I was incredibly surprised when I woke up in the hospital. Not that I was in the hospital, mind you, but that I was waking up at all. Even in my sedative induced haze, I knew that it was unexpected. Groggily, I opened my eyes to see Gabriel standing at the window staring out at the city with his arms crossed, his silhouette sharp in the darkness. "Well, this certainly ruins my dramatic death scene."

A smiled graced his face at my voice and he turned to come quickly to the bed, brushing my hair back from my face and laying a gentle kiss on my lips. "I take it by your sarcasm that you're alright."

I smiled tiredly. "As alright as someone can be after getting shot." My arm twinged, and I added, "Twice." He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes, and I knew something was wrong. "Gabriel, what aren't you telling me?"

His eyes darkened and for a long moment he didn't say anything or even move, watching me with that unblinking stare of his. "Can you move over?" My heart sunk at his words and I frowned, but obligingly shuffled to one side of the bed so that he could lay down with me.

Attached to so many wires, I couldn't turn on my side, but he curled up against me and wrapped an arm across my waist, careful of my wound. His lips pressed against my hair. "You lost a lot of blood, and your body went into shock. Your heart stopped…" He paused here, and I felt a slight tremor go through him at the memory. How awful it must have been for him to watch me die. "They gave you a transfusion of my blood, and it healed you, but it was too much for the baby."

With news like that, your mind can't really process what it means. You hear the words and you think you understand, but I'd begun to learn that true understanding takes time, that you have to let the idea roll around in your head for a while like tasting fine wine, let your mind process all the nuances and subtle flavors of that kind of pain. So I just lay there and stared dry-eyed at the ceiling, wondering what it would feel like when it really sunk in and what to say to someone who had already had time to appreciate the full bouquet of disappointment and grief. In the end, I decided to be honest. "I love you."

"I love you, too."

Our hands laced together, and I began absent-mindedly playing with his wedding ring, twisting the still-unfamiliar titanium band around his finger. Titanium was a tricky beast, especially for a wedding ring. It was used to cut diamonds, which meant that most medical professionals didn't like it on their patients because they couldn't cut through the metal if they needed to. Gabriel, however, was essentially immortal and had wanted a ring that would last as long as he did. It was one of the few times I'd ever seen him let emotion sway his decision-making process. He'd gotten the inside engraved with my name, and my heart still warmed at the tangible proof that his love for me was eternal. "What happened after I passed out? Is everyone else alright?"

"There were a few injuries, but nothing serious. Landers was targeting us."

"Is that his name? Landers?" The normal name didn't fit with the unbalanced man I remembered.

Gabriel sighed. "Richard Landers. He was married to Sue Landers before I killed her for her power."

"Which one?"

"Lie detection."

How strange to imagine my husband had once been a serial killer. This man, who was holding me in his arms and letting me play with his wedding ring, who was arguably smarter than I was, and had risked his life for mine on more than one occasion, had once killed for personal gain. But then my mind pulled up an image of Sylar holding Dr. Goswami in the air and torturing him because he'd hurt me, and it wasn't quite so difficult to believe.

I stopped twisting his ring and laced my fingers through his, turning my head to look him in the eye. "Gabriel, it was another life. You're a different man now."

He rested his forehead against mine. "This is the second time in as many months that I thought you'd died, Hero."

I smiled wryly, though both our eyes were closed. "Well, I'm not deliberately making a habit of it."

"I know. But I know now that I can't do this," he said softly. "I can't watch you die again, whether it's from a gunman or from old age."

My eyes flew open and I jerked my head back to look at him. "You're leaving me." It wasn't a question.

He shook his head. "No. I'm not going anywhere. I never believed in soul mates, but you're the great love of my life."

"And you're mine," I said honestly, knowing his Lie Detection would show my sincerity. I wondered what he was getting at.

His dark eyes met mine levelly. "I want to give you Rapid Cellular Regeneration."

I blinked. "Immortality? You want to make me immortal?" He nodded, still watching me. "You know that's not possible, Sweetheart. I'm a Normal. My Paracortex is dormant."

"Dr. Suresh once created a formula that can give powers to Normals," he said, running his fingers up and down my arm. The sensation gave me chills.

"I heard about it in grad school. The formula was unstable. It nearly killed him."

His eyes were fervent now. "You and I could stabilize the solution. Primatech had the formula. We just have to find it."

I frowned, mentally shying away. "Even if that's true, I'm not sure I would take it. I don't know if I can watch my family grow old and die while I stay young. I would want to give them the serum, too, and that's a slippery slope."

