A/N: So if anyone was ever doubting that the Sylaire action was EVER going to start in this fic I'm pleased to say that the ball's really rollin' now. Enjoy =D It's pure fluff and plot resolution from here on out!

I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me. Rated "M" for language, some violence, some blood & guts, and eventually some sexual imagery. And please review! If I've massively screwed something up, I'd like to know =D

12) Escape to Paradise

Olivia was thankful for the heat radiating from the stripping on the small ceiling above her head. She sat at the hoverbus stop, waiting for her morning commute while the structure shielded her body from the cold March-like deluge, common to the local climate year round. She found it interesting how human kind had progressed to the point where they were zipping around the galaxy in spaceships whose engines literally folded space… but on a day like this she was still using an umbrella. Warming her left hand around her coffee travel mug, her fingers still tucked tightly in the cuff of her sweater, she used her free hand to pull news feeds onto her fet. She was catching up on the action in the Leo sector, which had made a few headlines, when the display was interrupted by her messaging client.

"89425" was all it said. It was a private numeric code, shared only between she and Peter. It was a signal that he needed help. Alone under the little shanty because she was an early riser, she gave him an immediate call back while she had the privacy.

"What happened to 'laying low for a while?'" she asked when Peter answered his fet.

"I've had a little setback." Of course he had. "I need to know if you can get some information for us -"

"Us?"

"- I won't be able to lock down a solid hit on a map while she's still in transit. I need to know where she's being transported – what name did you say she was going by?" The last part was muffled as he put his hand over the speaker and addressed someone, presumably next to him.

"Peter -"

"Callie – she's using the alias Callie."

"I can only assume you're referring to Claire."

"Yes, but obviously you won't find her under that name, so -"

"Wasn't it supposed to be all kinds of easy to find her…?"

"Well, she got caught and we don't exactly have a lot of time here, so if you could -"

"Peter, I'm not at work yet and who is this WE you keep talking about? Don't tell me you got him and not her! Because that would be hysterical."

"…well… uhh…"

"He's there with you, isn't he."

"Yes. Yes he is."

"Put him on the phone."

"…huh?"

"I said put that asshole on the phone."

Wise enough to obey a hostile woman, he muttered a 'she wants to talk to you' before relinquishing the fet to his companion.

"… yes?" she heard a new baritone purr at her across the line.

"You're Sylar."

"… yes ma'am…?"

She then performed the one move that had branded her famously as the Digi-Strangler for so long in her youth. She phased her hand directly into the transmitter of the device, stretching her particles like a silver thread faster than the speed of light for billions of miles, where they coalesced on the other side of call. Her hand reached out of Peter's fet to crush its fingers deep into Gabriel's throat.

"I should've warned you -"

"YOU," she roared, "are a MAJOR pain in the fucking ass, do you know that?!? I hope you fucking rot, do you hear me?!? And that is all I have to say to you, you dickhead! Now, shut up and put Peter back on the phone." He kept perfectly quiet as he watched her spectral hand shrink back into the fet and disappear. Peter tried not to look too victorious as he received his device. He failed.

"Look," Olivia continued, "I'm still waiting on the hoverbus, but once I get to the office I'll look into this Callie chick. It'd help if you had a last name…"

"We don't."

"Because there's probably a million rebels named 'Callie' out there…"

"Who just got picked up here in Leo no more than three hours ago, give or take?"

"…That does kinda narrow it down. I'll see what I can find." Her transport pulled up, sloshing a miniature tidal wave of dirty brown water in the wake of the air coursing underneath it. She disconnected her call, tucked her fet into her shouldered bag, shifted her warm mug to her now colder right hand, and stepped aboard.

~*~*~

Claire's eyelashes ripped apart like a sticky zipper when she tried to open her eyes. They had secreted a substance that had dried and crusted over, and she had a horrid taste in her mouth. She lay very still while she waited for her vision to clear, acutely aware she couldn't move her limbs. And the cold, heavy weight of the inhibitor collar still rested around her throat, angled from the way she was laying to dig uncomfortably into her collarbones. Just as she was beginning to think that maybe she'd lost her sight, she came to the realization that the room was really just that dark, with the exception of a few blinking lights emanating from various pieces of machinery. Sound began to drift to her ears like it had been carried a long way on a distant breeze – she could hear whispers and whimpers. She wasn't alone. They were all prisoners, but their captors had secured them and left. Perhaps it was nighttime, wherever she was.

Deciding that if the enemy were with them the lights would be on, she took a gamble.

"Hello…?" she meant to call out, but her voice struggled to make sound, breaking free from her as a choked rasp. "Is someone there?"

"Callie? Callie!" It was Belinda. "Is that you?!?"

"Yeah, Lindy, it's me, but my name's not really -"

"Oh my god, I'm in a cage! And my clothes are gone – what are they gonna do to us?!?"

"Shhh, be quiet, dey migh' hear you…" hissed another voice, a woman with a strange accent. "Who knows where dey be, could be right outsi'e…"

Belinda had made an excellent point. Sensation began to pour through her body like a sleeping limb that had begun to awaken, and she felt cool breeze waft over far too great an expanse of skin. She was strapped to a table in the blessed dark, completely stark naked. Oh, the humanity. She flexed her muscles as she struggled against her bonds and discovered something else – she had a sickening number of foreign objects protruding from her body, stinging at the points where they punctured her flesh. She couldn't see what they were, but they felt like needles and she suspected they were connected to tubes, bags, vials, and machines. She was in a terrifying trap, but she wasn't going to panic. She repeated her mantra inside her head – 'what would daddy do?'

The first thing she did was relax her entire body, accepting her situation, recognizing she wasn't in any real pain. She regulated her breathing and let her heart rate drop, mimicking the pattern of continued slumber. Her first objective was to get free of her bonds, followed immediately by removing her collar. She explored what little of her surroundings she could, with agonizingly slow movements. She was definitely on a bed in what she was certain was a laboratory. Twirling her wrists, her fingers were able to feel tubes on either side, hanging off the side of the mattress, delivering fluids to and from her body. She had an idea – an extremely ugly one that would require quick reflexes. It was also potentially going to be very painful. Fortunately, to her, pain was a luxury.

