Sylar was floating in darkness, surrounded by irregular flashes of light. He thought he had to be inside a great thundercloud in the middle of the night. Every now and then his body shook slightly as if from silent thunder. He was cold, dreadfully cold. Aren't I supposed to be going towards the light or falling or something?

He had no sense of up or down, but the flashes were becoming more frequent. He was warm in a sudden wash, a hot breeze blowing over and through his body as though he were insubstantial. The fog around him lightened to grey and then began to clear in the wind. He knew he could see if he could just remember how to blink…

He blinked up and saw… Peter. Sylar's head was in his lap and Peter was stroking his forehead tenderly, smiling at him like he was the only thing in the world. "I must be in heaven," Sylar murmured. Someone snorted off to the side. He rolled his head a little and looked up to see Noah Bennet standing to one side, eyeing him. "Or maybe hell," Sylar amended.

"I need to go," Noah said, walking off around the far end of the couch, avoiding the blood at the other end.

Sylar pulled himself up to a sitting position. The bodies were gone, but the blood remained. So did Blake's gun and knife. There was an empty syringe on the coffee table in front of him and a second one that was still full. Peter turned to Noah and said, "I'll need to see Dwayne and Erica. Give me five minutes, then send them in." Those were the two who could negate abilities. With Sylar powerless and an inhibitor installed in Peter, there'd been no reason to have them in the room.

"As you say, Mr. President," Noah nodded and went out. Sylar glanced between Noah and Peter. Obviously Noah Bennet knew which side of his bread was buttered.

After the door shut, Sylar said quietly, "Damnit, Peter. I wanted to be dead. You can't… please don't do to me what your brother did to you." He looked at Peter intently and said very gently, "Let me go. Let me die. Don't do this."

Peter cringed at his words, but reached out and took up the full syringe. He looked at Sylar and said, "If you had your powers back, would you stay?"

Sylar looked at the needle. "There's no shot that can give me that. The best you can do is give me some fucked up version of intuitive aptitude and what good is that without the rest? I had to kill over a hundred people to get those abilities. They're gone. The people who had them are gone. I'll have one ability at a time and I'll have to murder for it every time. Woop-de-fucking-doo." He shook his head, teeth clenched. "I'd rather be dead."

Peter swallowed and repeated, "But… if you had all your powers back, would you stay?"

Sylar looked at him. Peter's tone was hurt, but still serious. It gave Sylar pause. He asked, "What's in that needle?"

Peter shook his head briefly and said, "Just what you think it is - a single use power, but if you had the right ability, then it would all be okay. Wouldn't it?"

Sylar looked at Peter's eyes, then at his forehead, then back to his eyes as he figured it out. "Your ability. You'd let me take your ability?"

Peter nodded. "And then you'd have every ability I had." He smiled. "Including all of yours. They're not lost, Sylar. I have them. And… if you want… you can let me heal afterwards and we can be together. Or if you don't… then leave me dead. Because you're right. There are some things that I'd rather not live without."

Sylar left the clean-up to Peter, who shape shifted into Nathan while Sylar posed as Peter for a while. He just stood around looking shell-shocked, which was apparently not that unusual for Peter. At least, no one seemed to notice. Sylar watched as people discreetly edged away from him. Their thoughts revealed they uniformly thought Peter was a freak, an aberration and a danger. He was viewed with disgust, like some sort of deviant, emotionally disturbed man-child that Nathan was forced to pander to because of his abilities. It was a bizarre rationalization that didn't stand up to logic. But hate rarely did.

As Nathan, Peter expressed his relief at being reunited with his brother and announced to the staff that they would be taking a vacation and carrying out "evaluations" to make sure Peter was still able to serve his country. Sylar frowned. People edged further away from him. He gathered that Peter was not always non-violent when his brother announced things he didn't care for.

In Nathan's office, with a staff member standing by taking orders, Peter picked a remote Caribbean island, one of those resort places where you're isolated from the world and a small boat brings you supplies every few days and checks on you. There would be a house, a beach, the ocean and each other. Nothing else. Arrangements were made. Sylar stared out the window at the night, glad that Peter was sane enough and functional enough to handle it, because at the moment, Sylar was still reeling from events.

The staff member left. Peter walked up behind him and Sylar jumped away from his touch, eyes wide. He still looked like Nathan. Peter glanced back at the door and barred it with telekinesis. He shifted back to himself, dressed as he had been the day before – jeans and a t-shirt. Sylar dropped his false appearance too, taking on his normal shape, illusioning some equally generic clothes.

