Hey, I'm back! As promised, Shades of Destiny is now complete, so here I am with another update. Thanks again for being so patient with me while I wrapped up one of my long-running projects.

Chapter 9: Family Affairs

Peter spent the rest of the night prowling the wood-paneled halls of the Cullens' Colorado home, then announced when the sun came up that he had decided to go back to New York, at least for a short visit. None of them had come up with any ideas on how to track Bella down; meanwhile, he hadn't seen his family in roughly four months, and could only imagine that they, like the Cullens, believed he had perished on Kirby Plaza. Setting their minds at ease seemed like a better use of time than helplessly puzzling over Bella's whereabouts - an occupation that was made even more frustrating by the unblinking golden eyes that were constantly fixed on him, as if their owners thought he had some special insight into the workings of her mind that would enable him to pull an answer out of thin air at any minute...or were concerned that he might explode again if she wasn't found soon.

If he hoped to escape their scrutiny, however, he wasn't entirely successful - Alice opted to join him, saying it had been too long since she'd seen her sister, while Edward and Elle wanted to retrieve some things they had left behind in their brownstone. There was also some confusion about their means of travel; Peter had assumed they would take the helicopter, but now that he had regained his memories, his companions preferred an even faster method, which he wasn't at all certain he was ready to attempt.

"Uh, guys, you do realize I've only teleported once, right? And I don't even know how I did it - when I came to after the explosion, Bella was lying there on the ground beside me, not breathing, and I just knew I needed to get her some help-"

"So you took her to a hospital. You knew what you had to do, and you instinctively channeled your power to do it. You have a better grasp of your abilities than you think, Peter," Alice said bracingly. "You just need to stop overthinking it."

"Pick an easy target," Elle suggested. "Someplace familiar, like your family's house. And make sure to keep your mind in the present; don't get caught up in childhood memories, or we could end up twenty years in the past."

"Thanks, Elle," Peter said dryly. "Just what I needed: one more thing to worry about."

"Hey, you said you want to see your brother, right? Just focus on him. Or maybe you should picture yourself going home to see him, because if you think about Nathan too hard, we'll probably appear wherever he is, and he might be in the shower right now."

###

Thanks to - or perhaps in spite of - Elle's coaching, they reached the Petrelli mansion without incident, finding it empty except for a single person.

"What do you know, Nathan really is in the shower," Alice commented after taking in the ambient sounds of the house. "And I thought I was the seer in this family."

"I'm just glad we didn't end up in there with him," Edward said fervently. "Well done, Peter."

"So you guys can hear the shower running all the way from here?"

"Yeah, we can hear everything," Elle replied with a slight shrug, as if their greatly enhanced senses were entirely unremarkable. "Your ears may not be as good, but you could probably tune in telepathically - right, Edward?"

"Our range does extend far enough to pick up the thoughts of every person in this house," he admitted, "and possibly even to either end of the street outside, if it isn't so crowded that everything blends into an unintelligible cacophony, but I make a point never to eavesdrop on anyone while they're bathing."

"Me too," Peter said quickly. "Especially not my brother."

###

If it had occurred to him to worry about the possibility of his mind being read, Nathan would have been relieved that no one was doing so at that moment, because his mind was more troubled than ever lately. His mother's recent arrest on suspicion that she had been involved in the murder of an old friend of hers certainly hadn't helped, but it was his encounter with Bella that weighed most heavily on him.

Disturbing as it had been to see his erstwhile intern so horrifically transformed - the memory of her red eyes glaring at him from the shadows had caused him to wake up in a cold sweat more than once - it was her words that truly haunted him...because, as much as it pained him to admit it, every one of her accusations were true. He had pushed Peter away, had valued his career more than their relationship, and his negligence had undoubtedly been a major contributing factor in whatever had happened to Peter. It was easy to blame Bella for leading him astray, but the truth of the matter was that she never should have gained that much influence over him in the first place. I should have been there for him, not her. But I wasn't, and now he's gone. And the guilt he felt over that simple, undeniable fact was slowly but surely eating him alive.

So far, he had managed to hold it together in the professional sphere - channeling some of his remorse and grief into anger at Bella had at least allowed him to do that much - but his personal life was another matter. Heidi had been supportive at first, but eventually she'd had all she could take and had temporarily moved out of the house along with their sons, telling him that they weren't coming back until he was in a better place. Angela, meanwhile, had pushed him to accept that Peter was gone and carry on, which had led to some nasty fights between them before her arrest.