She wrapped and tangled her wrists with the tubes as tightly as she could manage, letting them bind her while her pulse thudded hard enough to make her slightly queasy. She kept breathing, focusing on anything else, until her hands became so numb they gave out, hanging limply from her bonds. Knowing her next move was going to significantly change her breath and heart rate, alerting her monitors, she resolved to move as rapidly as she could. She sucked in one deep last breath that she held as she squeezed her eyes shut, surrendering to the trauma she was about to put herself through.

As fast and as hard as she could, she yanked her numb, club-like hands back against the metal cuffs that restrained her, pulling continuously as she heard the bones pop and snap and her broken hands finally slid free.

"Callie…?" Belinda called when she heard her grunt. Claire ignored her and kept moving.

Her useless, destroyed fingers fell heavily into her lap when she sat up. She had to get the collar off in order to get them to heal. Blood began to flood the starving vessels in the limbs once again, and probably leaked from them in several places, and pangs began to shoot up her arms as her nerve endings returned to life. She twisted at the waist, with her ankles still bound, and dropped her hands onto a tray next to the bed, laden with all manner of tools and implements. What she lacked in dexterity she was beginning to make up for in feeling – she could make out some of the shapes and textures. One was a scalpel, another few were syringes. She kept prodding until she found an item that felt distinctly like the tool used on the collar. Finding fine motor control nearly impossible, she ended up stretching to the point her spine cracked, pinching a nerve in her neck, until she could pick up the long, slender piece of metal in her teeth, which she then gripped in a clumsy, swollen fist. The pain was becoming overbearing, putting girlish tears in her eyes. Embarrassed, she sniffled while she fumbled at the collar, looking for that one sweet spot into which the utensil would sink. She sobbed victoriously when she found it, leaning forward with exhaustion, letting the whole apparatus fall onto her thighs.

She waited for her ability to return, waited for the familiar twitching ache that her bones made when they mended themselves, waited for the tingling of her knitting flesh… but nothing happened. She sat rigidly still with horror, realizing that her destroyed and excruciatingly throbbing hands could do nothing to free her still-trapped feet, knowing that her enemy was aware of her consciousness. They would find her, hands free and collar off, ashamedly naked and in the middle of a failed attempt at escape. They would do more than experiment on her – they would torture her. And she would feel it. Something was wrong with her – something was wrong with her ability. They did something to her, and she didn't know what to do.

~*~*~

"We can't stay here," Gabriel muttered as he paced the floor of the hotel room.

"I know," Peter replied, letting his fet's holo-display throw up a GPS map of the city. Starting near the location of the camp, he began a search that he knew was going to be futile.

"Seriously, we gotta go." Gabriel tugged at the curtains on the window, fidgeting nervously and driving a huge wedge into Peter's concentration. "If Beth took Claire, she knew we were connected somehow… it's not a far stretch for them to figure out we'd come here looking for her."

"Gimme just a minute," Peter growled, still finding no trace of his niece anywhere. He hung his head with an exasperated sigh when his fet left the mattress to fly through the air, smacking into Gabriel's outstretched hand.

"Dude. We. Have. To go."

"Alright! Alright. Fuck."

Peter crossed the room and snatched his fet back before stalking out the door, glowering, with an anxious Gabriel at his heels.

"Where should we go?" his unlikely partner asked once they were inside the stairwell.

"Hell if I know. I'm having trouble thinking of anyplace secluded yet within walking distance where we won't look suspicious, except for the hotel room we were just in."

"We need to ditch these suits," Gabriel responded, ignoring the jab, "they're what's drawing attention to us – without them we're like anyone else."

"Are you kidding…? The whole reason I've gotten this far is because of this suit! I've worn it for centuries, I'm not dropping it now!"

They marched across the hotel lobby in silence, but Peter could plainly see Gabriel's jaw clenching. Once they got outside Gabriel drew him up close by his elbow and hissed in his ear.

"You wanna be a danger to yourself? Fine. Fuck you, I don't care. But I'm actually interested in getting Claire back and I won't let you screw up my chances, got it? Now, with or without you, I'm going to find some civilian clothing, and I'm going to shapeshift like I suggested earlier." He turned on his heels and stomped away across the street. Not willing to let the quarry he'd chased for so long disappear into a milling crowd now that he finally had him, Peter jogged to catch up.

"Alright, fine, we'll do it your way, but I'm not ditching the suit and I suggest you do the same. We can dress over them, but I'm telling you we're gonna need 'em later."

"Fine. We need to find a residential district. I can break us into someone's house while they're at work and -"

"I have a better idea, there's a market a few blocks south."

"Isn't that kinda public for theft…?"

"Says the dude who slit my brother's throat in broad daylight, in the middle of Washington D.C.," Peter sneered. "The bombs the rebels use – they're made with some kind of weird cloth, right? A cloth made of an unstable fiber? Well, let's go confiscate some 'suspicious looking items.'"

It was a stroke of pure genius.

The same as earlier, the crowd peeled away like a banana when they entered the loud and boisterously colorful place of commerce. Conservative housewives, shopping for home items, eyed them with harsh yet disdainful approval, while more liberal highwaymen, there to place deals in shadowy corners, watched them mistrustfully, swerving out of their way but keeping their hands close to their concealed, and most likely illegal, weapons. As eager as he was to change his appearance, Sylar had to admit that he enjoyed the aura the suit granted him. He clamped down on the ridiculous urge to yell 'BOO!' and laugh. He still took a private thrill when people backed away from him in fright.

"There," Peter whispered beside him, beckoning toward a small tent constructed outside the covered market area. Sure enough, the place was stuffed with bolts of cloth and decorated with racks of artistically crafted clothing. "Bingo."

They nimbly picked their way through the narrow aisles until they reached their destination. Peter stepped ahead, having had more experience with the stiff, business-like illusion of belonging to the Black Guard. He ripped a shirt off of its hanger and flipped a strap on his utility belt, freeing a small hand-held scanner. He made a grand show of inspecting the article very closely.