Peter reached for him slowly and Sylar looked away, out the window, but he didn't back off again. For a moment he stood there stiffly with Peter's hand on his arm, then he lifted the arm slightly and allowed Peter to slip in next to him, hugging him. After a while he turned his face and made a kissing motion towards the side of Peter's head, but his lips didn't touch him. "I love you," he murmured.

"I love you, too," Peter said. "It's okay if it takes a while. I understand that. I can be patient."

"I just… don't understand how you made it for so long."

Peter was silent and for a while, they just stood together. Finally he said, "You ready to go?"

Sylar smiled a little. "Yeah. Yeah, I am. I wanted to rule the world. Now all I want to do is get away from it."

Sylar waded out into the water and dove, giving himself a small shove with flight. He cut through the warm seawater. It was warmer than the air. His skin, raw in places, stung in the salt water as it healed. He'd scrubbed himself until his hands were bleeding and he still wasn't sure he was clean. The pain helped.

He swam for a while in the grey pre-dawn gloom. He came back to shore when it began to get light, the false dawn brightening the sky. He hoped Peter had cleaned himself too, but he didn't think it was really appropriate to ask or insist. It was psychological, he knew.

He walked up the beach to the bungalow perched atop stilts. Peter walked out on the balcony and smiled down at him, a lazy, amused look. He threw down a pair of shorts. The wind blew them away, but Sylar summoned them to him with telekinesis. He was strangely pleased to see that Peter was wearing a set himself. Sylar pulled his on, then narrowly dodged being hit with a long cushion from one of the recliners. Peter landed next to him, holding his own cushion, giving a playful laugh because he'd missed.

"Come on," Peter invited. "The sun will be rising soon. I want to go watch."

Sylar glanced up at the balcony, but it faced west. They'd be able to watch sunsets from it, but in the other direction was a thicket of palm trees. He picked up the cushion and followed Peter through the air to the other side of the tiny island. Peter tossed his down on the sand and Sylar followed suit, dropping his a few feet away.

Peter looked down at the cushions for a long moment while Sylar's eyes scanned the horizon. There was a space between the cushions – an intentional space. Sylar looked back in time to catch the edge of Peter's deeply hurt expression as he turned and sat down on the other side, facing away.

Sylar frowned and looked at his cushion. He'd put it there on purpose, because really… he didn't want to be that close to Peter yet. Every time he touched Peter, his mind flashed to Nathan touching him. His subconscious had unhelpfully fabricated a map of every part he'd seen Nathan touch and he was uncomfortable putting his body against those parts. It was stupid and he knew that, but it didn't make it any less real.

He looked at Peter's back. What he wanted wasn't what he needed, or what both of them needed. Peter turned and lay down, acting like nothing important had happened. It was that pretense that he hadn't been hurt that led Sylar to reach out with his foot and nudge his cushion over next to Peter's. Peter glanced down at it with a slight stirring of his brows. Sylar lay down in the middle of it, rather than on the far edge like he wanted to. "Come here, pet."

Peter rolled to him, curling in his arms. Sylar hugged him gingerly and said, "I'm sorry, but you're right. It's going to take me a while." Peter nodded and moved away, putting some space between them again. Sylar was grateful he'd kept the contact brief. He tried to chase away thoughts of Nathan's hands on Peter... and worse.

He watched the ever-brightening line where the ocean met the sky. When it seemed the sunrise was never going to get around to actually happening, he turned to Peter and put his hand on the side of his face, pulling him over so he could kiss his forehead. He had to do it. He had to get over this. Peter didn't deserve his reticence.

"You smell like coconut," he observed.

Peter smiled. "I showered and washed up."

"Ah." That pleased Sylar and he relaxed a fraction. Now that Peter mentioned it, his hair was damp. Sylar offered, "I tried to sandblast myself." The sky was so bright it almost hurt to look at it, but it wasn't quite there. Sylar laughed nervously. "Do you ever really feel clean again?" He watched Peter out of the corner of his eye, not wanting to offend, but feeling he needed to confront the issue, even if only indirectly.

Peter made a small, hopeless shrug and took a deep breath. "I felt clean with you." He blinked several times as if holding back tears. "I feel clean with you," he said, changing the tense.

A knot formed in Sylar's throat and he rolled over, drawing Peter to him. This time he kissed his lips – a chaste pressing together, but it was a kiss any way you looked at it. Silent tears fell down Peter's face. The sun's rays washed over them, dispelling the coolness and bringing warmth.

A/N: Don't forget to review! Oh, and how do you like this as an ending point? Or do you want make-up sex on the beach? (Or in the beach bungalow, wherever they end up.) I take requests.