Chapter 45:

The last thing Elle wanted to do was leave that house with Peter, but she knew there was no point in making a scene in front of Sylar's father. She followed him out to the front stoop just to hear him out and get rid of him. There was nothing Nathan was doing that could not wait a little longer.

Peter was babbling something about driving to New Jersey, but he stopped as soon as the door was closed. "Nathan had some time to think about this development, that you slept with Sylar, and he started asking questions about you. So right now, he is at the company finding out things about your relationship and piecing them together. He's already told some people that Sylar's the father of that baby you're carrying."

Elle was starting to understand the emergency. "Why would he do that?"

"He wants to draw Sylar out of hiding. The man killed his parents, and that's all he cares about." Peter left off the part about how they were his parents too.

As an orphan, Elle could maybe sympathize with that, but she and Nathan had discussed this, and she was surprised that he was willing to put her baby at risk like that.

Peter must have know what she was thinking. "Now that he knows what everyone else already knew, that Sylar has a weakness for you, he doesn't believe the baby will be in any danger if Sylar finds out about it."

Elle decided to trust Peter's assessment that it was necessary to start damage control immediately. She could see why Peter could not do it on her behalf. The more he admitted to knowing, the worse it would look. "Let me just give Sylar my keys."

As soon as she walked through the door again, she noticed the lack of talking. She walked into the living room cautiously. "It turns out I do have to go with Peter." The tense atmosphere in the room worried her a lot. She had a feeling the things she needed to hear were already being said. As she handed off her keys, she leaned down to kiss Sylar on the cheek and said, "I love you. Don't do anything stupid."

When she left, neither man said goodbye to her. It drove her crazy that she was going to have to wait until Sylar came back in order to find out how he was going to be affected by it, and that was assuming he would come back. She knew that once she let Peter whisk her away, no one was going to bring her back to this house.

She joined Peter outside. He seemed surprised that she came back so quickly. "Here's what I need from you," he said. "You have to go in there and convince Nathan that there is no conspiracy. You acted completely on your own. I don't think I need to tell you that this whole plan to help rather than kill Sylar was top secret. You and Noah were the only ones who knew about it. No matter what you say to him now, Nathan cannot know that this was my plan."

Peter was right, and he did not need to tell her that. She could see how his willingness to let Sylar live could cause him to lose all the support he had gained at the company up to that point. "I'm on top of it, Peter."

Peter looked around. "Come with me." He led her to the alleyway behind the house. That was the first time Elle really thought about Peter's mode of transportation. He held out his hand, and Elle took it with some hesitation. She had teleported once before, with Sylar, and she was not that keen on the experience. It did have one good thing about it, which was that it was over quickly. Elle closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she was in a hallway at the company.

It seemed that the baby did not like teleportation any more than she did because Elle immediately felt nauseated. Since she had just thrown up in front of Peter the day before, she choked back the vomit. Peter asked her if she was all right, and she nodded. "Just pregnant."

"Okay. Well, you should probably take off that—" He grabbed her hand in alarm. "What happened to your ring?"

Elle looked down at her hand. "It wasn't real, just an illusion for his father's benefit." She was kind of sad that the ring was gone. Just like that, her engagement was over.

Peter looked a little relieved to learn that the ring was not real, probably because it meant that he had not lost her engagement ring, and he dropped her hand. "Okay," he said again. "Go tell Nathan whatever it's going to take to smooth over your mistake."

Elle was going to take umbrage at that remark, because she really did not see what mistake she had made. Handling Nathan was not her job; it was Peter's. Fortunately, before she said anything about that she realized that they were standing in the hallways of the company, and Peter could not speak freely. So she just narrowed her eyes at him and headed for Nathan's office.

On her way there, she ran into John Celiano. When he saw her, he slowed down, taking her in with a smirking, almost leering look. "You know, Elle, I always knew you were a slut, but damn. Sleeping with the man who killed your father. That is a new low."

Elle took this as a confirmation of Peter's story. She was not going to let John bother her when she had the much more serious problem of dealing with Nathan ahead of her. "Speaking of that, I have a message from Sylar. He wanted me to let you know that he finally got on the company mattress. How do you think he's going to feel when he finds out it was the mother of his child you were talking about?"

John kept smirking, but Elle saw a spark of something resembling fear in his eyes as they flicked down to her stomach. Her goal in saying that was to prevent him from wanting to spread in any way the gossip that she was carrying Sylar's baby. She had no doubt that right then he was thinking it best to keep the information to himself. With her own steely gaze, she pushed past him and continued on her way to see Nathan.

