Author's Note: It turns out I was wrong about some things, like Sylar's father and Peter's powers, but... oh, well. I'm not going to change those things here. It was AU, anyway. (Which is to say that Peter still has all his powers, just like in earlier chapters.)

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Chapter 25

Three days after Sylar left, Elle got her period. She knew that she should have been keeping track of it and should have known on that last night that pregnancy highly unlikely, but she had never paid much attention to her cycle before. When she counted back, she realized that she and Sylar had been together around the right time, on the night when he first told her that he loved her.

Elle marked it in her calender, resolving to keep better track of the possibility of getting pregnant on any given day. She called Sylar to give him what she assumed he would consider the happy news. However, although he certainly did not sound disappointed, he did not sound all that relieved either. He just thanked her for telling him.

–

In the days between leaving Elle and getting the phone call, Sylar had set a leisurely pace for South Carolina. It had not been an entirely conscious choice, but on some level he knew that the thought that Elle might be with child was slowing him down. Once he knew that she was not, he reached his destination city that day.

According to Elle, Rebecca Finder had the ability to melt solid objects. It was not a great power, but it had been his, and he wanted it back. He went straight to her home, wanting to get started as soon as possible, but Rebecca was not home. While he waited for her, he looked through her house. Elle had given him no information on Rebecca's family, and he was hoping this would not be another grandmother.

From the look of her house, Rebecca lived alone. There was very little food, and the kitchen smelled rancid. On the counter, there was an open loaf of bread that had completely molded over. Sylar tossed that into the trash can, which was about to overflow. He was starting to think that maybe she had not been home for quite a while, but today's paper was on her table with the crossword half done.

Considering the disgusting state in which she lived, Sylar assumed that Rebecca had no family, which was going to make this so much easier on him. It bothered him that he needed it to be made easy. He never bothered to find out if his victims had a family before. He remembered the first time he went after Molly Walker. He killed her father for his ability, then killed her mother just for fun, and he would have killed that poor child too, if he could have only found her. Sylar did not know if he was more horrified at the memory of what he had done to that family or the knowledge that he was going soft. He just hoped Rebecca Finder would come home soon so that he could get this over with.

When Rebecca did finally arrive, Sylar was sitting at the table reworking her crossword, which had been mostly wrong. She closed the front door behind her, looking more intrigued than anything. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

She was a little younger than he expected, and she actually did not look like a filthy, unhygienic person. He stood. "You have something I want."

She took a few steps forward. "Me? I don't actually have anything of value. Not right now anyway."

Now that she had stepped into the light, Sylar noticed that she had a more haggard appearance than he originally realized. She scratched at the skin inside her elbow, and Sylar knew what her deal was. "Tell me, do the drugs make it easier to use your ability or harder?"

Rebecca sank into a chair. "Oh, you're one of those. I thought you were here for money. I was hoping we could make a deal to pay in trade. But no, you want to talk about... that nonsense." She scratched herself again. "When you start melting everything you own, it's like the worst acid trip ever. The drugs don't do anything to my... ability, as you called it. They just make it easier to keep my mind."

"If you don't want this ability, I can help you with that." He circled around the table to stand in front of her. "Not everyone who is chosen can handle what's happening to them."

Rebecca laughed. "Chosen? This isn't a gift from God." She stood and pulled the chair away from the table. "Have you ever seen wood melt?" She liquidfied the chair, not caring that it splashed all over her jeans and shoes.

Sylar had seen wood melt before. He had seen nearly everything melt before. Watching her do it, the hunger grew in his chest. He ran his fingertips over the table, wishing he could melt that right then. Soon, he told himself. "Like I said, I can take it away." He threw her against the wall. "The process is a little painful though."

He cut into her head slowly so that he could listen to her beg for her life. Any conflicting emotions he felt before were gone. It felt so good to kill this pathetic person and take what she did not deserve. As he left, he tapped the table, turning it into a large puddle of goo with the crossword floating on top.