My mind, of course, had already come up with a solution: don't tell them, and gradually break off contact. Gabriel was thinking the same thing, I knew. Yet he didn't pressure me. "Please, just...think about it."

"I will."

0o0o0o0o0o0

My husband's blood meant that I finished healing within hours, and was released from the hospital in time to see my family off to the airport. But now that it was just the two of us in our little apartment, there was nothing to keep my mind off of Gabriel's request.

How did you make a decision like this? How could a person choose between one life with their family, growing old and dying while their husband stayed young, or staying eternally young with their husband and watch their family wither and pass like leaves in the wind? How could I choose between the love of my life and my family?

Logically, I knew it wasn't really a choice. I was much younger than everyone but Leo, which meant that he and I would be forced to attend the funerals of all our loved ones, left behind by the insidious cruelty of age difference. And since women tended to outlive men, I would in all likelihood bury even Leo. It was something I'd accepted, but I'd always thought that I would be old and grey, one foot in my own grave, when they left me behind. I'd thought I wouldn't have to suffer alone for long, because I wouldn't have long left myself.

This awful choice, though...it meant that I would feel that loss for eternity, even with Gabriel beside me to lighten the burden. And what of our children? Rapid Cellular Regeneration wasn't in our genes, so there was no chance for them to inherit it. They would be forced to make the choice when they became adults, and it would kill me if they chose mortality.

That was, of course, if I could even have children. Pregnancy and childbirth were brutal on a woman's body, because the immune system would view it like a parasite. There was every likelihood that a body enhanced by RCR would reject a pregnancy, would attack the invading life in favor of its own. With no studies done on the subject, there was a very real possibility that I would essentially be sterilizing myself.

Yet there was an equally good case to be made for accepting Gabriel's proposal. To be eternally young and healthy, to never again fear death from car accidents or cancer, was something man had been searching for since the dawn of time and was a prospect I couldn't quite bring myself to cast aside. I was human: I was didn't want to die. More than that, I saw the toll it took on Gabriel every time something catastrophic happened and he thought I was dead (and sweet Jesus, I was a lightning rod for catastrophes). This would ensure he never had to watch me die.

There was even an escape clause, in a way. Gabriel had once told me that there was a kill-spot on immortals, a place that would put them out if impaled. His was on his arm, which was a fact I intended to take to the grave...or, well, not. Still, so long as the spot was staked, the RCR couldn't kick in, which meant the body would decompose. Logic suggested that impaling the spot indefinitely until the body decomposed beyond all possibility of regeneration would effectively kill that person.

I didn't even know if I could create the serum, anyway. Primatech and Pinehearst had possessed the two halves of the formula, and Peter's father had the Catalyst, but all the pieces had been destroyed. If I made any attempt to create a new serum, I would have to start from scratch, and I had no idea where to possibly begin with something like that.

"You are so beautiful."

I turned to see Gabriel standing in the doorway of our bedroom watching me with dark eyes, his shirtless skin pale in the glow of the city lights out the living room windows. I wondered how long he had been standing there, watching me stare blindly into the darkness from my perch on the couch. Even with sleep-mussed hair, he was beautiful to me. "I don't know how to make this decision."

He sighed. "I know." He pulled away from the doorframe and came to sit by me, pulling me across his lap and wrapping warm arms around me. He was always like a furnace. "I've asked the impossible of you. I never had to consider the things you're facing." We'd had several discussions on the subject, but I was no closer to a decision.

"What if... What if I said no?" I asked quietly. "What if I aged and got ugly? Would you still love me then?"

He pressed a kiss to my forehead. "I will love you until the day I die, Hero. It's not your physical beauty that draws me."

I sighed. "What if we grow tired of each other? Centuries of immortality together... I imagine it would take its toll, even on us."

He rested his forehead against mine, looking into my eyes. "I just want the opportunity to cross that bridge. The way things are going, I'm going to lose you before old age can take you from me. Every time you walk out the door, I see reckless drivers, muggers, crashing planes, fires... And that's not even considering the other things that keep me up at night. Cancer, an undiagnosed heart problem, an aneurism. One day you'll go where I can't follow."

I swallowed. I hadn't known he worried about those things. Honestly, I was young and healthy; the idea of illness had never occurred to me. "I can't make this decision now. Let's continue with our lives and table it. I want to have your children. I want a life with you. But we can work on the serum, and have the option. We don't have to decide now."

The kiss he rewarded me with melted me to my core.