She walked into the office without knocking. There was another agent in with Nathan, but Elle did not let that slow her down. "I thought we agreed not to use my baby as bait."

Nathan nodded to the other agent to let him know he could leave. He waited until the door was shut before speaking to her. "Have a seat, Elle." She did, reluctantly. "What makes you think I'm using the baby as bait?

"Well, I don't think you're spreading the news that he's the father because you just couldn't resist telling a good story."

Nathan leaned back in his chair, assessing her. "Where were you this morning?"

She should have been expecting that question. Peter had not given her a lot of time to figure out what to say to Nathan, and she really had nothing planned. In this situation, nothing even close to the truth would do. "I had a doctor's appointment."

He raised his eyebrows. "And you didn't run that by Peter? He said he didn't know where you were."

"Peter is really laid back about that kind of stuff. I didn't think he'd care if I was late. It's not like I'm doing anything important here. I do paperwork. Besides, Peter's not my boss, right?" She stared back at him defiantly.

Nathan nodded at this. "I think you left out some important parts when you were telling me that story a couple nights ago."

Elle needed time to stall so that she could think of how to make her history with Sylar work for her. She was going to avoid the story of that night for now. "Fine, about a year ago, I pretended to be interested in him and dated him so that the company could get information on him. But if you think that means he isn't going to kill me, it's the exact opposite."

"What about the fact that he didn't kill you?"

Elle thought about correcting that misconception, but that was a piece of her story that not many people knew. Angela had mostly kept that a secret from the rest of the company because raising the dead was a very controversial thing. "Well, he has tried a few times."

Nathan bobbed his head a little. "In the past, but it seems that he's changed his mind about that. I saw the tape of that night."

At first Elle was confused about what night he was talking about. It could not be the night she got pregnant. She realized he meant when Sylar killed Angela. "Good, then you know that he threw me against a wall and kicked me or something." She knew that he had not kicked her, but she wanted to seem fuzzy on the details.

"Mmm." Nathan nodded again. "So I heard that you got really attached to Sylar during that assignment."

It was a little unnerving the way he kept changing subjects like that. He was not letting her have control of the conversation. She felt a little bit like she was being interrogated, but she was not going to let him get the better of her. "You heard wrong. I got attached to Gabriel, but that's not who he is anymore. Do you think that I'm in love with him, is that it? I'm not. I wasn't even then; I just felt bad about what we doing to him. I already told you why I had sex with him that night. I can't stand it when men don't like me. If I wasn't pregnant, I'd probably be hitting on you right now."

Nathan looked her in the eye calmly, encouraging her to go on, but Elle knew that she was already on the cusp of babbling. She kept her mouth shut, but it was difficult not to keep talking. They were locked in a staring match for a least a minute. Finally, Nathan said, "So you don't feel anything for him, but what do you think he feels for you?"

Elle wanted to ask how she was supposed to know, but she guessed if she had sex with the man, she should have some idea what he was thinking. "He hates me. Really hates me, because--" She sighed. "Because I really hurt him. He... He said I used to be special to him and that there was a time when he wanted nothing more than to... know me more intimately, I believe is how he put it. Do you want more details?"

"I'll listen to whatever you want to tell me."

She knew he would answer affirmatively; she just needed a little more time to think up the details. This would have to be the final version, so she really needed to sell it to Nathan. "He said he'd put all that behind him, but after I made the offer, he'd started thinking about it again. He insisted that I could say no and he would leave. And I did say no because I didn't believe him, but he really was going to leave. I stopped him and reminded him that he killed my father and I hate him. And he said, um..." She pretended she was trying to remember. "He said, Oh, make no mistake, you ruined my life. I hate you too.' And as long as we were clear on that, I told him he could stay." Elle really liked that story. It was just off the top of her head, but it really set it up well for when she did finally run away with Sylar.

Still, she knew she had to dial it back, make it clear that this was not some sort of love fest. "All that talk of intimacy and the past didn't really figure into it, though. It was really intense, hateful, a little violent. He threw me around, slammed me against things, pushed and pulled me into..." She got to thinking about it, what he might be pushing her into and slamming her against. She rubbed the back of her neck. "I think that's all the details I want to give."

In that moment, Elle really wanted to get out of there. She wanted go home and have Sylar throw her around a little bit, but then she realized that she should not have sex like that while she was pregnant. Then the memory of where Sylar was and who he was talking to came back to dampen her mood even more.

Nathan was unimpressed. "Why should I believe that any more than anything else you've told me?"