Since he was over his momentary attack of conscience, Sylar headed south for Florida, where there were a couple more people of interest.

–

The next day, Peter came into Elle's office. "Have you spoken to Sylar since the last time we talked?"

Elle knew that she needed to tell Peter something, but she had held off going to him to give Sylar time to disappear into the vastness of America. "Yeah, I saw him a couple nights ago."

Elle left it at that, even though she knew that Peter expected more information. "And how did that go?" he asked.

She had a decision to make, and it was a difficult one. She was not sure how honest she should be with Peter. She knew that she had to give him enough to keep him from deciding that Sylar was beyond hope. "We talked about what he might want. I tried to leave it open to him to tell me, but in the end, I told him about what you saw."

Peter sighed and rubbed his hands together. "What did he say?"

He seemed anxious, and Elle felt the need to bring him down. "You do realize that this is going to be a process, right? He's not going to change overnight."

Peter leaned against her desk. "I know that. I just... Where is he now, geographically?"

She shrugged. "I don't know."

"He's probably out trying to find someone to kill. How do I justify letting him go on like that? I need you to stop him, Elle."

Peter was breaking her heart. The company had given Sylar people to kill before; they never concerned themselves with collateral damage. But Peter was going to take every kill from now on personally. "He probably is going to kill someone. I think he's scared. He thinks that if he tries to be a good person, it'll always end badly. So he's rejecting the future you saw, which is the same thing he was doing when he killed me. He's scared to try to be a better person, because it'll hurt more when he fails."

He crossed his arms. "Why did he fail? How did my destroying the formula... or his killing my... What happened to change his future?"

"When you went to the future, he still thought you were brothers, right?" She did not wait for an answer. "He was trying to be a better person for your parents, and when he found out that they weren't his parents, he... I was there when Noah told him that they weren't his parents, and that's when everything changed."

Peter shook his head. "He wasn't doing it for my parents; he was doing it for the kid."

"Yeah, well, he never gave me the chance to give him a son. He just killed me. So, that's when his future was changed. I'm sure of it."

"So what are you going to do, Elle, to make him not scared anymore? How are you going to convince him to stop killing?" Those seemed to be rhetorical questions. "I know that you think I'm naïve. I know that this whole plan is a long shot, and I should just put an end to it and have him killed. But, no, because who's going to do that? I should put an end to it and kill him myself, if I can. Because I'm not going to send people on suicide missions."

Elle thought there might be more to this than just that Peter understood Sylar. "I think Sylar likes you, Peter. He has said that he doesn't want to kill you. I don't know, maybe it's just that having your ability would take all the fun out of it for him, but maybe he still thinks of you as a brother a little bit. Did your relationship change when you thought you were brothers?"

"Some, but we're not..." He ran his hand through his hair. "He's not..."

"And all of this happening around the same time that you and Nathan have that falling out..."

Peter did not know what Elle's objective was in bringing this up, but she might have had a point. Something Nathan said the night of the Pinehearst incident kept running through his head. "It's not what I would have done." What did Nathan mean by that? That he would not have saved Peter? Peter refused to believe that was true, but what else could it mean? On the other hand, Sylar had saved him, in a way. When his own father had wanted him killed, which Peter could accept, Sylar had broken his fall. And they had only been brothers for a week or so. "What if I am letting... that affect my choices? What if I'm letting people die because I feel that I owe Sylar something?"

Elle seemed to be getting uncomfortable. "I can't do this with you, Peter."

"Do what?"

"Get touchy feely. Have you tell me your fears and about emotions with any specificity. I just... I just can't."

The last thing Peter wanted was to get "touchy feely" with Elle, but she had brought it up to begin with. More than that, he was confused by her reaction to a couple simple questions. "Why can't you talk about emotions?"

She bit her lip. "I think we need to keep a professional detachment because Sylar... He thinks there's something going on between us. And I don't want to know these things, because if I relate them to him it's going to give him the wrong idea."