Moving on autopilot while lost in his thoughts, he pulled on a pair of slacks and buttoned his shirt - he wouldn't be working today, having taken some personal time to deal with his mother's legal issues, so there was no need for a full suit - then trudged downstairs, where he was brought up short by the unexpected sight of three people who didn't belong there. His heart skipped a beat, then resumed its normal rhythm when he realized that none of the pale, motionless figures were Bella; it was just Edward Cullen, Elle Bishop, and a second girl with short, spiky black hair who he'd never seen before.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded. He didn't bother asking how they got in, having long since learned that locked doors and security systems were no obstacle to them. Bringing someone else into his house, however, was a step too far. "And who is she?"

"I'm Alice," the spiky-haired girl introduced herself in a bright, chirpy tone. "Edward's sister."

"So your whole family's made a hobby out of breaking and entering? Great. You know, if you're looking for things to do together, you could always take up tennis."

"We prefer baseball," Edward informed him while Alice burst into laughter, "but our purpose in coming here today wasn't recreational. We've been investigating what happened on the night of Peter's disappearance-"

"Why?" Nathan asked sharply. "He's gone; the details of how it happened don't matter."

"As a matter of fact, they do, because it turns out that Peter is alive after all."

Nathan actually stumbled back a step when he heard that, as if the words had struck him with physical force. "That's not funny, Cullen. If Peter's alive, then where the hell is he?"

"Right here."

He whirled around at the sound of his brother's voice, and sure enough, there he stood, undeniably solid and real and very much alive. "Peter!" Still in shock, Nathan moved to embrace him. "How...?"

"It's a long story. I-"

Nathan's phone rang, cutting Peter off just as he began to relate said story. Nathan moved to silence it, but Alice, who was staring at the noisy device with a strangely apprehensive expression, said, "You should get that. It's important."

Nathan frowned at her but did as she suggested, pressing the phone to his ear. "Hello?" He listened for a moment, his aggravated demeanor falling away as he did, then said, "I'll be right there," and hung up, looking shocked all over again.

"What was that about?" Peter asked, reaching out as if to shake Nathan out of his daze.

"Someone just tried to kill our mother."

###

"Wait, so Mom's been arrested because they think she killed this Nakamura guy?" Peter stared incredulously at his brother, but Nathan kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, his face unusually pale as he clutched the armrest on the inside of the car door next to him. He wasn't exactly sure how Edward had managed to commandeer the keys to his car, or how he and Peter had ended up relegated to the backseat along with Alice, but Edward had assured them that he would get them to the hospital where Angela had been taken in record time, and it looked like he was going to make good on that promise, weaving through traffic at speeds that should have been impossible at midday in downtown Manhattan.

Whatever reply he might have given to Peter's question was cut off by a peal of laughter from the front seat. "They arrested Mrs. Petrelli for murder? No way. I mean, I could totally see her doing somebody in, but she'd never let herself get caught. I don't think she'd kill Mr. Nakamura, though," Elle added in a more serious tone. "They always seemed pretty close. Very close, actually."

"Yeah, I know." Nathan swallowed hard as Edward swerved around a corner, and continued talking to distract himself. "Dad never seemed to like him, and I remember this one time he came over to the house - when she hugged him, it lasted a little too long... You were at school that day, Pete, but I was home with a cold."

Deciding not to dwell on the disturbing idea that his mother might have had an affair, Peter said, "But even if there was something going on between them back then, why do the cops think she killed him now?"

"Why don't you ask them yourself?" Edward took another sharp turn into a parking garage, paid the toll, and quickly found a space. "Here we are."

From there, it was just a short walk into the hospital, where they were immediately directed to Angela's room. Thanks to Edward's crazy driving, however, they had arrived well ahead of the detectives assigned to her case. Nathan maneuvered past the officer stationed outside her door with some lawyerly talk about constitutional rights, and an emotional family reunion ensued, though Peter couldn't help noticing the scratches on his mother's face, or that the hands with which she clutched at him like he might evaporate if she let go for a single second were heavily bandaged.

"Mom," he said at last, gently disentangling himself from her embrace, "what happened to you?"

Her expression instantly became guarded. "I was overwhelmed with everything that's happened recently, losing one of my dearest friends so soon after I thought I'd lost you, and I suppose I suffered a breakdown of sorts."

