My heart has lost its wind now/
Broken like a dead sail/
My love has drifted out to sea/

"Have you ever done yoga, Peter?" Katie asked, looking up at him from where she sat cross-legged on the floor.

"You may not have noticed," he told her patiently, "but I'm a boy."

"Oh, don't be sexist," she scolded, grabbing his arm and pulling him down beside her. "Boys do yoga, too."

"Boys who are straight?" Peter asked doubtfully.

"I'm sure I wouldn't know," she said breezily. "You don't have to freak out, we're not going to be doing any weird poses or anything. It's just the relaxation part of it that I want you to focus on, the posture and meditation and things—it'll help you get control of your emotions. I don't suppose you're Buddhist?"

"Sadly, no," he said, looking at her as if he thought she might be crazy, but found it rather appealing. "Sorry to disappoint."

"No such luck, I guess," she said. "Well, we'll just have to start from the beginning—sit down."

"I am sitting down," he argued.

"No—like this," she said, sitting on her heels, back as straight as if she'd replaced her spine with a steel pole.

"That makes my feet hurt," Peter complained quietly, drawing a tolerant sigh from his teacher.

"Now, breathe," she instructed.

"I am—"

"Breathe like this," she interrupted neatly. "Deep breaths from your stomach, cleansing breaths. You're not breathing deep enough." She put her hand on his stomach and pushed, collapsing the air out of his lungs. "I need you to breathe deeply enough to make my hand move."

"Would you be really angry with me if I told you that tickled?" Peter said in a small voice.

She lost her composure, jabbing him hard with her hand. He laughed and grabbed her wrist, and suddenly the situation was flipped on its head, altogether different. The air sucked out of the room in a scandalized gasp, leaving them in an awkward limbo, frozen and not sure what to do with each other. After a second, Peter dropped her hand, and she pulled away like she'd touched something slimy and disgusting, both stunned at the possibilities being forced on them.

Peter rubbed a hand over his forehead, intensely confused. "Damn it," he said quietly. "This is not working."

She pushed a lock of hair self-consciously behind her ear, suddenly finding it vitally important not to look at him. "It isn't, is it?" she agreed. "I think we need to have a DTR."

"Sorry? A what, now?"

"Oh," she said sadly. "I have been out of it for a very long time, haven't I?"

"Eight years is a long time," he reminded unhelpfully.

"DTR," she defined, "means 'determining the relationship'. We need to determine our relationship."

"All right," Peter said gamely. "The relationship—here's what it is, as I see it. You are a very attractive woman who happens to have been thrown into my life. I'm twenty-six, single, and relatively disease-free; I'm attracted to you. It happens."

"Okay, then," she said, not sure whether to be insulted or flattered, "all cards on the table, I'm attracted to you, too—to an alarming extent, actually, it's really been freaking me out."

"Well, there we go," Peter said helplessly, looking down at his hands. "Now what?"

"Look," she said. "Intense mutual attraction aside, I have to tell you that I'm really not ready for a relationship right now. It's nothing personal—believe me, if I wanted to date anyone, it would be you—I just…can't. I'm just barely getting used to the world again, and I'm running for my life, and there simply isn't enough of me available for anything but keeping myself alive."

"You know what, that works for me," Peter said. "This isn't exactly something I like to talk about, but I ended a relationship pretty, um…violently, just a couple of weeks ago. I'm not exactly ready to go jumping back into anything just yet."

"So that's it, then," Katie said awkwardly. "We just—won't do anything. We'll just ignore it."

"Right," he agreed firmly. "Ignore it."

"Right."

"Exactly."

"Okay, then," Katie said, brushing her discomfort aside with unusual brusqueness. "Let's see if we can get you breathing right."

---

Nathan felt a little uneasy about leaving Katie and Peter alone, in a bedroom no less—Peter didn't have a very good track record at keeping his hands to himself, once he liked a girl. He was far too charming for his own good, and he went after what he wanted, whether or not it happened to be available. There was nothing for it, though—he certainly wasn't going to sit around playing chaperone, watching those two blush and flirt like fifth graders with a crush. He thought his brother had enough sense not to get involved in anything that might hurt him, but then, Peter had done some pretty stupid things in the past for love. All he could do was cross his fingers and hope Peter could keep his head enough to see that now was not the time, not even close.

He picked up the hotel phone and dialed the number Mr. Bennet had given him, twisting the cord around his hand as he waited for connection.

"Hello?" Mr. Bennet said, rock-steady tenor blocking out the buzz of the phone's static.

"Bennet," Nathan said, half confirmation, half accusation. "We're here at the Marriot, all snug in our rooms with mints on our pillows. Any gratuitous violence going on over there?"

"There's about to be," Mr. Bennet said, and for the first time Nathan noticed the subtle strain in his voice, internal pressure causing it to bend and splinter very slightly. "This kid is working on my last nerve, and after that's gone I can't be responsible for my actions."

"Don't complain," Nathan consoled him sardonically. "I'm stuck here with the Amazing Almost-lovers, and they are no cakewalk." He was having that irritating connection with Mr. Bennet again, the feeling of being the only two adults on a high school field trip. He didn't like to relate so closely with this man—there was only room for one straight-faced, suit-wearing, morally-grey Nathan Petrelli in the world, and Mr. Bennet was coming dangerously close. "Well, as much as I love talking to you on the phone, if everything is all right, I'm just going to go," he said unapologetically.

"Call me if there are problems, if they're serious enough to call and not serious enough that you're still alive."

"Will do." Nathan dropped the phone back on its receiver like it had bitten him, alarmed as always by the déjà vu, turned around, and nearly had a heart attack.

Standing less than a foot away, absolutely nose-to-nose with him, was Jessica Sanders. He yelled in surprise and backpedaled, keeping just enough presence of mind to throw a chair between them but not enough to realize that a chair probably wasn't going to be much of an obstacle for this cold blond killer.

"No," she said quickly, desperately, holding her hands up (this was not comforting to Nathan, as one of the hands held a gun). "Nathan, it's me, it's Niki. I'm not going to hurt you."

Now that he looked, he could see the subtle differences in her face, the softer jawline and the guilty eyes. He still didn't know what exactly was wrong with this woman, but he'd placed his bets on manic schizophrenia, and he was pretty sure he was seeing the 'nice' side of his sometime lover. But not sure enough to trust her. "Stop," he said harshly as she stepped toward him. "Don't come any closer."

"Nathan, I have to hurry," she plead. "I don't know when she's going to come back."

"You said that last time, and it doesn't make any sense," Nathan said furiously. "Would you please tell me what's going on?"

Suddenly Niki's face changed, lines crystallizing into biting, indestructible ice, and the gun came up. "Sorry," Jessica said, "she doesn't like to talk about it, and that's not why we're here."

"Then why are you here?" Nathan asked tensely, feeling like a prisoner of war, blindfolded in front of a one-woman firing squad.

She gave him a blazing grin that showed all her teeth and threw her gun to the ground, sending it skittering across the tile to his feet. "I've switched sides," she told him. "I want to be on your team now."