Waiting for the End

Sylar is lost. Confused. Alone.

His throat is raw and his voice isn't working anymore. He's desperate and tiny beneath buildings that tower like pillars into the sky and he can't breathe as darkness bleeds in around him. He runs along the length of a never ending brick wall that keeps him trapped in this prison, runs with no idea what he's looking for or why he's hurting so. He just knows that this isn't right. That this isn't the way it's supposed to be. Something important is missing but he can't remember what, and all the while thunder tears through the sky like the crack of a hammer upon stone, but still he doesn't know where it comes from or what it's supposed to mean.

Then everything's dark. Cold. Claustrophobic. Time blends together inside these four blank walls. Hours turn into days, into weeks, while Sylar is shackled like an animal and tortured to the brink of death, only to be hauled back from the edge and forced to endure it all over again. Faceless lab coats with syringes come and go while he's swept up in a blur of disjointed, vivid hallucinations, snatches of Parkman's voice in his head, hands holding him still while the pain burns brightest and he can no longer hold back his screams. But the worst moments are the stretches of nothing but silence. When Sylar is alone in the dark and cold, too tired to fight but too sore to rest -

A blinding white light shocked him from the depths of unconsciousness.

Sylar floundered halfway between the nightmares and reality, his eyes burning against the brightness. He needed a moment to recognise that the screaming ache of his limbs and the tightness of his chest didn't come from having just raced through miles of a graveyard of a city. And a moment longer to take in the cooling sweat on his skin and the electric currents still twitching through his muscles: unwanted reminders that his whole body had recently been aflame with the stuff.

Grunting, he squirmed within his unyielding restraints as best as he could with limbs that barely responded to his command. Then finally, the truth smothered him much worse than any dream when an unmistakable Renautas cell washed away any lingering disorientation, like a curtain caught in the breeze.

And he remembered.

It was only when the eerie click of high heels echoed around Sylar's prison, encircling him as their owner drew in close, that he noticed he wasn't alone anymore.

"Electrocution. Sleep deprivation. Starvation. Telepathic interrogation... most men would have lost their minds by now, yet here you stand."

Sylar grit his teeth long before a pair of sharp, white shoes stopped directly in front of him, just as he'd come to expect by now.

"They were right about you, Mr Gray. You are a strong one."

His head too heavy to lift, Sylar didn't bother trying. A growl got lost somewhere on the way up from his chest, and instead all he managed was a pitiful croak that almost drew all the breath from his lungs. "My name... is Sylar." He insisted, although he didn't expect Erica Kravid to acknowledge it any more this time than she had all the others before.

"Are you ready to co-operate today?" She asked, in a tone as unforgiving as he knew her expression would be also, hidden from his sight beyond the tangled curtain of his hair. "I'm sure by now you'll have realised I'm a patient woman, but even I have my limits. You ever want out of here? This is your last chance to impress me."

Sylar choked back the urge to yell, to give her the satisfaction of thinking she was worth a reaction from him. Of course he wanted out of here! But not her way. Because, yes, Sylar was currently weak and powerless and hurting all over and he'd never been so thoroughly exhausted in his life... but he knew he deserved this. He knew he deserved worse. This was the punishment he'd been long overdue, the one he'd so arrogantly believed he'd outran that had finally caught up to him at last.

And now he had the rest of forever to live with this mistake.

It took a lot of effort for Sylar to muster his reply, the words well-worn and familiar on his lips. "Where is he?"

Erica Kravid made a sound, somewhere between a snort and a huff. "We've talked about this, Mr Gray. I generously spared your memories in an act of goodwill for our future together, not for you to dwell on the past. Don't make me regret it."

Biting his tongue, Sylar let his eyes slide shut against the pointed shoes and the too-bright cell, but it didn't provide him any relief from the young man who had been haunting Sylar for weeks, now. A weak curl of his fingers was the only sign of how much it hurt to recall Peter Petrelli.

Being left to drown beneath the memories Renautas refused to relieve him of was a worse punishment than blissful ignorance ever could be, he was sure. It was the cruelest torture they'd put him through yet. Because surely it wouldn't ache this badly if he never knew what he was leaving behind...? Sylar was no stranger to pain. To loss. Or to forcing himself on from the countless broken promise that now lay crumpled in the dirt, a more wounded person than he had been before. He knew how it felt to be left behind, discarded, to be the victim and be the one to blame, and to hate himself for it either way. But this time it was different. It was too hard to let go of what he no longer had. And now here he was, missing what he'd never deserved in the first place and tormented with memories of the better life that he'd lived.