"Why would he think that there was something going on between us?"

Elle shook her head, as if to signal that she knew this was going to sound ridiculous. "Because you kissed me once, nearly a year ago. And I lied about it at first, which only made things worse. And now I like your future, and he... he just got weirdly jealous about that. He hasn't said it, but I think he would kill me if I broke his heart again. Like if I got involved with someone who was like a brother to him."

If Elle thought that he was interested in her as more than an agent, she was mistaken. "I don't want to give you the impression that we're ever going to get involved. Because we're not, and that kiss was--"

"I know what the kiss was. I'm pretty sure I know what you thought of me at the time, and I don't need to hear it. I don't want to give Sylar the impression that you and I are ever going to get involved either. Because that could... Because I think he would hurt me, emotionally, physically, any way he could think of."

The things Elle was saying worried Peter. "If you feel like..." He leaned forward, but he stopped himself from touching her. "I just assumed that you wanted to be with Sylar. Obviously, it was never our intention to force you into an abusive relationship. And that probably sounds ridiculous because he's already killed you once. But..." He struggle to find the right way to express this. "If you're only with him because you're afraid of him, we'll protect you from him."

Elle got up from her chair. "That's exactly what I'm talking about, Peter. I'm not afraid of him. And how do you think it's going to make Sylar feel that you, the good, clean, honest one, is protecting the woman he loves from him?"

"You just said--"

"I don't intend to break his heart again." Too honest, she thought.

Peter had tried not to read her mind up to that point because he was trying to treat her like a colleague rather than a suspect. But now she was being so maddening that he needed to just to know what was going on with her. "If he has threatened to hurt you if you leave him, that's not healthy."

Has he? "Look, he's kind of a disturbed person, and it shouldn't surprise you that I find that a little attractive. I said he might hurt me because that's what he's done in the past when I hurt him. He taunted me with my father's murder and then tried to kill me. He hasn't said that he would do that again. In fact, he'd like to think that he wouldn't, but when he's been hurt, he gives into some really dark impulses. I want to be with him. I don't need to be protected from him. I just want you to understand that he's a little guarded about the idea of having a future with me. I want you to understand that this is going to be a process. Even if I get him settled down, he still might kill the occasional person." No, that's going to make him... "Can I take that back? With a little time, I think I can get him to stop completely."

Peter was quiet for a while, and Elle wondered what he was thinking. Then she wondered if he was reading her mind and whether she had been thinking anything she should not have. Then she realized that if he was reading her mind, he knew that she was thinking about him reading her mind. She wished he would just say something.

Peter sighed and opened his mouth to speak, but his cell phone rang. He answered it. Elle watched his face as he listened silently to the caller. She could tell it was bad news, and she had a feeling she knew what it was.

"I'll get someone on that right away," he said, before snapping the phone shut. He looked Elle in the eye. "A woman was found in South Carolina with the top of her head cut off, and the brain was missing. I want you to go down there and investigate with Noah."

"And what is it you want us to do there?"

He shrugged. "I'm not trained as an agent. I don't know what you people do, but just do it. Figure things out, come up with a plan. And keep me posted."

"Oh." She could tell he was frustrated. "You're doing a good job, Peter. I think you've got some really good ideas, and I'm excited to be working here. You just need to learn a little more about actually running the company. I can help you with that."

He looked doubtful about the quality of her help. "You don't want Sylar to get the wrong idea."

Elle smiled. "I'll call Noah, and we'll work out how to handle this." She turned to leave, even though it was her office. "You are going to reimburse my travel expenses, though, right?"

He pushed away from the desk. "I'm sure Nathan will take care of that."

"See, you're already delegating. That's a great start."

Peter slid past her to leave the office before her. "Eventually I'm going to want specifics on what you plan to do about Sylar."

Elle waved good-bye to Peter. "And eventually I'll give them to you. But right now, I'm going to call Noah." She pulled out her cell phone to do so, and Peter walked away down the hall.