Elle did not see why he would not believe that. "I lied about getting pregnant in Europe because I didn't want you to know that I slept with Sylar. I didn't really want anyone to know. But what would I be lying about now? What's your big conspiracy theory? What do you think is going on here?"

"I think that you got pregnant by a serial killer. A man who tried to kill you, who actually did kill your father and my parents. A man who killed Isaac Mendez, James Walker..." He picked up a stack of files and threw one down on the desk with every name. "Charlene Andrews, Rebecca Finder, Jesse Murphy, Bridget Bailey, Ted Sprague, Sue Landers. Am I forgetting anyone?"

"Yeah." He had actually skipped over a lot of people, ones the company knew about, but he had said enough to make his point.

Nathan looked over at a different stack. "Oh, there are a couple agents that he didn't get anything from. Girls about your age. Let's see, he forced Eden McCain to commit suicide, killed Candice Willmer in Mexico." He nodded thoughtfully. "I can see why you're protecting him."

"Oh, for god's sakes, Nathan! I'm not protecting him." The accusation was not nearly as ridiculous as she was making it sound. "If I ever wanted to protect anyone, it was Gabriel. But I brought him Trevor Zeitlan to kill, just like the company told me to. I helped turn him into Sylar, and given the chance to stop him, I would. But you took me off that case."

Nathan looked incredulous. "Because you slept with him and you're carrying his child. Besides, you've been taken off all field assignments because of your pregnancy."

That was a good point. "I still don't know what I'm doing here, what you want from me. How do I get you to stop using my baby as bait?"

"Right now, I am trying to figure out how to use your history with Sylar to my advantage."

There was something Elle could work with. "That's what I'm trying to tell you; we don't have a history. He's not that guy anymore. When I look at Sylar, I don't see Gabriel. I can't find the man I knew in there anywhere. He's just gone, replaced by a cold-blooded monster that I don't recognize."

"And yet, you still slept with him."

"I really don't know how to get this across to you. That had nothing to do with our history. I didn't tell you about all that stuff that happened before because it wasn't relevant to what happened the night I got pregnant. I didn't sleep with him because of our history, and he didn't--" Elle stopped because she was afraid that she was going to contradict herself. "It might have been a factor for him, but I don't think that he felt anything for me. I don't think he feels anything for me, and I don't think that he's going to care that I'm having his child." She stood. "I don't think any of this is going to help you get what you want."

Because Elle could not think of anything else to say to Nathan, she walked out of the office. Nathan was lost in thought and did not say anything to stop her. She headed for her own office so that she could finish out the day doing her own boring work, even though she was supposed to be in New Jersey with Sylar.

Peter came in behind her and closed the door to the small office, which was hardly ever closed. "That was really good."

"Really?" Elle had not thought that her conversation with Nathan had gone that well at all. Yes, she had handled him, but it seemed like they only went around in circles. She sat down in her desk chair. "I don't feel like I accomplished anything in there."

Peter shook his head. "That's okay. I know what we need to do next, and you set it up beautifully."

She did not know how that was possible when she did not even know his plan. "And what are we doing next?"

"You're running away with Sylar," he said as though it was obvious. "Not right now, because you're clearly not there yet, but in about a week."

Peter was always so sure that she was going to choose to be with Sylar, and he was right. Still, Elle felt that this pronouncement was a little abrupt. "Don't you think I should get a say on that timeline? I have things I need him to do before I'm willing to run away with him."

He nodded at this, but not in a way that comforted Elle. "There's still time for that, and if time runs out, then you'll have to decide whether the superhearing is really that important to you."

It was never about the hearing, but even the empathy was not that important in the long run. Standing her ground, however, was important to her. She had already backed down a lot by saying that he just needed to get back any one of the abilities. There was no way she was now going to say that he did not need to do anything.

"Or whether being stubborn is," Peter added.

She hated when he did that. "Stop reading my mind, Peter."

He shrugged. "I can't help it. It's just so fascinating in there."

Peter opened her office door to leave, but Elle said, "Wait! How am I going to get home tonight? I left my car at... the doctor's office." With the door open, she thought it best to revert to the lie.

It appeared that Peter had not thought about that. "Don't worry; I'll take care of it."

He left Elle wondering how and when he was going to take care of that. He had been a little vague on the plan too. She had a feeling he had more planned there than just that she would run away with Sylar. He had not told her anything about what she was supposed to do about Nathan over the next week. He really had not told her much at all, but he was gone, and this was not the place to talk about that.