"Fuckin' boogeymen, why don't you go bother someone else," snarled a hugely fat man, splayed lazily in a corner, puckering his blubbery lips to the nozzle on a hose leading to a beautiful pipe. An odor like sickeningly sweet incense invaded Gabriel's senses as he backed away in surprise. He calmed, reminding himself it wasn't the first time he'd been termed as such. Hoping to display some sort of false authority over the situation, he reached for the gun on his utility belt… only to realize it wasn't there. He'd gotten himself dressed in a suit, but in their haste to flee the scene he hadn't grabbed a belt. Shit…

"It would appear your friend seems ill-prepared, perhaps he is defective," the man crooned at Peter, strange mauve-colored smoke swirling away under his jowls. "Or perhaps… you aren't Guardsmen at all. I don't know who you are, but you need to get lost."

Gabriel nearly grew ill as the world twisted and spun before him, and his feet curled toward his head. Also affected by the vertigo, Peter dropped the shirt and his scanner and crashed to his knees. Knowing that the protective suits they wore partially mitigated the effects of mod abilities, he hated to think what the raw deal would feel like. Tumbling backwards, out of control while his surroundings whirled like a kaleidoscopic pinwheel, Gabriel reached back and caught hold of a bolt of fabric before his shoulders hit the ground.

He sighed with relief as his one of his own abilities clouded his vision, replacing the nauseating panorama with glimpses of the physical memories stored in the inanimate object. He flashed through every face that had touched the silky cloth until he landed on one with short brown hair and bright green eyes – eyes he'd know better than if they were his own.

"Claire…" he whispered without realizing the breath had left him.

"Stop!" a woman's voice called from across what felt like a huge, foggy chasm, and he clamped his eyes shut when the spinning returned. Bile rose threateningly in his throat. Somewhere, he thought he could hear Peter sputtering wetly.

The world abruptly stood still when a small, frail hand clamped with unanticipated strength on his shoulder. He parted his eyelids to find an old woman on the other side, staring at him expectantly. "What did you say???"

"These guys are trouble, I wouldn't -"

"Oh hush," she chided her partner. "Tell me what you said. Did you say 'Claire'?"

Gabriel sat up and straightened before he nodded affirmatively at the woman.

"How do you know her name – her real name???"

"How do you know her real name?" the fat man berated her.

"Now that's a stupid question, don't you think?" She glanced around wildly before she grabbed at Gabriel. "Come with me, quickly. Both of you."

He pitched forward as she tugged him to his feet, stumbling to follow her. She lead them to a small, rusted trailer parked behind the tent. Peter hesitated momentarily, grabbing his scanner and seeing where they were headed, but the woman would have none of it.

"Quickly, inside," she directed, holding open the door, ushering rapidly with her hands.

"Okay, I'll bite," Gabriel deadpanned once Peter stepped past the entrance and the door shut behind them. "How do you know Claire?"

"You're not Guardsmen, I can tell by your voices. You can take off those ridiculous masks," she said, ignoring the question momentarily as she rummaged through a cabinet above a dirty sink. Finding what she was looking for, she turned to face them and gestured that they should have a seat at the table in the middle of the small space. She held in her hands a small crystalline sphere which she thrust out between the three of them. She closed her eyes and hummed a few bars of a song Gabriel had never heard, and he sucked in a short breath when the crystal began to glow. When the woman finished her quiet recital and reopened her eyes, they glowed the same way, bathing them in a strange, unnatural light.

"You both know Claire, have known her for a very long time. She means something to both of you, yet not quite the same thing." The woman was a psychic. Excellent. "You both love her very much." An indiscreet psychic... "You are correct, she was here earlier, and I can tell you where she is now."

"Where?!?" Peter pounced forward. "Is she safe???"

"She is in grave danger, Brother and Boyfriend."

"What? No -"

"I'm not -"

"She is in a Federal laboratory, in the Taurus sector."

As if on cue, Peter's fet sang noisily, breaking the woman's trance, causing her to drop her sphere to where it rolled off the table and across the floor.

"Olivia," he answered while Gabriel and the psychic chased the meandering crystal.

"I found her," she told him, "they moved her quietly because apparently they were also investigating a double agent and didn't want tip him off." Overhearing her, Gabriel stood and sighed loudly. "It looks like they've taken her and her partner to -"

"The Taurus sector, we know."

"Yes."

"Fuck. The feds are staying put for probably another couple months, I know they're gonna keep the Guard here for at least a few more weeks, I have no idea how we're gonna get off this planet…"

"Correction: they're gonna keep the live ones there. The dead ones, however, like, I dunno, the huge clump of 'em who all mysteriously got sawed in half in the Feds' own office, are leaving in thirty minutes on a transport back to Pisces for recycling. If you can make it onto that ship, I can reprogram its landing coordinates remotely so that it happens to show up… someplace else."

"Olivia, you are brilliant!"

"Of course I am. So, how'd you find out she was there…?"

"We asked a psychic. Gotta go. Thank you!"

Snapping shut the fet, he whipped around to face Gabriel.

"You any good at playing dead?"

~*~*~

Just because the bodies hadn't quite begun to rot didn't mean the air on the transport wasn't stale and unpleasant. Since the cargo hold wasn't catering to the needs of the living, certain comforts like circulation had been neglected in favor of diverting power to the engines for greater efficiency. Peter had used Matt Parkman's old ability to make themselves invisible to bystanders, granting them easy access to their only means of transportation.

"Doesn't exactly look like we're dressed for the occasion…" Gabriel muttered, noticing the macabre payload had been stacked neatly and individually wrapped in black body bags like sinister chocolate bars.

"Here," Peter called, having stubbed his toe on an open crate of extras. "Catch."

He tossed one across the stagnant bay to where it landed in Gabriel's open palm, who, after glancing around, came to a grisly conclusion.

