Gloria, we lied/

We can't go on/
This is the time and this is the place to be/

Alive/

Nathan gave himself a quick once-over in the mirror, watching his reflection as if he suspected it might suddenly jump out at him—in his crazy sci-fi life, it wasn't an impossibility. "I don't know," he said critically. "What do you think about this tie?"

"I think," Peter said seriously, "that the color of your tie will be directly responsible for whether or not you win this election. In fact, I'm not sure you should wear red, because Americans in general tend to associate red with communism. On the other hand, yellow was used in the Middle Ages to symbolize the devil, and green is unlucky in Britain, but then again your voters aren't British unless something has gone seriously wrong with the voting system, so—"

"No, really, don't continue," Nathan said with a hard smile. "I'm not sure why I'm asking for fashion advice from Mr. Sweatshirt anyway."

"You've got something against my sweatshirts?" Peter asked, miffed. "There is nothing wrong with sweatshirts—in fact, I think if politicians loosened up and wore hoodies to press conferences, it would be considered a major step forward by the American public."

"I thought I told you to shut up," Nathan said with amicable brotherly hostility, adjusting his tie.

"I really think we should get this sweatshirt issue out between us," Peter said with mock gravity. "I would hate to think that you're harboring some sort of angry resentment against my clothing choices, festering inside you every day—"

"Did you somehow get more obnoxious than before, or am I just repressing the memories?" Nathan wondered philosophically, tugging on his lapel to straighten it despite the fact that it already appeared to have been straightened by a laser leveler.

Peter walked up behind him and put his hands on Nathan's shoulders, massaging the coiled tension away. "Relax, Nathan," he said. "You've got this election in the bag. You saved the President, remember? That just about takes the cake, as far as publicity goes."

"I didn't save the President," Nathan said tiredly. "You saved the President, Pete."

"Shh," Peter said gently. "You never know where the press might be hiding. I, personally, have caught them in several of the larger wardrobes, so keep your voice down, huh?"

"How am I supposed to explain Heidi?" Nathan said with sudden anxiety. "I mean, the lack of Heidi, how am I supposed to explain my wife not being there on election day? I have press conferences to attend, soirees, boring dinners, and she is supposed to be on my arm, looking gorgeous and smiling like a toothpaste commercial! It's bad enough that I have a fugitive terrorist brother, I cannot deal with a mysteriously MIA wife!"

"One thing at a time," Peter said, graciously ignoring the 'fugitive terrorist brother' comment "You need to not think about Heidi right now, okay? By the time they notice she's not hovering over your shoulder like a perfect Mrs. Cardboard Congresswife, it will be too late for them not to vote for you."

"Thanks for the glowing endorsement," Nathan said irritably. "Could you do me a favor and go somewhere else for a little bit? I'm just—pretty tense right now."

"Okay," Peter said with a small smile. "No problem."

"You might want to take a look at Jonathan," Nathan said helpfully. "Bennet just brought him in, and when I saw him, he closely resembled a dead person."

"Why the concern?" Peter asked. "I thought he was Public Enemy Number One around here."

"He is," Nathan said with a sharky smile, looking more like himself than he had all day. "I'm just worried he'll get bloodstains on the carpet. You know how Mom hates that."

---

Jonathan couldn't get her face out of his head. His mind was obviously getting desperate in its attempts to distract him from the pain in his leg—it had now resorted to dredging up another kind of pain altogether, forcing him to remember the way Claire had looked at him. She'd been standing on the stairs, stopped halfway down with an expression that managed to be freezing and scorching at the same time, a feat which Jonathan felt to be an unfair breach of physical law. She looked like at him like he was the Devil himself walking in the door, and he felt that he'd rather stab himself to death with a butter knife than see her look like that again.

The really sick part was, he couldn't help wanting to see her again, wanting to talk to her and see her smile, like a lung cancer patient who still craved his cigarettes, clinging to the thing that was killing him. So when the door opened, his heart immediately went into jackhammer-overdrive—until he saw that it was Peter, looking very professional with his hands full of bandages and braces.

"Hi, Jonathan," he said, dropping to his knees and spreading the supplies out on the floor.

Jonathan gave him a suspicious, semi-hostile glare. "'Hi'? What do you mean, hi?"

"It's a greeting. It means hello, nice to see you, how are the twins, I got your Christmas card, I hope the shop is doing well—people started shortening it a couple centuries ago because that got to be a bit much."

"No," Jonathan said. "What I mean is, shouldn't you be shooting me in the face or something? I don't think I'm on 'hi' basis with anyone in this house."

"Uh-huh," Peter said dismissively, staring down at Jonathan's bloody knee. "Wow, you messed this up pretty bad, didn't you?"