But it was never meant to last, anyway. The fantastic, forbidden, fucked-up friendship he'd discovered against all odds. Sylar was nothing more than a deluded, naïve fool for ever truly thinking he could skip out on his past to live happily ever after with the kindest man in the world. He should never have gotten so comfortable, there. He shouldn't have let himself get used to the feeling. But it had just been so unbelievable, to finally be able to trust for the first time in his life. To be loved by someone. And he'd never even found the words to say how much it meant to him when he'd still had the chance.

This truth was so heavy he couldn't stand it.

The evo's aching body tensed in his restraints as he sensed Ms Kravid step up closer. He would have recoiled had he the strength, but instead he could do nothing as a surprisingly gentle hand ran through his lank, messy hair and lifted his head back for a more thorough inspection. Sylar bit back the hiss of pain that spasmed through his body, mustering the most murderous glare he could manage. It didn't seem to phase his visitor, but he supposed a weak and sickly, powerless captive would probably not scare anyone, let alone the ruthless boss of this ruthless corporation.

"Such a waste." Erica deemed, her face too close: sharp, severe eyes; fine lines marking her skin like battle scars of time; bleeding lipstick painted over downturned lips that didn't even try to hide her disappointment. "You were meant for more than this." She tilted her head, an attempt at sympathy. "Look at what they've done to you. You're a shadow of what you were, ruined by other people's fears and expectations. I've heard the stories. Seen the evidence. You were incredible once, towering over them all." She arched an eyebrow in something resembling an invitation. "You could be again. All you have to do is say the word."

Sylar pulled free from her clutches with difficulty. It was even harder to rid himself of the old insecurities she'd kicked back into his face, like each word was a shard of glass, sharper than the last.

"Wax poetic all you want, lady." He snarled, determined not to show how much even keeping his head up and forming a few simple sentences was taking out of him in this state. "Nothing you can say will have me killing on command for you like some pet. Been there. Done that. Still got the scars to prove it."

Erica smiled then, as if this was exactly what she'd wanted to hear. "I think you'll find that Angela Petrelli and I have very different ways of working." She took a step back, crossing her arms. "She was afraid of what you could do. What you could be. She tried to take advantage of you by promising something she could never give. She was foolish."

Sylar turned his face away, anger bubbling up more than ever at the reminder of that time in his life. That particular scar was one still tender, prone to playing up on him from time to time no matter how much he wished it wouldn't. It still pained him to recall how naïve he'd been to not only believe the lying Ice Queen, herself, but in how much he'd longed for what she'd told him to be true. And now...? He'd never trusted the same way since.

"I, on the other hand, don't plan on making the same mistake. I need the best of the best on my team if we're to have a chance of surviving the future we both know is coming." Erica Kravid continued, regurgitating visions of a charred and broken, lonely world in Sylar's mind. "I know potential when I see it, Mr Gray, and I've always been good at choosing my investments."

Sylar's lips thinned dangerously. "You think you have anything I want?"

"I do."

At this, the helpless prisoner's air of indifference faltered, despite telling himself not to be so stupid or believe her for one moment. She was lying. She had to be. She couldn't undo what had been done to him, she'd never return Peter's memories or restore the only meaningful connection Sylar had ever known. And even if she did, what was the plan? They'd live 24/7 under Renautas supervision? She'd dress Sylar up in a tie and a badge, give him a big spacious office, work weekdays 9-5 and send him home each night in time for dinner? She'd turn him into Noah Bennet? Sylar trembled just at the thought.

Yet, he still couldn't help but hang on her next word, the one Erica unveiled as if presenting him with a priceless secret weapon. "Freedom."

Sylar narrowed his eyes, disappointment deflating in his chest.

"I can give you a freedom you've never known. To gather as many abilities as you want; to kill as you choose; to hone these powers, perfect them, and have your talents appreciated rather than be punished for them. You'll be the best. The most powerful. You'll never be hunted again." The woman raised an eyebrow once more, apparently under the impression she was successfully unlocking Sylar's many reservations one by one, as he had used to unlock the rusted gears in a timepiece to set things back in motion. "All I ask is that you use those powers for me."