"…so I'm just supposed to make a nest here… snuggle up against some stiff and lay here for god knows how long -"

"Don't tell me you – you – are suddenly squeamish about dead bodies…"

Whatever. He was the Lord of the fucking Afterlife, for Christ's sake, and he wasn't about to be bested by Claire's prancing pony dickhead uncle. Biting back a scathing response, he laid the bag out with a harsh wave, dove into it, made a huge show of wiggling around, making a space for his butt between all the knees and elbows underneath him, then zipped himself shut. Somewhere over the sound of his breath ricocheting off of the surrounding nylon, he heard Peter's zipper mimic his own. Irritable and desperate for fresh air, he thought it a better idea to step away from reality for the duration of their long flight and retreat to the sanctuary of his own mind.

"I mean," Peter interrupted, obviously not going to allow him any peace. The flight just got longer. "You're the one who made this mess, right? Isn't that a little like making a great big sandwich then turning your nose up at it?"

So he wanted to start something, did he? Gabriel wasn't going to rise to the bait.

"I just figured," he continued, "that since you were content to live in my brother's body for five whole years that maybe you'd enjoy another chance to wallow in your own filth."

Gabriel expected to feel Sylar clawing at his shoulders, begging for the chance to force some quiet into that mouth the hard way… but nothing happened. Maybe his heart was exhausted – he'd had a hard day. He'd had a hard life. Or maybe he was more interested in trying to accept that he was becoming a different man… despite the evidence that was currently poking him torturously in his right kidney.

"These guys aren't real, you know," he mumbled although he was sure Peter could still hear him. "They're just dolls that get recycled…"

"Nathan wasn't a doll."

Gabriel tossed uncomfortably, turning away from him onto his side, cradling his head under his hands. He was prepared to take the man's abuse – he obviously needed to give it, and maybe there was a little of it Gabriel still needed to receive. After all, he shouldn't have expected that hundreds of years would lessen the man's grief the same way it had in Claire. She was a pillar of strength even he couldn't aspire to.

"It's crazy, you know," Peter laughed, "how this reminds me of these camping trips we used to take, upstate, on some land we owned, by a river…" He was quiet a moment, like he expected him to be able to relate. But he'd never had a brother. Never really had a mother or father, either. Never gone camping. Was it better to have had and lost, or never to have had at all? "This one time, it was just me and him, I think we were squirrel hunting or something. Anyway, we got in this huge fight, not sure what about. All I remember is he popped me one, real good, right in the face. I probably had it coming, but it stung like hell. We didn't talk for hours and there we were – just the two of us, miles from home – pissed. It wasn't until we were in our sleeping bags, all zipped up like this next to the fire, looking up at the stars we used to name together, and we were waiting to see who was gonna talk first. The stars were waiting for us…" He paused for a moment, contemplating the cruel metaphor. "He ended up singing his apology into the dark… and I know I'd still be missing him, even if you hadn't taken him from me, but it's just easier having someone to hate."

An odd silence passed between them, filled with expectancy and misgiving.

"I'm sorry," Gabriel breathed, the warmth of his admission coating his cheeks.

"You think sorry's gonna cover all that?"

"No, but it still needed to be said."

Letting the conversation fall, he settled in for a long, boring, awkward, and tensely quiet flight. Thirty minutes later, just as he and little Sylar were standing in a field of red blossoms, having gotten a pair of kites to lift into a headwind that was as turbulent and unsettled as he was, Peter's voice ripped him away one more time.

"Alright, I'm bored. Here we go, ready? I spy, with my little eye, something….. black!"

~*~*~

She felt like an animal caught in a trap. And not the kind children build with boxes, sticks, and string – the kind that had broken her body and was going to require that she chew off a limb to get free. Just as she was contemplating traumatizing her ankles in the same manner she'd employed on her hands, Belinda's voice reached her again.

"Callie… what's happening? What did you do?"

Claire turned in the direction of the sound. She had another idea.

"I got my collar off, Lindy – the tool is still in it but both my hands are broken -"

"Oh my god, are you serious? How did you -"

"Listen to me – we don't have much time. My feet are still bound and I can't get them free, and I think we're gonna have company -"

"Dere's so many, how we gonna figh' dem…" whispered the other woman's accented voice.

"Lindy, I need to you keep talking to me – I'm going to try to throw my collar to you. If you can use the tool to get your own collar off, you can get us out of here."

"Okay, well, I was born on Earth, actually – I'm from Canada, and I have a dog named Patches because she's a Dalmatian, and I've been an orphan as long as I can remember, and -" She stopped when she heard Claire cry out, launching the apparatus to where it crashed and slid across the floor into the door of the cell next to her.

"Did I make it?!?"

"Almost…" Belinda grunted as she reached her arm through the bars of her cage, flailing in the dark for an item she knew had to be there somewhere… if she could just get her fingers… to reach…

"Fuck! 'Almost' is a death sentence!" Claire dramatically flopped herself back onto the mattress. The warrior in her bit down on her lips as she brought her mangled fingers to her eyes. She pushed away the tears in an effort to keep thinking – she wouldn't give up. If she could just grasp a scalpel or two she could go down fighting. She would've lobbed off her right arm if it meant she could've had an ounce of Gabriel's telekinesis. She would've lobbed off both arms if it meant he could be here with her…

"I got it!!!"

"Oh thank god – thank god!!!" Claire allowed herself to sob triumphantly, pressing her wrists against her brow. For a split second, an irrational fear lanced through her, thinking that Belinda might whisk herself away and leave the rest of them there, but then her retinas were assaulted by a fiercely violent purple light by her feet. The silhouette of the girl's form emerged from the portal and immediately set to the task of undoing Claire's remaining bonds. Good girl, good girl! She ran her arms up and down her body while her partner worked, dislodging needles and tubes like spindly spiderwebs. "Help me get the others," she beckoned to Belinda once she was free.

"I don't think so."

Claire no sooner had the bottoms of her feet on the chilly tile before she had to squeeze shut her watering eyes. The room had suddenly been illuminated, blinding her with brilliant, stabbing light. Beside her, Belinda shrieked. Whomever had spoken had flipped on the light switch.

"Stay where you are," the speaker directed.

