Chapter 35
Sylar thought it would get easier the more time he spent away from Elle, but it only got harder. This was not just because the dreams had returned in full force, although they had. It was simply difficult for him to imagine where his life was going without her. He had spent so much time avoiding the future, not thinking about it, not worrying about it. He thought that when Elle and all their chances at a future were gone, he would not think about it anymore. He thought he would be able to go back to living in the present. He was wrong.
He was not surprised that the horrible nightmares had come back. That was to be expected, even though they had gotten what they wanted. The point of them was to remind him of how much he had hurt her and to make him aware that he would only continue hurting her in the future. They were trying to make him understand that he needed to cut her loose before something worse happened, and he had. He knew that he had probably hurt her a lot by disappearing on her, but it was just one last time, and it would free her.
When he froze that piece of bread, it felt like a promise that he would never be able to deliver on. Up to that point, he had tried to make it clear to her that there was no chance of Peter's future happening. They were going on, trying something, but it was not going to be Peter's future. Once she saw the empathy, he knew it was going to be impossible to convince her of that. He decided a clean break would be best. They would be better apart, not trying to find a middle ground that neither of them wanted. Elle deserved that normal life, and she was going to find it as soon as she got over whatever she was feeling for him.
Sylar knew his motives in breaking up with her had not been entirely selfless. It was not solely because he thought it would be better for Elle. He had seen Peter's future, and he just could not imagine sacrificing that much of himself for her. He barely even recognized who he had become. Elle had not seen it, but she heard Peter's description. If that was the kind of man she wanted, that was not him.
–
Night 113:
About three weeks after leaving Elle, Sylar had a different sort of dream than usual.
He walked into her apartment and into her bedroom, finding her asleep in bed. He wanted to go to her, but there was something holding him back.
A voice came from behind him. "You shouldn't have come here."
Sylar turned around to find Peter standing in the doorway to the room. To Sylar, the scene felt slightly surreal, and his movements were sluggish. He did not know what to say to Peter.
Peter took a step forward, then raised his hand and threw Sylar against the opposite wall. There was a loud crash, but Elle did not stir. It occurred to Sylar that maybe she was not sleeping after all. "Is she okay?" he asked.
Peter gave her a cursory glance. "She's a heavy sleeper; you know that."
Sylar had to think about that. He had always known Elle to be a fairly moderate sleeper. What bothered him was Peter's apparent familiarity with her sleeping habits, inaccurate though he might be. He tried to get to his feet, but Peter held him in place.
"Why would you come here?" Peter asked. "You know that I'm not going to let you hurt them."
"Them?" Sylar looked over at Elle. It was now apparent that she was pregnant, although it had not been before.
When he looked back, Peter was approaching him with a sword that he must have pulled out of thin air. "Don't worry, I'll take really good care of them after you're gone. Maybe we'll even name the kid after you. Gabriel Petrelli, how does that sound?"
Sylar did not even try to stop him as Peter brought the sword across to decapitate him. Right before the blade hit his neck, Sylar woke up.
He sat up and subconsciously rubbed his neck. He could tell that the dream was not a literally precognitive one because it did not flow in a rational way, but he suspected that it revealed more of the future than he would like.
–
Elle was awakened by the sound of her phone ringing. She did not recognize the number in the display, which made her not want to answer it, but she did anyway. "Hello?" she said groggily.
"Are you pregnant?" asked the voice on the other side.
As tired as she was, it took Elle a while to decipher whose voice that was and what it was talking about. She became much more alert when she realized it was Sylar finally contacting her. "No."
Sylar breathed a sigh of relief as Elle did period math. She was alarmed to discover that she could not remember having her period since she came back from Europe. "Wait, maybe."
"How can you not know?"
Elle scrambled for her calender. "I never really kept track of these things. I'm sorry." She flipped through the pages. "Oh, god."
There was silence on the other end of the line. Elle wanted to remind him that this was his fault, remind him of all the times he had batted her hand away from the condoms, but she had other things on her mind. "I just told Peter to kill you earlier today."
"You actually..." He trailed off, blowing into the phone.
"What was I supposed to tell him? I waited, and you never contacted me." She thought about the disappearing act he had pulled. She remembered what he said in that fight before he left. She was not sure if her getting pregnant would change anything, and she was not going to ask, at least not directly. After what he said about destroying people, she knew what she needed to do. "I have to go. I'll call you back." She hung up quickly before he could inform her that she had just lied.
She immediately called Peter. "Where are you?"
There was a long pause. "It's five thirty in the morning. I'm at home."
Elle should have realized that. "Good. I need to talk to you before you … do anything today."
"What happened?" he asked, sounding concerned.
"I just realized that I'm probably pregnant." After all that talk of futures and babies, she did not know how that could have slipped her mind. She was so selfishly preoccupied with the break-up that she had not thought about anything else. "And I know I should have looked into that before telling you to kill Sylar, but... I didn't think of it."