For a moment Sylar just let this proposal sink in.

Then, slowly, he started to laugh. A deep, languid sound that rebounded off the walls of the cell, made his tender ribs hurt and tugged at the needles embedded in his spine.

He should have been furious. And the feeling was there, simmering deep inside: the rage that his craft could ever be considered so cheap, that this was how the other side saw him. He should have been insulted that they thought him so easily bought, like a fearsome wild beast won over by a doggie treat tied to a string. Over the length of his imprisonment, the thought of pretending had ran through his mind. Taking the bait just to get free of this cage. But then where would he be? He couldn't run without being chased forever. He couldn't fight without ending up killing, and he couldn't even slaughter his way out like in the good old days, since his powers had left him 'impotent' even before Parkman had locked him in the most effective form of rehab on the planet. But even if he could kill, and even if he did still want to go around stealing others' powers for his own collection... he wouldn't. Never again.

Sylar sneered into Erica Kravid's tightening expression, reveling in the realisation that no matter which version of him she approached in any timeline, she was never going to get what she wanted. "I hope you have more inventive tortures lined up. Cause it's gonna take a lot more than that."

He bared his teeth, half a grin and half a snarl, his laugh dying out due to the pain splitting his rib cage. Even then, he leaned forward as much as his anchored limbs would allow, the better to unveil his secret weapon in return. Because the battle to be special had never really been about seeking others' approval, or fighting to live unrivaled with his abilities, or even catching the interest of the highest bidder in town. Because the only person who'd ever really needed convincing of his worth was himself.

"I'd rather die in here," Sylar confessed, "than be 'free' at the end of your leash."

He wanted to laugh again at the transformation that overcame the figure before him: her lip curling, her expression sagging and pinching all at once, the fine lines at her eyes and the corners of her mouth becoming more pronounced in the moment she realised she'd lost, and that all these months of plotting and chasing and meddling to get him here in this cage had been for nothing.

For a long moment, Sylar could practically see the gears spinning below Erica Kravid's slicked-back bun. "You disappoint me, Mr Gray."

He eased himself back in his bonds, unable to wipe the smirk from his face despite the pain gnawing relentlessly at his body and making him light-headed. "You'll live."

"...So will you." Forced to admit defeat, Erica turned on her heel, raking a deeply unimpressed gaze over her charge one more time. "For now."

Sylar watched her leave with triumph tickling inside, unable not to wonder in the back of his pounding mind, unable not to hope, that maybe this would be the day relief finally found him. He shivered as the door locked shut and the lights cut out around him with a clunk, swathing him in cool, musty darkness.

His uneven breathing was loud in the otherwise deadly silence and the first tingle of fear prickled over his skin, but it wasn't Erica's last threat that bothered him. Because the prospect of dying didn't scare him anymore. And any torture Renautas enacted next would be better than an eternity spent alone in this room, missed by no one, hated by all, and left with no other choice but to wait for the end to come, one way or another.

He just hoped it wouldn't take too long.

( )

Outside, Noah stood in the basement corridor with his arms crossed, staring through the observation window at Sylar's barely visible form hidden in the blackness. He paid no attention to the steady stream of MF Harris duplicates trickling around him, arms laden with dozens of prophetic paintings that Noah knew off by heart even without looking. A flaming oil rig illuminating the water; a small figure holding back the might of a tidal wave; one man hunched over the other in a run-down operating theatre, his bloodied fingers probing into an exposed brain. Even Noah's grand plan back at Union Wells High School was depicted in taunting clarity of a time when he'd thought he'd won, down to the very last sparkle of ice caught in the moonlight.

He couldn't bring himself to look as the past half year of his life was transported along the corridor to be packed into crates destined for storage, as if they held no further value and all his work had been for nothing. Which, now he was slowly managing to accept, it absolutely had been.

Noah struggled to maintain his usual unreadable mask as Erica approached him from the cell door. He acknowledged his boss with a nod when she came to a stop beside him, imitating his pose and following his line of sight through the window that seemed so harmless from the outside. The silence seemed to drag between them before Noah summoned his voice.

