eyes thanks to the fact that there was less than an inch's difference in our heights. "Why do you not look happy?" he asked curiously.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You saved Ando – you are a hero now, like your friends, but you do not seem happy about it."

I looked away. "You've got it all wrong… What I mean is, I'm no hero, really, I'm… I'm just…" I shrugged, uncertain of what I wanted to say. I knew Webster's definition of 'heroic' didn't fit me in the slightest; I just couldn't find the words to explain that.

"Yes, you are," Ando said. The words came out a bit indistinctly through the fat lip Hart had given him. "Jumping into a fight with that man – you are very brave to have done that."

Blood rushed to my face – I had a few good qualities, but bravery had never come up when I tried to list them. I began to stutter out some protest, only to have Peter cut across me. "Yeah, she is when the situation calls for it. She's just shy, and you're embarrassing her."

They apologized, then said goodbye. "It was good to meet you, Bella. Perhaps we will meet again."

"I'd like that…I think." I held out my hand to shake, but neither Hiro nor Ando took it; they bowed from the waist instead. Then Hiro put a hand on Ando's shoulder and they vanished, presumably to continue the search for their stolen formula…leaving Peter, Claire, and me to deal with Hart, who'd been knocked out after his interrogation was over.

We debated for several minutes about what to do with him, ultimately coming up with no better solution than locking him in the Charger. His limbs flopped limply as the three of us shoved and folded his insensate form into the backseat.

Claire, despite her earlier suggestion that we put Hart in the trunk, turned out to be less than enthusiastic about using her car for temporary detainment purposes. I couldn't blame her; I wouldn't want someone so negligent with his personal hygiene in my truck either. She might have argued, except that Peter promised the arrangement wouldn't last long – Noah Bennet was already on his way to Seattle, and would take Hart back to Company lockup where he belonged. Peter then diverted her attention by reminding her that my broken nose and numerous cuts and scrapes still needed tending to.

He claimed to need her help with that, which confused me until he took out a syringe from a box in the trunk and stuck the needle into her arm to draw blood. "Oh, no," I objected, backing away. "You can't just go putting someone else's blood in me – what if Claire and I have different blood types? I might get sick."

"No you won't. My dad – Noah, I mean – isn't really related to me, so there's a good chance that he's not the same blood type as me and it didn't do anything bad to him. Besides, you're totally just saying that because you don't like needles," Claire mock-accused me as the tiny pinprick wound in the crook of her arm healed itself.

"Come on, Bella," Peter coaxed, "a little needle's nothing compared to falling off an overpass and you were fine after that."

"Only because you didn't let anything actually happen to me," I retorted.

"So why do you think I'll hurt you with this? It's not like I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to giving shots, you know."

He did have a point there. "Okay, I trust you. You can give me a shot, just make it quick." I pushed up my sleeve and held my arm out, squeezing my eyes shut.

Peter prodded my arm above the elbow, looking for a vein. "You need to relax – it'll hurt more if you're tense."

"It's hard to relax when I'm about to get a needle poked in me!"

He laughed softly. "Don't give me that. Seriously, I know you've got more guts than that."

"No, I don't! I'm really, truly, one hundred percent gutless."

"If that was true, you wouldn't have gotten into that fight. Actually, you wouldn't even be here." I opened my eyes and looked up at him in confusion. He rolled his. "Just because I didn't say anything about it doesn't mean I've forgotten what day it is – I know you and Claire had to have ditched school. You wouldn't let her talk you into that if you were gutless, Bella."

I felt a reflexive urge to defend my actions and Claire's, but he didn't sound angry, so I merely quoted something Edward had once said to me: "It's healthy to ditch class now and then" and added, "Being a paramedic, you should know that."

"Sure, whatever. There, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

"What?" Peter held up the syringe, which was empty. I checked my arm, finding the place he'd injected me just before the tiny wound disappeared. There was no more pain, only a dull tugging sensation as my cuts knit closed and the scrapes on my forearms from where I'd fallen on the street were covered with perfect new skin. The crushed cartilage in my nose shifted; I ran my fingers over it and determined that it was healed – there wasn't even any residual crookedness to show that it had ever been broken. "Holy crow, even Carlisle could never fix me up that fast!"