Claire wiggled her fingers, testing them. The pain had subsided a little, and her flexibility had slightly increased. While her ability was still very sluggish, it was working, despite the chemicals they'd pumped into her. Feeling a bit more invincible, she decided she wasn't going to do what she was told. She peeked open her eyelids to meet the barrel of a handgun, lined up before a pair of sea-foam colored irises. Beth looked like the confident type who could be a pretty good shot if she really tried. Claire suspected that, if the world were different, she'd really like her. Well, if she kept her dirty claws out of Gabe, that is. She wondered if she'd be able to wrestle the gun away from her.

"You can't hurt me," she warned, charging forward, intent on getting her still-healing hands around the girl's pale neck.

"Wanna bet?" Beth replied as she pulled the trigger twice.

"NO!!!!" Belinda screamed.

Fire exploded through Claire's chest and abdomen, and asphyxiating fluids – presumably mostly blood – flooded her throat. Her knees gave out and she gagged, landing hard on her right elbow as it caught on the mattress she'd just left behind, still warm from where she'd been stretched. Belinda flung herself forward in a mindless attempt to attack, but was quickly dispatched when Beth fired a third shot into the girl's belly. She dropped where she was with a grunt.

"Lindy! Why…" Claire sputtered weakly as she struggled to regain her footing. "Your fight's with me, you bitch!!!!"

"I fight what I'm told to. Currently, my fight is with your entire species. It's nothing personal." Beth brought the weapon around and took aim for her fourth shot. Her scream rang discordantly in Claire's ears when a crackling purple disc flashed around her forearms before dissipating. Beth's severed hands, still holding the gun, dropped away from her to land with a heavy thud next to Belinda's collapsed frame.

"Holy shit…" Claire muttered to the girl, hoping she was still alive enough to hear her, "didn't know you could do that…"

Beth wailed until she was hoarse and her voice gave out, mission forgotten, as she backed herself into a wall and slid down its length to the floor. In the distance Claire could hear footsteps thundering through the hallway outside the room. Was… was that screaming?

"Dey be comin'! Do something!!!!"

Claire did the only thing she knew how to do. Gulping down the sickening ball of liquid, she forced her trembling legs to carry her forward. Next to Belinda she bent at the middle, clamping both hands around the scalding hot barrel of the firearm, shaking away the graying and twitching limbs still clinging to the grip. Bleeding and fighting for consciousness, breath leaving her in gurgling rasps, she stumbled a few steps until she reached Beth, who had tucked her stumps into her armpits and was digging ruts into the floor with her heels as she writhed.

"You…" Claire wheezed, "… you hurt someone… I care about." And she wasn't just referring to Belinda. Summoning the last of her strength, she lifted her arms, bringing the butt of the pistol high in the air behind her. With a mighty blow, she let her hands fall, rendering Beth unconscious with a revolting crack to her skull.

As the adrenaline left her, so did her fortitude. Her legs crumpled and she smashed down onto her kneecaps.

"No! NO!!!!" someone cried as two vaguely human-shaped shadows entered the room. The first threw his arm out at her and an unseen force crushed her windpipe, immobilizing her out of panic. The second turned his attention to her as well, twirling his fingers, creating a cloud that surrounded her body… a red cloud, she realized, as sharp pricks began to pierce her everywhere, from the inside out – he was pulling her blood through her skin, desiccating her. She tried to raise her gun but couldn't move. She was horrified to discover she couldn't even manage a final, desperate scream.

The crimson halo plummeted to a thick puddle around her, bathing her, when an object struck the second black suit. A large, black, vaguely man-shaped object… As the rushing left her ears, she could've sworn she heard more howls from somewhere…

A third shadow man entered the room, but this one was different. He glowed with raging blue lightning, left scorching footsteps where he walked, and didn't wear a mask. Fury burned across his familiar features as he electrocuted his prey, leaving him nothing more than a smoking lump, then turned to the Guardsman who was still strangling her. She hacked uncontrollably, sucking air into damaged lungs, as the hold on her was released. Her attacker circled his arm around to defend himself but found he was horribly outmatched. He never had the chance to act – the newcomer lifted only one finger, cleanly removing the suit's head from his shoulders. Amidst a spray of blood, his useless body slumped to the floor. A fourth unmasked shadow man appeared over Gabriel's left shoulder. Reaching out her hand in relief, she freely let her tears fall, letting the renegade dissolve to reveal the woman she really was.

"I knew you'd come… I knew it…"

The other man shouldered past him, catching her as she grew faint and pitched backward. A grey haze began to cloud her vision, causing her to believe she was hallucinating.

"…Are… are you Peter…?"

"Yeah, it's me," he smiled. Maybe she wasn't seeing things. Nope, definitely not. Behind him, Beth's body rose into the air to where it hovered with unnatural stillness, in preparation for something truly gruesome.

"Gabriel," she coughed, digging her fingernails into Peter's shoulder as she clutched herself to him unsteadily. "Don't…"

Peter followed her gaze to where it met Sylar's vengeful, murderous eyes. Energy still rippled from him, climbing the walls and shooting across the ceiling.

"You've worked so hard…" she continued, "… don't let some worthless whore screw that up for you." Realizing she was right, and that he'd do anything she asked of him, he withdrew all of his abilities into his core and let Beth fall away, forgotten. He approached and knelt beside Peter, sliding his large, warm hands over her one of hers, frowning protectively at the wounds she'd given it. She ignored the twinge of discomfort as she gave him a small tug, blinking at him reassuringly.

"Knew… you'd come…" she repeated before she drifted off into blackness.

~*~*~

Peter gaped at the tender exchange between the two with stunning clarity. Son of a bitch.

"It is. It's true."

"She's not heal- what?"

"Sandra Bennett was right all along. You're in lo-"

"Don't," Gabriel growled. "Don't you say it."

"Okay, I won't. I don't really want to. Here – her ability is working, but very slowly. She's still bleeding but her body won't let her die. Just put pressure on this, right here. That's it. I need to work on the other girl."

"What about us?!?"

"Get us out of here!!!"

"Quick – dere's no time!"