"You can't wipe his memories." He stated, knowing already what she was going to say. "I told you, reverting him back to a more dangerous and murderous state would be suicide for us all if he ever got loose. You never knew him before. Back then, Sylar would have slit your throat as much as listen to you, and that's without giving him a hell of a good reason. At least like this he's weak."

And vulnerable, Noah's thoughts supplied, but not in the tone they would have had he been pleased about that fact. Sylar: weak, vulnerable, wronged, broken, imprisoned for someone else's crime. A victim. It wasn't something Noah had ever expected to encounter. He'd never in his life expected to feel something close to sorry for the son of a bitch.

"I don't want him weak. I have enough of those to go around already." Noah felt Erica's glare of superiority upon him before turning to meet it, dreading what he was about to hear. "I've been more than reasonable. We tried it your way, Noah. It failed. Now we do it mine. Have the Haitian wipe him then prep him for transport."

Noah clenched his jaw to keep from shouting, or worse. "You're just gonna ship him offshore and leave him out there for god knows how long at the height of his rampage? What good will that do anyone?"

Although she was slightly smaller in height, somehow Erica managed to look down her nose at him. "Like I said: I've always been good at choosing my investments." Without another glance at him Erica sauntered away down the corridor, quickly disappearing beyond the tide of roaming easels.

Barely refraining from resting his head in his hands, Noah turned back again to stare unseeingly at the vague shape of Sylar through the observational window. Shit. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. And the poor suckers who were going to be guarding this vicious killer in his worst mindset until Erica next had use of him were the last things weighing upon Noah's conscience.

It had been much easier to hate the murderer before Parkman's interrogation had revealed that Sylar really was trying to change his ways. That he had been telling the truth all these months. Of course, Noah could never like the self-righteous bastard, and he would never forgive him for the tumultuous years between them stained in their own and other people's blood. But Noah, himself, would never be who he was today if he hadn't been lucky enough to have Sandra, Lyle and Claire forgive him for his sins too many times to count. He hadn't deserved them, but they'd always come back with another chance for him, no matter how bad his crime.

Without them, Noah couldn't help but wonder if he'd have earned himself a place in a cell next to Sylar's years ago...

The agent averted his eyes from the latest canvas to be carried past: the silhouettes of two young men entwined before an open window, captured forever in an act much too intimate for their hunter to ever have seen. He hadn't cared, at the time. He'd used the unlikely bond they shared to hurt them. To catch them, to divide him, and for what?! Because the world was still ending and Noah had no idea what was going to happen next, and if he didn't have Parkman working away on more paintings in secret then he'd know nothing at all about the looming future Erica refused to impart upon him now that she'd had her use of him. But Noah did have Parkman's prophesies. And the sky was still going to burn, the oceans were still going to rise, which proved more than ever that Noah had only been a giant chump the whole time, a pawn, who had lost his daughter and erased a good man's memories and condemned the wrong person to an imprisonment in the middle of the ocean for nothing.

The point of no return had been and gone a long time ago.

Just as Noah was sure he couldn't feel any worse, the sound of his ringtone chose to correct him. He retrieved his phone and stared at the name on the screen for a little too long, before hesitantly answering the call.

Her voice was clipped down the line. "Why didn't it work?"

So no time for pleasantries, then. Noah finally turned his back on the dark observational window, struggling to keep his reluctance from his reply. He'd been expecting this call sooner or later from someone much too clever to be fooled, but even after weeks of radio silence he still wasn't ready to confess the scale of their grand fuck up to her.

"Hello to you too."

( )

"Why didn't it work, Noah?" Angela Petrelli held her phone dangerously tight in order to stop herself from shouting at the man for his drawling ignorance. She paced back and forth across a spacious bedroom, nightgown flowing behind her, running her fingers repeatedly through the length of her hair that was yet to be styled to perfection.

Weak sunrise streamed through the window, beyond a spectacular view of the city being roused to life for the day. Yet she couldn't see it. She couldn't appreciate it. Not when the after-image of smoking ruins and a burning red sky were still plastered across her sight like a godforsaken photograph that she couldn't hope to escape.

"Why am I still having the dreams?" She demanded, keeping her voice low but dangerous. "We should have stopped it. We separated them. Peter and Sylar are no longer in my visions, their futures have changed but the world's has not, so enlighten me: what am I missing, here? What haven't you told me?"