"Are you saying you did this to yourself?" He couldn't believe it; Angela Petrelli was not the kind of person who suffered breakdowns, and she certainly wouldn't hurt herself.

"I did, and when the detectives arrive, I'm going to confess to Kaito's murder." This declaration was met with vehement protests from both of her sons, which she silenced with a stern look. "I've done a great many bad things in my life - things I never wanted either of you to know about - but now my past is catching up with me, and I've realized that the only way out is for me to confess."

"How is going to jail for a murder you didn't commit going to solve anything?" Nathan demanded.

When Angela merely pressed her lips together and refused to answer, Peter said, "Don't worry, Nate, we'll fix this. We'll find out what really happened-"

"No! You need to let this go, both of you. If you keep digging, you'll just get yourselves killed, and I can't lose either of you-" She turned her head to fix her piercing gaze on Peter "-especially not when I just got you back. Do you understand?"

The brothers exchanged a brief look before speaking in unison. "Sure, Mom."

"Absolutely."

Angela received their assurances with a suspicious frown, but before she could say anything more, Alice stuck her head in to tell them that the detectives were on their way. Peter and Nathan rejoined the three vampires outside the room, and within minutes, two men with badges clipped to their belts came into view. One was an older, heavyset black man, and the other was...

"Matt Parkman?"

"Peter Petrelli? Your mother and brother told me you'd gone missing." Matt's eyes darted between him and Nathan in search of an explanation.

"I did, but now I'm back."

"And you brought your friends with you." Matt grimaced slightly as he recalled the telepathic feedback he'd experienced during his last encounter with Edward, and tried to keep his focus elsewhere.

Before anything more could be said, Matt's partner butted in. "You can catch up with your old pal later, Parkman - unless you can't be impartial about investigating a crime where his mother's our prime suspect, and you need to take yourself off this case."

"No, I'm good." Matt followed his partner into Angela's room, but not before glancing back at Peter and thinking, We'll talk later.

Nathan went in with them since he was currently acting as Angela's legal counsel - she refused to call any of the numerous other lawyers she knew, and he felt that someone should look out for her interests, especially now that she had apparently decided to fall on her sword - while Peter stayed in the hallway, not being in the mood to listen to a false confession.

"I don't guess any of you have any idea why Mom would confess to something she didn't do, do you?"

Elle shrugged. "Who knows why Mrs. Petrelli does anything?"

"I'm afraid I can't offer much insight either," Alice said regretfully. "Her mind was already made up when we got here...and we've been apart for so long that I don't know her as well as a sister should."

"She's certainly hiding something," Edward put in while giving his sister a quick, consolatory pat on the back. "Her thoughts were very tightly controlled, as if she was taking care not to think of anything that would contradict what she said. Did you notice that?"

Peter shook his head.

"Well, it can take a while to become attuned to more subtle nuances of others' minds, but in time, you'll be able to glean much more from the thoughts you hear than simple words. Unfortunately, I can't pry information from a person's brain if they refuse to think of it at all; that's more Matt's area. Given how difficult he finds it to be around me, perhaps I should make myself scarce for now."

Elle started to follow him as he walked away, but he turned back and put his hands on her shoulders to stop her, saying, "No, you should stay with them; maybe you can help them prove Angela's innocence."

She frowned - Angela Petrelli was far from innocent in her estimation, even if she hadn't committed the particular crime she was presently accused of - but Edward pacified her with a quick kiss and a whispered admonition to be nice.

"Hey, I'm always nice," she retorted, which merely made him laugh.

Peter looked away, fighting to suppress a pang of longing brought on by their brief display of affection; even if they did manage to find Bella, he knew her feelings (or lack thereof) for him weren't likely to have changed one jot, so there was no sense in letting his mind go down that path, certainly not in wondering what it would be like to kiss a vampire... Nevertheless, the feeling persisted, so it was a relief when Nathan and Matt emerged from Angela's room.

Matt sent his partner back to the station, saying he had a few more questions for the two brothers; maybe it was just his imagination, but Peter thought there might have been a hint of telepathic force behind the suggestion. Whether there was or not, the other detective left without a word of protest.

"So what happened to you?" Matt asked Peter once his partner was gone. "Why did everyone think you were dead until today?"

"Never mind me; why do you think my mom murdered this guy?"

"I don't, but her fingerprints were found at the scene, and as far as we know she was the last one to see the victim alive; that's enough for my partner, but I think maybe the real killer had a way of getting onto that roof without being seen."

