Chapter 2-

First try-

"I got my feet on the ground and I don't go to sleep to dream.

You got your head in the clouds and you're not at all what you seem.

This mind, this body, and this voice cannot be stifled by your deviant ways.

So don't forget what I told you, don't come around, I got my own hell to raise."

Fiona Apple, "Sleep To Dream"

India-

Sylar slept smiling. He'd wash off the blood in the morning, he decided, and slightly shifted, a spring coil of the bed pressing into the flesh of his back uncomfortably. Finding a nice spot of both comfort and support, he let his head sink into the pillow and shut his eyelids, to see only the blackness. The darkness. Where he felt at home. His humble abode of thought, mind and deed. Making sure to focus on Bennet, his mind drifted slightly, but he had already begun to find out how this one worked.

Odessa, Texas-

Noah Bennet stretched out with a yawn, next to the bed he and his wife shared. Sandra chuckled at her always serious husband looking like a downright goofball, arms outreached, mouth gaping open with a Yeti-like sound coming from it. Noah walked to the bathroom connected to the bedroom, and looked at himself in the mirror. Still me, still alive- what more can one want in this world? He saw the reflection of his wife in the mirror, wearing a blue nightgown and waiting for him, a Reader's Digest propped against her chest to read as she lazily flipped through the pages. Noah Bennet cracked a smile. Well, there was a bonus. The most recent hospital tests had come out all good, the love of his life would be okay as long as she stayed on the medication.

"Don't forget the pills, Sandy." He hadn't used that nickname in a while.

"Fine, No." She had her own little nickname, that happened to make things confusing a bit, but she loved to do that to him, seeing him get frazzled by her little take off of "Who's On First."

"Claire would be rolling her eyes right now." No noted.

"And Lyle most likely pantomiming a gagging."

But the kids were out for the night, and the Bennets could finally get some rest. Life hadn't dealt them a good hand recently, but they had always fought through. Stupid nicknames and all. Over a decade of fighting through, they'd made it. It was anniversary time this year soon, and Noah knew just the right present. Sandra once , when they had started dating, told him of how she fell in love with dogs. When she was little, Sandra was sitting on her porch steps, watching the world go by. Out of nowhere came a screech, a thud, and a howl. Tires peeled away, to reveal a beautiful black German Shepard with near fatal injuries. Sandra and her family raised him, later named Tsar, back to health until he passed away from complications- an infection.

"I cried so much that day...and I figured, if I was crying so much, I really loved Tsar. Maybe I could love another dog more, with that...harsh experience. And then we got Bruno." Sandra had told him. Over the years she just poured her love into those dogs, her life...until she met him of course, she'd say with that smile of hers. Noah had spent a few hours looking through old family photo albums, sepia tinting the captured memories. A framed watercolor painting of Bruno would be the gift, or at least gift number 1. He had it all planned out- Sandra frequented the local art galleries, or well...gallery in Odessa, and had a favorite artist. The guy didn't usually do commissions, but was a sucker for a sweet story, a young 24 year old with over-romanticized ideas of marriage and till death do us part. Well, not over-romanticized in the case of Noah and Sandra Bennet. For many, that peaceful and loving a marriage was just a...dream.

For Noah and Sandra Bennet, it was a reality. Sandra washed down the pills with a glass of warm milk, a habit she had gotten from her decidedly old fashioned mother. Noah had his glass also, a habit he inherited from noting that Sandra's mom had lived to a ripe old age and in good health. She said it was the glass of warm milk and good night's sleep. Sandra held up the fluffy down covers, as Noah sat down on the bed and brought his legs over it, sliding underneath the warm bundle of covers. Noah brought his arm around his wife and held her peacefully, nodding off to dream land.

The dreamscape-

Sylar walked through the darkness, ever stretching as it was. Millions of people, dreaming dreams of different dalliances. A 12 year old girl in Wyoming dreaming of failing a test. A scruffy and hardened older 40s man in New York dreaming of the Apocalypse, himself unsaved. He even passed a few old friends. However...he had a target. He tracked down Bennet, for he was in others dreams. In many he was just a shadowy figure, but Sylar knew the distinctive figure of the man with the glasses. The calm and collected manner, the voice. Sylar meant what he said about them not being so different, and for a moment considered it a shame that Bennet had to be so frustratingly...normal. Then- there he was. A man being accosted by his boss for mishandling a shipment of paper to Scranton, Pennsylvania. The boss was Bennet.

He had found Odessa,Texas in the dreamscape, and walked the streets, a specter of evil. He went through the open door of the Bennet house, up those familiar stairs and into the bedroom, where he found Noah Bennet and slipped, sliding into his mind's eye like a worm through the apple's core. Destination had been found. Now for the fun.

"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person."

Mignon McLaughlin