There was a nasty silence on the other end of the line. Angela waited impatiently, daring him to lie to her, willing him to ease her fears and assure her that everything was alright. She wanted to worry that he'd lost Sylar, in typical Noah Bennet fashion. Because if the killer had slipped the net once again then he and his powers could still be a threat to Peter, to the world, and that explained it.

But if he hadn't, and the end was still destined to come without Peter and Sylar's involvement... then Angela had much, much more to concern her than she'd feared.

"Noah?"

Finally, the man sighed. "You're right." Another, longer, sigh. "There's been... a development. You're not going to like it."

Knowing better than to be surprised, Angela barely refrained from gritting her teeth. "Tell me everything."

( )( )( )

"...People will always try to get between us and the ones we love. People will always try to highlight our differences. Divide us. They'll try to tell us who we can and can't be, what we can and can't do because of the lives we were born into. But they can't control who we are if we don't give them that power. If we choose to take action and don't give in to their hate."

Angela couldn't look away from the might of her granddaughter's presence. The sheer power of it, the passion in it, currently being broadcast on screens around the world to be observed in a shared awe spanning continents and time zones. Angela watched, unblinking, unaware that she had already cut through the corner of her untouched omelette and was now just sawing at the plate.

She wasn't even hungry. Not when Claire's words took on a new meaning than they had during even the many other media appearances she'd made since the events back at Renautas, infused with a new lease of life, it seemed, to have her voice used for 'good'.

The teenager's green eyes bore unashamedly through the TV screen and into the Petrelli mansion's airy, wood-paneled dining room as if there weren't miles of distance between the two. "There is no "them and us": there's only ourselves and the people we choose to accept, regardless of if you can bend time, fly across the clouds, or walk through fire and not get burned." Claire paused behind her podium, giving the words time to make their impact. It was a tactic Nathan had perfected in his time, and Angela wondered if Claire had rehearsed it also, or if the skill had come to her naturally. Standing proud and strong up there, she really looked every bit Nathan Petrelli's daughter.

Angela tore her gaze away from the news, unable to shake the feeling that these words were meant solely for her. And she wasn't so modest as to believe that her stubborn son's stubborn daughter wouldn't go to such lengths to convey what she'd been refrained from conveying face to face.

Well Angela got the message, alright. Loud and clear.

A shadow had been forming overhead since Peter had first awoken back in his childhood bedroom three weeks ago, missing some memories but brimming with questions. It had grown considerably after night upon night of the same nightmares that should have stopped by now. And since Noah had bombarded her with the truth of their mistake that morning? The shadow was now so large that Angela struggled to carry its mass alone on her shoulders.

She could blame Noah for his part to play in the whole thing. But what would be the point in that when she had been the one to force his hand in the first place? The tightening sensation around her throat was beginning to feel an awful lot like guilt and regret: a concoction Mrs Petrelli had spent a great deal of her life learning to outrun. But this time it wasn't so easy, when the fallout of her actions had already infected the world like a darkness emanating from her, left alone and to blame at the core. Because now she knew without a doubt what she had been afraid to admit before... that she'd been wrong.

She'd misinterpreted the dreams. She'd let fear and skewed perceptions warp her judgement. What was it Peter had said back at Renautas? 'You're only seeing what you wanna see. You're blaming Sylar cause it's easier, cause you want an excuse to hate him more than you already do...' At the time Angela hadn't wanted to hear his love-blind delusions of the killer. But now she couldn't escape the truth that she had lied, and she had hurt, and she had piled up innocent deaths to get Sylar out of the way, even wrongly set a bounty on the man's head, and she had betrayed her son's trust and broken his heart for no reason at all.

The blood was long dried on her hands, and there was no washing it away.

"What's important is to understand that we're all human, no matter where we come from." As Claire continued her impassioned speech, each word hit home deeper than the last. "Evo or not, we all feel, we all laugh, we all cry. We all love. And we've gotta remember that when others try to tear us apart. Remember the ones we love, and the ones who love us..."

Angela hurried to mute the damn TV when soft footsteps scuffed into the room.

Securing a pleasant expression in place, she smiled too brightly at the arrival of her youngest son. Just setting eyes upon him safe and sound and back in their family home made Angela want to doubt starting to regret her actions. What she had done, wrongly or not, had brought him back to her when he'd been lost.