"I didn't," Jonathan said exasperatedly. "What, do you think I decided to shoot myself in the knee just for the fun of it?"

"With what you young people get up to these days, I never know," Peter said breezily. "You might want to sing the ABCs or bite a sock or something, because this is going to hurt."

"Finally, a doctor who doesn't lie to me," Jonathan said nervously. "Though I can't say I'm crazy about the—ahhhh!" He grabbed the bedpost and bit back a scream, fingernails gouging into the wood.

Peter held up a blood-slicked bullet like a trophy, fingers red to the second knuckle. "Got it," he said with satisfaction. "And I'm not a doctor."

"What?" Jonathan said, white with pain and slightly hysterical. "Then why am I letting you stick your hand in my knee?"

"Two reasons. One, because you don't have a choice, Inmate Number 6783, and two, because I'm a nurse. Not as good as a doctor, I'm sure, but you're going to have to deal."

"Fair enough," Jonathan said, heartbeat slowly returning to normal, then skyrocketing again when Peter pulled out a needle and thread. "Wait, what is that for? This is not Home Ec, we will not be sewing any pillowcases here!"

"Ever heard of stitches?" Peter said sardonically, deftly threading the needle. "If we don't get your knee sewn up, it will get infected, and I know of at least one person who would be happy to chop your leg off for me when it goes septic."

"Great," Jonathan said, closing his eyes. "Fine. Sew me up."

"Don't worry," Peter said with a smile. "I took Home Ec at least twice."

As Peter bent over his leg, Jonathan felt his brain kick into defense-distraction mode again, couldn't help the words coming out of his mouth: "How's Claire?"

He saw Peter go completely still, needle hovering inches over his knee. After a few moments, he straightened again and put the needle down, looking Jonathan straight in the eyes. "Look," he said. "Jonathan. Let's be honest here—you don't have a lot of allies in this house. In fact, I think it would be fair to say that most people in this house would happily kill you with a cheese grater. Now, I'm willing to protect you from them and their cheese graters—"

"Why?" Jonathan asked, surprised.

"Because I'm too damn nice for my own good," Peter explained patiently. "So I'll protect you, but there's a condition—if you so much as touch Claire Bennet, you are on your own. You stay away from her, understand?"

"I wish I could," Jonathan said bitterly.

"You're going to have to," Peter said, voice gritty with protective menace. "I don't want to hear any dramatic teenage angst about how you're so in love with her, because I don't care. If you love her, you'll stay away from her—all you two are ever going to do is tear each other apart."

"I know that," Jonathan said. "You don't think I know that? You can't control who you're attracted to, Peter."

"But you can control what you do about it," Peter countered.

Jonathan stared moodily at the wall behind him, burning a hole in the paint with acidic adolescent emotion. "Every time I look at her," he said, "I want to die."

"Better you than her," Peter said mercilessly, picking up the needle, conversation closed. "You ready for this?"

"Go for it," Jonathan said. "It can't possibly hurt worse than teenage angst."

---

Mr. Bennet closed the door behind him and walked down the hall, into the room where everyone was gathered around the TV, watching election results as if they were the Superbowl. He sat down on the couch between Claude and Claire, giving his daughter a quick hug and checking her expression to see how she was holding up under the strain of Jonathan's presence. She seemed calm, but tight somehow, like a watch wound too hard with the mechanisms straining not to break. The calm she'd learned from him—the tightness could be dangerous.

"Still nothing," he said quietly to Claude. "I've seen no manifestation of a separate personality, he's all Sylar."

"You think Jonathan lied?" Claude asked, keeping his eyes on the television.

Mr. Bennet saw Claire tense slightly at Jonathan's name. "I certainly wouldn't put it past him," he allowed. "I just can't see any motivation he might have for wanting him alive."

"Who says he has to have motivation?" Claude asked. "Years of Company programming on an impressionable teenage mind, I would be surprised if he wasn't stark bloody raving."

"Um," Claire said, "I hate to interrupt, but I have an idea."

Mr. Bennet stared at her a moment, still unused to a daughter with 'ideas' beyond pom-poms and nail polish. "Go ahead, honey, we're listening," he said finally.

"Well," she said, heartened by his acceptance. "You guys have got that control collar on Sylar, right?"

"Right," Mr. Bennet said slowly.

"And it blocks all his abilities," she continued.

"Yeah," Claude said blankly.

"All of them," Claire repeated. "Even extra personalities?"

They blinked at her a few times, processing, processing. "Bennet, your daughter is brilliant," Claude said finally. "I swear, the instant you chopped off all that blond hair you went from cheerleader to Nancy Drew."

Claire grinned, and they fell into silence, watching numbers run up and down the TV screen and realizing all the implications of their new discovery. "So," Mr. Bennet said. "Who wants to take the collar off?"