Peter ignored the cries of the people in cages across the room, focused on the task at hand, centuries later still a paramedic. He tossed his way through cabinets and drawers until he filled his arms with gauze and various other bandages. He began a thorough but efficient field dressing of the bullet hole in Belinda's stomach.

"Please, dere be more – dey come!"

Stressed and irritated, Gabriel flung his hand behind him, simultaneously prying open the locks on all the cell doors. A small crowd of four hospital-smock-covered people crawled from them, scrambling over each other for a tool that would unlock their inhibitor collars. He didn't withdraw his arm until a lab coat floated from a hook across the room to where it hung itself on his waiting fingers. Lovingly, he covered the woman in his arms, defending her honor and granting her some modesty, wiping the sanguine coating from her face and hair.

A young man appeared at his side, one with strangely orange skin. Gabriel grimaced – this person had probably spent his entire life in a camp, unable to exist as a normal baseline outside their walls. This was likely the first taste of freedom he'd ever had. And Claire was probably the first naked women he'd ever seen. The thought plucked at the strings of his jealous temper. His brows narrowed.

"I can fight, too," the boy warbled uneasily, "we'll have to fight our way out of here."

"No we won't," Peter said as he stood, draping Belinda's arms around his neck to hold her to him. He gestured to her, and stabilized her with one hand. "I have her ability." Extending a finger out in front of him, his eyes swirled over with an odd lavender luminescence. "I think I have to… draw the door… or something."

There was a loud 'pop' in the middle of the room as the spinning violet portal split the air. Following Peter and the others, Gabriel pulled Claire's diminutive weight to his chest, sliding an arm under her knees and letting her head rest on his shoulder, then he left the scene behind. He pressed her more tightly against him as he stepped out into the bracing chill of the shuttle port.

"This way," Peter called as they crossed the distance to the spacecraft on which they'd ridden earlier. It wouldn't be long until reinforcements realized they were loose somewhere in the Taurus office compound. Climbing inside, Peter nearly doubled over at the rancid odor made by the piles of bodies left behind, now very clearly beginning to decay. "We have to get these cleared out of here…" he groaned through his fingers as he clamped a hand over his mouth.

Gabriel kept at his heels as they wandered toward the cockpit, pulling down two cots from the bulkhead, depositing the women and freeing their arms. Taking a second to smooth the lab coat over Claire's legs, making sure nothing was showing that she wouldn't want seen, he turned to find the orange boy carrying four bodies at a time as if they were no more than buckets of water. He was grateful to find this would go very quickly.

"He's awful strong," he muttered.

"Super-human strength," Peter replied.

One of the other prisoners, a dark-skinned man, left the side of his similarly hued wife to kneel in the middle of the deck, placing his hands on either side of him. "Bacteria lef' behind," he stated with accented speech, when the last body was dumped unceremoniously from the back of the hold, "dese will eat dem." White mushrooms popped up in little, wild clumps, covering the whole floor, doing the job nature intended for them. Gabriel stepped nimbly through their patches until he reached the pilot's area, where he pressed the button that closed the bay door.

"If you can get this hunk of metal out of here," Peter told him, collecting Belinda to him once again, "I can get Olivia to program you new coordinates, get you somewhere safe."

"… you're not -"

"I can't come with you. This one needs immediate medical attention, or she'll die. Plus… if I get caught with you… it'll ruin everything I've worked for."

"I can fly 'er," Gabriel said, nodding, knowing what Peter was relinquishing, understanding what it took.

"The only reason I'm letting you go is because of her, you know that right?" Peter sighed, inclining his head toward Claire. "Because I want her safe. Otherwise…"

"I know -"

"No, you don't know, alright? You have to understand this, okay? The only way this is ever going to end is if you let them catch you." He stood his ground as he received a grim, hard stare. "I mean, can you do that? Would you?" He then looked away for a moment, rubbing a hand across his aching forehead, choosing the right words. "Look, if you really love her, you'll do it for her. Let her stop being a rebel, let her be out of trouble. Let her stop running. Let her just live. Whether she wants to or not."

Gabriel closed his eyes as he made no effort to deny his feelings, sighing in surrender, facing the truth that Peter was right. The universe had dealt its cards a long time ago, and they'd spent all this time tucked up his sleeves. It was time to put them on the table.

"Alright," he relented, feeling an indescribable weight on his shoulders. "What do I have to do."

"Get these people to safety, then go back to Leo – they're expecting you there. They'll extradite you to Pisces, where they always send the double agents for questioning. That'll get you close to Central Labs." He darted a finger out to Gabriel's temple, and before he could back away he telepathically burned a series of numbers into his memory. "All but the first five will call my fet. The last five are code – they'll tell me it's you and that you're in position. Message me when you get to Leo."

Gabriel nodded before adding, "242, 12, 39 – Sagittarius."

"Wha-"

"Tell Olivia that's where we need to go."

"But, I don't -"

"Just trust me. That's where we need to go."

"Okay -"

The instant the word left his mouth the transport ship rocked wildly, shockwaves crawling up her hull as the magnetic force underneath her became momentarily unstable. The married couple grasped each other, mouths hanging open in fright, as the orange boy kept the fourth – a tall, older woman – from falling over. Peter and Gabriel whipped around to face the viewport just as snapping, crackling electric red netting coated her surface, and beyond they could see a swarm of black suits running to encircle the ship.

"Oh god," the older woman cried, "how are we going to get out of here…"

"You should go," Gabriel directed, turning to Peter. "I can fly her."

"But what about the nets -"

"I will make her fly. Go!"

Without another word, Peter turned on his heels and disappeared with Belinda through a twisting purple hole.

"Everybody hold on," Gabriel directed as he turned to address the others, whispers of the past echoing between his ears of a time when he'd made a vehicle fly across a giant hole in the road, or landed a shuttlecraft on its nose. He jabbed a hand out beside him, flexing only a small part of his power to pry open the hangar doors to prepare for their exodus. This was going to hurt a lot.

He moved to the middle of the craft, shutting out all ambient sound including the nervous fretting of his passengers and the blasts pitting the surface of the hull. He closed his eyes, filled his lungs, and exhaled slowly, spreading his fingers wide, wrapping his mind around the entirety of the transport vehicle. Once he felt it was firmly and confidently in his grasp… he lifted.