Yes, Angela had messed up spectacularly once again. But the most important thing was that Peter had been returned to her, even if he wasn't entirely himself anymore. Because along with the loss of his animosity toward her, he'd also lost a spark of himself that no amount of bribery or hugs could reverse. Angela had resolutely convinced herself it was the recent loss of Nathan taking its toll on him, or no longer being able to bury himself in a job that he loved, or the suppression of the abilities that would become both his and Angela's undoing if left unchecked. It also had to be natural to feel a loss upon having a considerable period of one's memory erased (not that the Company had ever cared enough to check up on this in the past), and Angela couldn't blame him for that.

Peter had a lot to miss. A lot that he knew he should miss, and even more that shouldn't be burdening him at all. Yet, Mrs Petrelli couldn't help but wonder...

She watched the young man approach the polished wood dining table, looking tousled and still sleepy in crumpled sleepwear and bare feet at this time of day. If it turned out Angela had just time travelled back to his teenage years, when the latest girl to take advantage of his feelings had just dropped him for the quarterback and left him broken hearted, she wouldn't even have been surprised.

"Good morning, sweetheart." She said, trying to sound cheerful. "How did you sleep?"

Stifling a yawn, Peter stopped at the back of a dining chair. "Better." The short smile he sent her way said otherwise, and while that shadow of guilt grew heavier still, Angela appreciated his effort. Almost as much as she appreciated the way he retrieved the Haitian pills set out for him without question or hesitation.

She waited for him to sit down opposite her but he didn't. He just stood there as if still unsure if he were welcome in this house, measuring out his morning dose of pills while ignoring the table swathed in cereals and fruits and waffles and pancakes and toast and a selection of different spreads. As if all Angela's efforts and all her performance of a happy family lifestyle didn't appeal to him at all.

She forced a bite of tasteless omelette. "I was thinking we could go somewhere nice today for lunch. What do you think? It would do you good to get out of the house."

It was supposed to be an inviting prospect after weeks of house arrest, but Peter's shoulders rose to his ears and he refused to meet her eyes. "I kinda don't feel like going anywhere today." He said stiffly, before taking his pills in one go.

Angela hated seeing him so closed off when his natural state was to shine. He seemed more lost, more dull, than he had been even after losing Nathan the first time. And it pained her to no longer be able to deny he was hurting, or pretend that she'd done him a favour in the long run, that this pain was for the best because she'd spared him from the destiny of ending the world someday...

"I'm gonna eat upstairs." Peter announced, finally deciding on a bowl of plain cornflakes. Angela tried not to feel so uncomfortable with his choice. Until this had miraculously changed after the Sullivan Brother's Carnival event, Peter had always despised cornflakes. As far as he remembered, that should still be the case. Clearly, not all yearnings could be erased as easily as memories.

Before he could reach the hall, Angela held out a hand for her youngest child. "Come here, dear."

Politely, Peter did, setting his bowl down and making his way around the table to slip his hand into hers. It came from obedience, practice, but was void of the heart that Angela longed to see in him. It surprised her how difficult it was to find her voice for a moment.

"You know that you're the greatest achievement of my life, don't you? You and your brother."

At this, Peter's eyes crinkled slightly. "Thanks, mom." Again it was kind, but still there was a divide there, an invisible veil that Angela longed to rip through in order to reach him properly.

She took his other hand too, absently stroking his fingers while keeping his gaze steady on hers. "I know these past few weeks have been difficult for you. You've never been able to sit back while others do the dirty work. But I want you to know that everything I've ever done has been to ensure what's best for my boys. I almost lost you, Peter. The return of your abilities, the... accident..." Here, Angela lost her voice, caught between all the lies and twisted truths that she'd plied him with in order to keep him here. It was difficult to keep track of even her own stories by this point. "All of this – the pills, the house – was to protect you."

Peter smiled shortly again, this one more distant than the last. "I know. I wouldn't have stayed if I didn't believe you." He squeezed Angela's hands just slightly, but his skin was cold and clammy against hers and she couldn't shake the sense that his words were only what she wanted to hear.