Another long pause. "So now you think--"
"Now I don't know what to think. He kind of implied that he would kill the baby. And if that's true, then you need to kill him now more than ever. But maybe it does change things the way you hoped it would. You need to talk to him, because you can find out what he's going to do, how he feels about this. You can acquire that lie detection thing he does, and you can read his mind. I can't do any of that, and I can't be around him until I know what he's going to do."
Peter sighed. "Okay, I feel like you're getting ahead of yourself. The first thing we need to do is find out if you're really pregnant, and then we can talk about the rest of this."
Considering how late she was, Elle had no doubt that she was really pregnant. There was also something in Sylar's voice when he asked the question that made her think that he had reason to suspect that she was. Since he was a precog, and since it was the middle of the night, in the Americas anyway, she had a feeling his reasons were fairly reliable. Peter was right, though; it would not hurt to be sure.
–
An hour later, Elle showed up at Peter's door with a bag containing pregnancy tests. "I got three different brands, just to be sure."
He opened the door a little wider. Over the phone, he knew she was upset, but he did not realize she was upset enough to drive into the city at six in the morning. "This wasn't really what I had in mind when--"
She walked into the apartment. "Sylar already knows. He's the one who alerted me to the possibility. I can't wait any longer to find out what's going to happen. Where is your bathroom?"
He pointed to it, and she followed his directions. She was in there for a long time, but eventually she came out carrying three different sticks. "Yeah, I'm definitely pregnant."
Peter had no idea why she had to do that at his apartment. She could have done it at home and called him, and he would have believed her. He just wanted to be sure before she got any more frantic. He could tell that she was really worried about what Sylar was going to do, not that she was trying to hide it at all. This pregnancy was going to change things, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. Peter could not help but feel that this whole mess was his fault, even though he never told her to get pregnant. "How did Sylar imply that he was going to kill the baby?"
"You're going to talk to him, right? Find out what he's thinking?"
"Yes. Elle, I'm not going to let him hurt you or your child. But I need to know what he said."
She sat down at his table, still holding the pregnancy tests. "He said that he destroys people and eventually he would destroy us."
That sounded really bad. Peter had not been looking forward to another showdown with Sylar. It was true that he had won the last time they faced off, but he thought Sylar had been taking it a little easy on him then, thinking they were brothers. "The man in Calgary, what could he do?"
Elle hesitated. During the pause, Peter realized that for her to tell him this would be a real betrayal of Sylar's trust. He was about to tell her that she did not have to answer that when she said, "That doesn't matter. Nothing he can do matters. All you have to do is spend five minutes with the Haitian, and he won't be able to do anything."
Working at the company, Peter had spent plenty of time around the Haitian already. "I can't get his ability if he's blocking mine."
"You could try. He's not constantly blocking abilities; it's a conscious choice. You've already been around him, right? Here." She shot sparks back and forth between her hands. "Try to stop my power."
Peter thought about the Haitian and concentrated on stopping the electricity. He had never before tried to evoke an ability that he did not think he had. The sparks became weaker, and he could see her putting more effort into it.
Elle put her hands down. "Well, that's a start. Now you talk to that Walker kid for a minute, and you'll be able to find him."
Peter had seen how much trouble the Haitian had blocking his father's ability. Sylar was at least as powerful, and Peter barely had the ability. He just reminded himself that he had beaten Sylar once without it. As for Molly Walker, Peter had never sought people out just to acquire their ability, but now he realized Elle was right. Seeking abilities was not going to make him like Sylar, because he did not hurt anyone when he did it. If it was okay with Matt, Mohinder, and Molly, there was nothing wrong with getting her ability.
He looked at the clock on the microwave. It was too early to go over there or even call. He held out his trashcan to Elle. "Go home. I'll talk to him."
She threw the tests away. "I can't go home! That's the first place he'd look for me."
Elle's fear seemed irrational to Peter until he remembered that this was Sylar they were talking about, a man who had already killed her once. Still, in the past she had always defended him and insisted that she wanted to be with him. He looked at her torso. Maybe this pregnancy was already changing things. He did not want to let her stay there, but he felt that he could not turn her out. He told himself it would just be for one day.
Elle spoke again, less agitated this time. "It was stupid, wasn't it?"
"What?"
She shook her head. "I did. I thought your plan was incredibly naïve, but it sounded so good. I don't know if I really expected him to ever stop killing, but... It was stupid to think that we could ever have future. That's what I wanted to believe. It was stupid to get involved with him again after he had already hurt me so much." She looked up at him. "He's a serial killer, Peter. I have my own problems, but I was never that bad. I just convinced myself it could work."
Again, Peter felt slightly responsible for that. "There's still a chance, Elle."
She looked exhausted, and she put her head down on the table. "No, I don't think so. I think all those people died for nothing. I think once you cut through the lies and get to the bottom of what he's feeling, you're going to see that there is nothing left but Sylar." She closed her eyes. "I think one of you is going to die today."
Peter helped her to her feet and led her to the couch. He went to the bed to get her a blanket, and she was asleep by the time he got back. He covered her and went to the kitchen to make himself coffee. It would still be a couple hours before he could do anything.