At first the craft wouldn't budge, held securely in place by the devilishly sticky nets. He flicked an index finger and depressed a button on the pilot's console, one that corresponded with the power of the magnets underneath his feet, relying on their power to give him a little boost. Straining against her bonds, the ship rose slowly, a few inches at a time.

"Pull you bitch… pull…" Gabriel groaned. "Come on… PULL…" He ground his teeth together, clenched his fingers into fists, and heaved, sweat dotting his brow.

"We're… we're moving…" the boy whispered from across the galaxy.

"You can do it…"

"I wish dere was somet'ing I could do to help…"

He was tired. The transport was so heavy. There was so far to go. Had to get her to orbit. Once they escaped the gravity of the planet her drives would kick on and take over and the programmed coordinates would do the rest… He tugged against her weight, the muscles in his arms flexing… pain lanced through his head like a white hot knife. He was panting for breath as the ship made it through the hangar doors, jammed open wide despite the Feds' best efforts to override their circuitry and close them.

"Ungh!" He dropped to one knee when the first ground missile struck her, deflected by the telekinetic shield he absolutely would not drop – the one that encompassed her, lifting her to safety. "Fuck you, you assholes – you are not gonna take us alive!!!"

He felt the dark-skinned woman's presence at the back of his neck for a split second before he felt her enter his mind. He was stretched to his limit already, he was defenseless against her entry.

"I can help," she whispered to him, "show me where de guns be." He let a brief image of their controls flash through his mind before he cinched his grip tightly around the ship once again. After that she was gone, and mercifully he was bombarded no more.

"Arrrrrghhh!!!" he wailed, struggling against the oppressive pressure of several miles of atmosphere, doing its best to seal them onto the planet's surface like thick plastic wrap. He pulled his chin to his chest, his eyes secreting tears of exertion, his lungs heaving in harsh heavy rasps. With the last of his strength, he cried out and slowly lifted his arms as the transport rocketed through layers of air and friction to burst into the forgiving stillness of the vacuum of space. Immediately the ship shuddered as the drives roared to life, spooling up energy to create the tesseract that eventually sent them away, disappearing into velvety black star-studded safety.

In the deafening silence, Gabriel swayed alarmingly on his feet, blood pouring from both nostrils. The two other men reached him just as he collapsed face-first toward the deck in exhaustion.

"Arturo," the dark-skinned woman called to her husband as she pointed to Claire, "dat girl dere, I seen it in his mind, she be his mate. Put him dere wit' her."

~*~*~

One thing he'd learned after centuries of life was that regaining consciousness often was a slow process. Before he opened his eyes, he was immediately aware of something heavy and blunt, most likely a knee, resting precariously close to his groin. He jerked reflexively at the middle, trying to give his soft parts a buffer zone, causing her to stir. Her fingers twitched at his ribs, tickling him and drawing his attention to the slender arm draped across his middle, and her breath warmed the erogenous crook of his neck. He twisted his head a little at the contact, gifting a greater expanse of sensitive skin to the mouth that expelled that air, craving it. His left hand moved on its own, involuntarily exploring, starting with the object that threatened to crush his already swelling and hardening male organ. The skin was hot and smooth as it slid against him, straightening to entwine and ankle with his. She rolled against him, the subtle movement drawing his hand up against the curve of her delicate hip bone, across the lightly perspiring small of her back, in the dip of her spine, and his heart started racing, until the thought crossed his mind that this person was quite naked underneath this…

His eyes shot open. They were met with Claire's openly yawning face, pulling her arm away from him to draw it across her sleepy eyes. Reality crashed around him, reminding him exactly what he had been doing and who he had just been doing it with.

"HOLY SHIT!" he yelled, waking up the entire ship as he flung himself backwards, making a huge production out of rolling off the cot to land with a loud thud on his head. "Claire, I'm sorry, I didn't -"

"What's going on?"

"He woke up in bed with me and he's freaking out."

"I didn't do it on purpose -"

"We t'ought you were together."

"You know, I'm getting a little sick of -"

"We get that all the time, it's okay."

"You are not helping -"

"It's okay, everyone, it's a long flight, go back to sleep. Nothing more to see here, the situation is under control. Gabriel, come here."

He gaped at her as if it were some sort of cruel trick. He eyeballed all the unoccupied cots that were still tucked neatly against the bulkhead… although admittedly they weren't near as warm…

"Come here."

He was helpless not to obey her. He stood and brushed himself off, black suit shamelessly clinging to the final remnants of the burgeoning erection he'd previously had, and he timidly rested one thigh on the thin, militia-grade mattress.

"Oh for shit's sake, lie down, you retard. Where I can reach you – you've got blood all over your face." He sighed and acquiesced to her demand.

On his way in, he met her eye. She was clammy and flushed, and he remembered how blazing hot her skin had felt. He caught her hand as a glistening, saliva-coated thumb was thrust with purpose toward his right cheek.

"You're sick," he muttered, brow furrowing in concern.

"It's not that gross, unless you've got wet-wipes in that suit stashed somewhere I don't wanna know…"

"No, no… you're ill."

"Oh, that. Well, I almost died, right? It's not the first time. I've got some infection, is all. I'll manage."

"But… your -"

"I know – they did something to me that slowed my ability down. It's coming back though, just gonna take a little time, is all. I'm fine. Now, shut up and let me get this off of you."

He held onto her wrist as she commenced her gentle assault on his face, and he felt it tremble.

"You're shivering."

"I'm cold," she admitted without lessening her pace. "Been a long time since I've been cold."

He employed a little more force, pulling her hand away. He stared straight into her… and she returned it equally. They held each other transfixed for a few achingly silent moments.

"I'll keep you warm," he finally whispered to her, wishing to keep their conversation private, agreeing to share the cot with her.

"Okay."

"C'mere." He pulled her to him, her frame matching his, tucking her head under his chin, rubbing slow, lazy, warm circles between her shoulder blades. She placed her hand on his chest, watching it rise and fall with his breath, listening to the lullaby of his beating heart.