"Who's Carlisle?"

"Old doctor," I muttered; I hadn't intended to mention him, nor did I feel like getting off on the subject of the Cullens.

Peter shrugged, acknowledging that a new topic of conversation was required. "Feel like grabbing something to eat? There's a sandwich place on the next block."

"Great, I missed lunch." A loud rumble from my stomach reminded me forcefully of exactly how long it had been since breakfast.

"So much for ditching being healthy. Is that all right with you, Claire?"

"Yeah, great," she agreed; she sounded unhappy, however.

"Are you sure? We can find something else-"

"No, it's fine, I love sandwiches." She smiled, but I didn't need to be an empath to tell her smile was faked.

###

Peter and Claire sat down on opposite sides of our booth, and I made to sit beside Claire; she plunked her bag onto the other side of her seat, taking up the rest of the bench and forcing me to sit next to Peter instead. Being so close to him felt awkward with her right across the table. It would have been anyway, what with me unwillingly falling for him – stupid, but true. Before today I might have been able to convince myself that I only enjoyed his company in a friendly way, but that excuse didn't hold up anymore, not after I'd almost kissed him…would have if not for Claire's interference.

Fortunately, her behavior in the restaurant made me think she knew exactly what she had interrupted and had done so deliberately. The only explanation for that was if she didn't want him to be more than my mentor and friend, an attitude which made the uncomfortable position I found myself in easier, in a way. I already knew Peter had no romantic interest in me, that I was too young for him to like me that way, but those evidently were not strong enough deterrents to make me stay away from him.

Knowing that Claire wanted me to was. She was the best friend I'd ever had, practically a sister to me – I wouldn't risk my friendship with her for anything, especially not by making a play for a man who would never return my feelings anyway. As if I would even know how to go about getting his attention if I wanted to!

Although my conviction to restrict my feelings for Peter to friendliness brought on a sense of despair that settled like a lead weight in my stomach and ruined my appetite, I also felt a familiar relief that the decision was made. My course was set; there was nothing left but to see it through.

After finishing our sandwiches (at least Claire and Peter finished theirs – a lot of mine ended up hidden in my napkin and subsequently trashed) we returned to the car to wait for Noah. He didn't keep us waiting long, for which I was grateful. I watched him approach with no more than perfunctory interest muted by depression – a tall man who wore his brown hair fairly short but not cropped, dressed in a neat suit and tie, and whose horn-rimmed glasses somehow seemed as much a part of his face as his eyes and nose.

Noah Bennet's appearance couldn't interest me…but the fact that he was observing me as well and, judging by the way he was looking at me, not liking what he saw did. He didn't say anything to me at first; he hugged Claire, shook Peter's hand, and said how good it was to see them again before giving any indication that he'd noticed me at all. "And what's your name, young lady?" he asked, turning to me and holding out his hand.

"I'm B-Bella Swan," I stuttered, thrown by his smile, which reminded me of a crocodile about to pounce on its prey. I shook the hand he offered me, though it felt like sticking mine into a bear trap – not least because the man had one heck of a grip.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Bella. Now, if you could excuse us for just a minute-"

"She doesn't need to go anywhere," Peter told him, putting a hand on my shoulder to stop me from leaving although I'd made no move to do so. "Bella already knows all about Hart and everyone like him – she helped us catch him."

Noah looked surprised for the briefest second before his expression reverted back to calm and collected. "I see. Why didn't you call me when you found her?"

"No reason to. Look, Dad, I know you worry about me, but Peter and I aren't going to tell you every time one of us makes a new friend – because that's all Bella is, a…friend of ours."

This time Noah wasn't as successful at hiding his reaction. "Are you saying that she's not one of you?" He looked at Peter, clearly hoping he would contradict Claire's assertion that I was 'nothing but a friend'.

I was just confused; Noah Bennet already knew about our kind, knew that Claire and Peter were different, so why would Claire tell him I wasn't?