Looking up at her surviving child, his face open and patient and framed by ridiculously overgrown hair that he'd refused to let Angela trim, she was hit over again by the gut-wrenching fact that she was the one who did this to him. It was her fault that he was having trouble sleeping, her fault he was so reserved and broken and alone, lacking the luminous spark of something pure that had always made him Peter. He had never lost that spark, before. Not even when living with the godforsaken murderer of his brother.

So how could his own mother have reached inside and extinguished the same light that Sylar had somehow kept safe and warm?

"I... I just want you to be okay." Angela confessed, the most truthful thing she'd told him since Renautas. With a rather watery smile, she tugged Peter down into her arms.

For a heartbeat she worried he would throw her off. But no, he hugged her gently in return, rubbing her back and speaking quietly into her shoulder. "I'm fine, ma."

Angela let go much sooner than she wanted to, pulling herself back together with the experience of a lifetime of practice. She was just about to wave the young man away as if the whole thing had been silly, when something caught her eye.

A prickle crept up the back of her neck. Then she was hit by a sudden light-headedness.

The dining room seemed to warp at the edges where it hadn't done before, and Angela reached out a numb hand to hold her son steady in front of her eyes. For a moment she didn't understand what she was seeing. For a moment the dark stain growing over Peter's heart didn't make sense to her.

Tiny at first, it blossomed before her eyes, seeping through his t-shirt and flowing down the length of it in rivers of deep, dark red, as if he'd just been shot. Horrified, Angela gaped as her child bled out right in front of her without making any attempt to stop it, and when she glanced up at his face she saw tears streaming down his cheeks but still he was trying to hide it.

As if he was alright.

As if it didn't hurt.

As if he wasn't broken and lost and lonely and hiding it from the world.

As if it wasn't all Angela's fault, and she hadn't done this to him, ruined his heart and wrecked him for her own selfish reasons –

The world lurched as Mrs Petrelli awoke with a gasp, her chair rocking with the momentum of returning to reality.

Heart racing, she needed a second to assess her true surroundings. The dining room – the same spot she'd been waiting in for Peter to join her for breakfast after Noah's call – the TV was still running on the wall, Claire Bennet's latest grand speech just beginning – Angela was slumped in the armchair in the corner – her cup of tea now cold and neglected on the side table. Finally she located the clock, and saw with a jolt that it was after midday now.

Short of breath, Angela's eyes darted wildly around the room until at last they placed the slim figure standing sheepishly at the table.

"Sorry, didn't mean to wake you." Peter smiled at her, and it was real and heart-wrenching and warmer than it had been in her dream. "Rough night? Me too."

Angela didn't answer. She blinked rapidly as her whole and healthy son eclipsed the nightmarish state of him in her dream. It took all of the willpower she had honed for years not to run at him right then and haul him into her arms, confessing all her many mistakes in a blur of tears and apologies.

Instead, she simply straightened herself up in the chair, smoothing her hair back into place. "You're up. About time. I was beginning to worry about you, dear."

The performance must not have been as convincing as she'd hoped, because Peter chased down his Haitian pills with some juice and crossed over to Angela's side. "I'm fine, ma." He said quietly before kissing her cheek. Angela's skin crawled. Not just at the words that echoed her dream, but at the kiss that she desperately didn't deserve.

She forced herself to remain unreadable as he pulled back with another of those obliging, sad smiles that Angela knew too well by now. His t-shirt wasn't blood-stained and his eyes were dry this time, but she could still see it. Just how much he was suffering here in this prison of her making; the unfortunate truth that she had deliberately blinded herself to until now.

She couldn't keep him like this.

Peter stopped at the table to pour a bowl of plain cornflakes. "I'm gonna eat upstairs." He announced, scuffing his way out of the room and leaving Angela alone to wade through the ringing afterglow of her dream. Oh, Peter...

Easing to her feet, she didn't even look at the determined face on TV before shutting off her granddaughter mid-speech. "...When others tear us apart, remember the ones we love, and the ones who love us back. Remember. Just remember."

A/N: I'm sorry for suuuuuuch a long wait for this update. You wouldn't believe how difficult it's been to get the time to sit and work on it this summer, but finally I'm more than happy to be able to share it here. Hopefully it was worth the struggle and worth the wait X) Yet again this update got away from me, so I decided after writing to split it into two.

Please go check out the next chapter that's posted and ready to read now too, and don't be shy to leave any thoughts!