"Well, there's any number of ways they could've done that," Elle interjected. "They could've flown, or teleported, or just made themselves invisible and sneaked up the stairs..."

Nathan's eyes widened in alarm when she began casually listing the killer's potential superpowers, and he tried to tell Matt he had no idea what she was talking about, but Alice cut him off with an airy little laugh. "You don't have to play dumb for him; Matt's one of us."

"Yeah, I can read minds," he confirmed when Nathan turned a cautiously inquisitive look on him. "And you can fly, right? Sorry, I can't always control what I hear."

"Yes, I can fly," Nathan admitted with a grimace, "but I try to avoid it as much as possible. As far as I can tell, these abilities cause nothing but trouble - and if they helped someone leave our mother on the hook for murder, I'd say that just proves my point."

"If the killer was like us," Peter reminded him. "We don't know for sure that they were. Nakamura was some high-powered businessman, right? Maybe there was a rival or ex-employee who wanted him dead."

"Maybe," Matt agreed, though he sounded doubtful. "The only other piece of evidence we've been able to turn up is this." Reaching into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, he pulled out a photo sealed in a plastic evidence bag, showing Kaito's face with a strange symbol drawn over it in red. "That was on the roof he was pushed from...and then we found this in your mother's cell after she was rushed to the hospital." He took out another photograph, this one of Angela, with the same symbol slashed across her face, the red lines eerily reminiscent of the bloody wounds that now marred her skin in real life.

"I know that picture," Nathan said suddenly. "It was a group shot; she and Nakamura were both in it-"

"Yeah, I've seen it too," Elle added. "My father was in it too, and he kept that picture in his office, along with one of him with the biggest fish he ever caught. He was so proud of it, I'm surprised he didn't turn the stupid fish into gold and mount it on the wall..."

"Can we get back to the picture with Mom and Nakamura, please?" Peter asked with thinly veiled impatience.

"Oh yeah... Well, the people in it were the founders of the company I used to work for: your parents, my dad, Kaito Nakamura, Maury Parkman, Charles Deveaux, and Daniel Linderman. There was one more, another woman, but she wasn't in the picture; all Daddy would ever tell me about her was that she disappeared a long time ago."

"Jesus," Nathan murmured.

"I don't remember seeing Him in the picture either," Elle quipped, her irreverence earning a disapproving look from the congressman.

"I just meant that half the people in that photo are dead - Dad, Nakamura, Deveaux..."

"And my dad, Bob Bishop, although it was definitely delayed karma in his case. Maybe karma caught up with the others too."

"I don't believe that," Peter said at once. "Mr. Deveaux was a good guy, and Dad...well, obviously there was a lot we didn't know about him, but he wasn't that bad, was he?"

"You have no idea," Alice muttered. "In any event, since our killer is targeting the founders of Primatech, an organization dedicated to locating, monitoring, and incarcerating or eliminating people with special abilities whenever they deem it necessary, I think it's safe to say their motive isn't anything as mundane as money."

"And the only ones left are Angela Petrelli, Daniel Linderman, and my father," Matt added. "They've already tried to take out Mrs. Petrelli, and from what I've heard about Linderman, they'd need an army to get to him; unless they come back here when they find out she survived, my father could be the next target. I need to find him."

"Why?" Elle questioned. "You said he abandoned you, so it's not like you owe him anything."

"Maybe not, but he's still my father."

This response brought a pensive frown to her face; after learning of - worse yet, reliving - the true extent of the abuse Bob had subjected her to, she hadn't thought twice about exacting her vengeance, blood ties be damned, and she certainly wouldn't have lifted a finger to help him if he'd found himself in someone else's crosshairs. Of course, while walking out on his family was reprehensible enough, Maury's desertion of Matt still paled in comparison to what she'd suffered at Bob's hands. Would her feelings have been different, she wondered, if Bob had simply left her?

I probably wouldn't have killed him for that, she decided. After all, that was what her mother had done after divorcing Bob; Elle hadn't seen her since the day she dropped her off with her father, telling him she just couldn't 'deal with her' anymore. Once she was free of the Company, Edward had offered to help her find her mother, but she declined. The woman had been out of her life for so long that she no longer held any strong feelings toward her and wanted nothing from her, neither revenge nor reconciliation. No, I wouldn't have needed to kill Daddy if he'd just walked away...but I wouldn't save him either. But then, would she still feel that way if Bob's experiments and the social isolation he had forced on her hadn't left her with a diminished capacity for emotion in the first place?