"I'm sorry about Beth."

Her lie caused him to twist his spine a little, although it wasn't entirely uncomfortable.

"No you're not."

She huffed a breathy laugh.

"Okay, I'm sorry she hurt you."

She was telling the truth. He couldn't summon an immediate response. His wits had been addled by the scent of her hair and the heat of her fingertips. Picturing the red-head's face, however, still twisted a knife in his gut, and he really didn't appreciate the reminder. He felt ashamed, embarrassed. Feeling a sudden need to draw into himself and sever the contact, he rolled away from her, but she didn't remove her arm. She brought her hand up to cup around the ball of his shoulder, and she tucked her knees into the back of his.

"You know what the really sick thing is?" he asked into the night. "My partner, Mike, told me that I should've known something was wrong the whole time… and I did. I knew the whole time. But I wanted to believe it so badly that I physically turned that part of me off." He tilted his chin over his shoulder toward her. "Do you know what that means, Claire? I lied to myself. What the fuck is wrong with me?"

"Oh, there's a billion things WRONG with you, do NOT get me started… but that's not one of them," she said, caressing his smooth musculature. "I've done that to myself at least twice now. It just means you're human, Gabe – you need what everyone else does, and there's good and bad in everybody. Human beings lie sometimes, it's a part of nature. But you're gonna live, okay? No matter how much you beat yourself up over it, and I know you will, you're gonna keep on living. It's gonna be alright."

"I know."

"Besides, I'm glad she's gone," she told him, jerking his body with a quick hug. "It's kinda hard for everything to be all about meee when you're obsessing over some other girl." His shoulders jiggled with quiet laughter. "And I clocked her a good one for you too, you should've seen it. No slimy little red-headed bitch is gonna jack with my buddy," she squeezed him again, "not on my watch."

A hopeful little piece of him clung to the possessiveness in her voice. She had no idea how much he belonged to her. He reached up and took her hand, grateful for the opportunity to be this close.

"Thanks for keeping me warm," she hummed, mashing and rubbing her face back and forth against his back.

"Don't mention it. Shouldn't we be spooning the other way?"

"No, this is perfect, don't move – keeps my nose warm. That gets cold, everything gets cold. Besides, this way we're both spared the pain of you jabbing me with your dick first thing in the morning -"

"OH MY GOD."

"Like I've never been married before or something. I'm not a virgin, buddy, I know a thing or two about peni-"

"Please stop."

She dissolved into a fit of giggles while his face burned holy hellfire. Eventually, over the course of several yawning minutes, her arm grew limp and heavy, rolling down to rest at his waist. He threaded his fingers into hers, toasty warm and luxuriously comfortable regardless of their bedding's poor quality, allowing himself to finally fall into a deep, contented, dreamless sleep.

~*~*~

A tickle – not much more than a whisper or a breath between her eyebrows – roused her. She opened her eyes to find his staring back at her, warm like sunbathing mahogany. They were perched at the edge of the mattress between his fingertips – he was kneeling and obviously very excited about something. He exuberated a boyish gleam, humming with energy, putting dimples in his cheeks.

"I have something to show you," he breathed. The fact that he was so quiet told her the others were still asleep, this secret treasure was meant for them to share alone. Feeling strangely romanced, she soundlessly extracted herself from the coarse standard issue blanket and dropped her feet to the deck, which he had been considerate enough to warm by diverting a little power to the heating coils that lay underneath. The cabin was comfortable.

She padded behind him to the viewport where the air was snatched from her lungs in awe. She'd seen planets before, but this one…

"Where are we," she muttered, unable to tear her eyes from the swirling sphere of cerulean, lavender, veridian, and white. He leaned in front of her to make a few keystrokes, summoning a small holo-display that stated their coordinates and pictured map of their location on a larger star chart.

"That… is that Sagittarius…?"

He mischievously smiled his answer.

"But… but it was destroyed…"

"Well, that's the thing, right? That material, from Leo, used in the bomb that blew this place up? Apparently, when it mixed with the toxic atmosphere in the blast, it created a nasty substance that coated, like, flippin' everything in the dome generator. It's gonna take a lot to clean up that mess… which is a real shame. Claire, billionaires lived here. Movie stars, plastic surgeons, you name it. Everything down there was left exactly like it was when they left -"

"Which means they're gonna try to come back and claim it," she interjected nervously.

"They'd be crazy not to, sure… if the feds didn't believe this place was completely untouchable until that stuff reaches its half-life… two hundred years from now…"

She whipped around to gape at him, desperately wanting to believe she understood him correctly. "How…"

"I may or may not have filed that in my report while I was here… 'investigating'. Or sabotaging their efforts to fix the dome. Whatever."

"But they know you now… they're gonna know it was you, that it was fake…"

"I suppose they might… if I wasn't a completely different agent at the time with a completely different name. OH – and a completely different face with a completely different set of fingerprints. They guy who filed that report looked an awful lot like Nathan Petrelli…"

"But… these people," she tossed a thumb behind her, "aren't gonna be able to breathe down there… let alone anything else… unless you think you can fix that dome…"

"Claire," he chided smugly, "I can fix anything."

"Then that means -"

"It means that they are eventually going to come for this place. I mean, you haven't even seen it yet, but when you do you'll know why. I always wanted to come back here," he grinned and turned to appreciate serenely revolving sphere's celestial majesty, her reflection lighting his eyes. "You and I may end up having to fight for this place someday, but these people," he gestured to their sleeping forms, "They'll all be able to live out the rest of their lives in peace."

"You," Claire hissed as she captured his face in her hands, "are absolutely brilliant!"

"Well," he chuckled, "I've always been a schemer, I suppose…"

Twisting back around, tears of joy flooding her eyes, trembling fingertips pinching her lips, she soaked in the vision of her new home – a real home, the first one she'd had in centuries.

"Wait'll you see it, Claire, you won't believe it. It's Paradise."

A/N #2: Does anyone remember the prologue from Vol1? Like, the VERY FIRST chapter? The beach they were on??? Well, folks, guess where we are... =D