"No, she's not," Peter told Noah. "Bella's a great girl, but she's nothing we should've called you about – completely normal." As he said this, he squeezed my shoulder tighter; I got the message that I was supposed to let the lie stand so, perplexed as I was, I held my tongue.

Noah Bennet, however, did not. "You exposed your kind to a regular girl? Which one of you did this?" he demanded.

Claire bit her lip, obviously not wanting to bring her father's full wrath on herself by admitting that she had been the one to demonstrate her ability for me and tell me about mine – which she and Peter were now covering up, for some mysterious reason.

Peter took her discomfort as a cue to step in and bail her out. "It was me. I'm the one that told Bella about us."

"And when you say 'us' do you mean people like you in general, or…?"

"Yeah, Dad, she knows what I can do, too." Claire's voice was flat, her emotions carefully concealed. Her face was likewise blank except for a hint of an anxious frown and the fact that she didn't quite meet anyone's eyes. I guessed that she felt guilty, both for lying to her dad and for letting Peter take the blame for something she'd done – because Noah was clearly blaming him for it.

"I can't believe this," he said slowly. "I trusted you to keep Claire safe, and instead you blow your cover – and for what? Impressing your new girlfriend? Never mind that she could give you both up in-"

But he never got the chance to say how long he thought I would take to expose Peter and Claire's secrets. "Hey, you don't say that about Bella; she wouldn't do anything like that! I trust her – with my life and Claire's – and you're not locking her up in a cell somewhere or erasing her memory like you did Sandra's-" It was Noah's turn to interrupt – which he did by punching Peter in the mouth.

He raised the other fist to strike again, but Peter literally beat him to the punch, catching him in the stomach and then shoving him against Claire's car so hard that the tires on that side actually came off the ground.

"Stop it!" Claire and I yelled at the same time; this time it was her who threw herself into the fight and pushed the two men apart.

Noah was wheezing from the fist to the gut he'd received, but Peter showed no ill effects from the scuffle apart from a trickle of blood from his mouth, which did nothing to prevent him speaking. "I think you owe Bella an apology," he growled at Noah.

"Peter, calm down! In the first place, I doubt he can talk after you hit him and in the second, he hasn't done anything to apologize for! He just wants to make sure his daughter's safe, and there's nothing wrong with that." I did think there was something wrong with suggesting that I would betray my friends before he knew anything about me, but expressing that thought wouldn't do a thing toward stopping Peter from resuming their fight.

Peter still looked angry, but all he said was, "Fine…whatever you say."

"Good. Here, let me do something about your mouth – it's bleeding." I employed the same method he had used to clean off the blood left on my face from my nose being broken, which consisted of wetting my fingertips with saliva and rubbing it off. "Does that hurt?" I was doing my best to be as gentle as he'd been with me, but sure that I was nowhere near as good at this sort of thing. It was usually me who needed minor (and occasionally major) injuries treated; this somewhat limited my experience with treating anyone else's.

"It's fine, thanks."

Meanwhile, Noah had caught his breath and straightened his glasses and jacket. Feeling his eyes on me, or us, I snatched my hand away from Peter's face and turned, waiting to see what Noah would do now. Claire seemed to be waiting for that as well; her gaze flickered from me and Peter to Noah as if she were watching a tennis match.

Noah absorbed all this with an appraising look and finally said, "I'd like to speak with my daughter for a moment – alone."

Claire threw Peter a look full of some emotion I couldn't identify; he nodded, expressionless, and she followed Noah to his Primatech van.

There are a couple of things here that I think might be confusing, so here are my notes on those issues:

1) Why Peter and Claire lied to HRG about Bella being special: they didn't want to take a chance on him deciding to 'bag and tag' her which, let's face it, he has a bad habit of doing – regardless of whether the posthuman in question is really dangerous (i.e. Matt and West), or wants to spend a day strapped to an exam table.

2) Claire's reaction to Peter and Bella getting closer: please don't freak out on me because of that! I've put lots of thought into this aspect of the story and there's more to it than her not wanting her uncle and best friend together. I'll go in depth about what Claire's thinking in the next chap; until then, I can promise you that I'll still do the BxP pairing I promised you, and I won't turn the story into a Bella-and-Claire-catfight-fest.