While she mulled over the contrasts in hers and Matt's feelings toward their estranged fathers, he continued talking. "He could also be our best chance of finding out what's going on here. Since you told me what he could do, I've been trying to develop those skills on my own, but I haven't been able to compel anything out of Mrs. Petrelli." Turning to Peter and Nathan, he said ruefully, "Your mother's one stubborn lady," to which they both nodded in agreement.

"So how do you plan on finding your dad?" Elle asked him. "I saw him at the facility where I lived sometimes, but I couldn't tell you where he hangs out when he's off the clock."

"Don't worry, I've got it covered. After Ted was arrested, Bennet and I carried on with what we came to New York to do, which he said was to take out Primatech's tracking system so they could never find us again and we could get back to our lives, free of their interference...but then the tracking system turned out to be a little girl."

"Of course it did," the blonde muttered.

"I stopped Bennet from shooting her, and I've been taking care of her ever since, along with this scientist, Mohinder Suresh; Molly had some kind of virus that kept her from using her power, but he cured her...and I guess we both got attached. Anyway, she can find my father."

"That's a start, but if we're hoping for him to shed any light on this situation, it would be helpful if we had more to go on than just 'someone with a grudge against Primatech's founders'. From what I've heard about their activities, that could be any number of people," Alice pointed out. "If we knew more about the symbol that was drawn over the faces in the photo, that might help narrow it down."

"I think I've seen it before," Peter said with a trace of hesitation in his voice. "Maybe it was in a book I read recently. I think it was the one Mohinder's father wrote about people like us, but I'm not sure; I didn't make it through the whole thing. It's not that I don't like reading," he added quickly, imagining the scandalized look on Bella's face if she heard that he had left a book unfinished, "but I got sidetracked by a time traveler who told me I had to save a cheerleader from a brain-stealing psychopath."

"That'd do it," Matt agreed.

"The book should still be in my apartment...which I probably don't have anymore after not paying the rent for four months."

He appeared crestfallen for a moment, only to perk up again when Nathan said, "I took care of that, so everything's just like you left it, Pete. Ma told me I needed to accept that you were gone, but I never really did. Some part of me always believed you'd come back... I even had the lecture I was going to give you when you did all planned out."

"So why didn't you give it to me?"

"I forgot it as soon as I saw you," Nathan admitted, somewhat sheepishly.

"Thank goodness for small favors."

###

They split up soon afterward; Matt went home to ask Molly about locating his father, while Nathan, Alice, Elle, and Edward accompanied Peter to his apartment to look for the book he'd mentioned.

"Hunting down information on a mysterious symbol that could be the key to unraveling a deadly conspiracy - it's almost as if we've been dropped into a Dan Brown novel," Edward remarked as they climbed the stairs to Peter's unit. When Alice looked askance at him, he merely shrugged and said, "They may have been riddled with historical inaccuracies, but they're still entertaining fiction."

"If this was a Dan Brown novel, we could just call Robert Langdon to explain everything," Peter interjected, "but hopefully we won't have to run all over the world, looking for obscure clues in art."

"Might be easier than trying to find something in your apartment," Nathan muttered.

"Very funny, Nathan." Peter unlocked his door, and the two of them stepped inside, but the three vampires froze on the threshold, their golden eyes wide. For a moment, he thought they were playing off of Nathan's teasing jibe about his housekeeping; from what he had seen of their house in Colorado, as well as the one Edward and Elle had shared with Bella in Manhattan, they seemed to be very orderly people, while he did have an occasional tendency to put things down wherever it was convenient, and sometimes forgot to move them back to their proper places for a while. Still, he thought their reaction was a bit extreme. "Come on, it's not that messy in here."

Then Elle suddenly sprang into motion, veering around him with a mere inch to spare as she ran through to his bedroom. Alice and Edward came in at a more sedate pace, their expressions of shock growing more pronounced as they sniffed the air.

"What is it?" By now, Peter had realized that their strange behavior was no joke. "What's the matter?"

It was Edward who answered, sounding as if he could scarcely believe his own words. "Bella was here."

Well, that seems like a suitably intriguing note to end on, but don't worry - at the risk of spoiling you guys, I think I'll be able to manage at least one more update this year. I know I've already doubled my output on this story from last year, but I like to set ambitious goals for myself.