A/N: Yatta! I'm back for my next Petlar fic after completing the 400k+ behemoth, Tongues of Fire! In this story, you can expect shorter chapters, hopefully more regular updates and a more compact story (nowhere near ToF's 400k+, for example). It will still be a multi-chapter road-trip adventure complete with angst, crossed wires, cute moments, and enemies-to-friends-to-more X)

See you in the end notes. Enjoy!

The Hostage

"Be good, my darling."

Soft hands on his cheeks, lips against his forehead. He can't remember her face, but he can smell her, even now, if he closes his eyes. It soothes him from a distance, like a dream he used to have. He can't recall anything else about her, not her smile, not her eyes, not even her voice. Just the last words she ever said to him, a long time ago.

"Be good, now."

( )( )( )

"Well, well. Fancy meeting you here."

Stupidly, Peter's first instinct was to be relieved to see him.

It didn't matter that he was now trapped among countless grenades, rifles and knives with the man who had murdered him in the past. This didn't stop Peter from dropping his hastily filled bag of weapons to meet the tall, dark figure that melted from the shadows.

"Sylar?" He blurted, surprised. "You're okay? Where have you been? Everyone thinks you died, after Pinehearst..."

It was only when the other man was visibly taken aback by Peter's welcome that he remembered, no, they weren't still on good terms. And that, no, Sylar didn't deserve this from him. Suddenly Noah Bennet's secret armoury became much more claustrophobic than it had a moment before. The endless shelves and trove of weapons suddenly felt like a minefield.

Too late, Peter backed up a step, scowling, but it wasn't far enough to escape Sylar's intuitive gaze. "After you terrorized Claire and my mother."

At this, the killer seemed to come back to himself with a scoff. "What are you doing here, Petrelli?" He lazily brushed past Peter to resume browsing Noah Bennet's Company stash lining the walls. As if they were strangers. As if they hadn't been under the impression they were family the last time they'd met. As if Sylar hadn't gifted Peter perhaps the biggest favour of his life by taking the bullet meant for his father out of his hands. "Shouldn't you be off saving the world and all that?"

Just a moment ago, stealing resources for Matt and Mohinder had seemed like the most important thing in the world. Now though, Peter almost forgot about the hostage being held back at the motel, and stormed after Sylar.

"What happened to you? I thought you wanted to be better, you were trying to be good!"

"I needed the truth, they needed convincing. It's as simple as that."

"And that makes it okay?"

Peter almost bumped into him when the killer stopped in his tracks, voice quiet. "Your family lied to me, Peter. Terrorized me. How is what I did to them any different?" He examined an old frag mine with a burned bullet hole through the casing, as casually as perusing laundry detergents at the supermarket. "At least I was honest about it."

Maybe it was the way Sylar's shoulders were tensed up to his ears, or an unfamiliar tone in his voice, then, but somehow the man standing before Peter now was no longer the fearsome boogeyman he'd once been. The bravado had been stripped away since last time, replaced by something timid, more humbled than Peter had ever seen him before. Not that he could blame the guy. Only a soulless cretin could be put through the emotional ringer of Angela and Arthur Petrelli's mind games and emerge unscathed.

Which meant Sylar had a soul, after all.

Between heartbeats, Peter recalled a different kind of prison, a different kind of concrete cell, a time he'd awoken to this man rescuing him and vowing to be a better person. Despite what had happened afterward, there in that moment he had been telling the truth. Peter believed it then and he believed it now, no matter how hard he tried to hold onto his righteous anger.

"Look, I get it." The empath stepped around the tall figure to block his escape. "They lied to me too. They had no right to do what they did to us, but that's not an excuse to go around hurting people."

If Peter wasn't mistaken, the dark, pursed lips of the killer almost twitched in a smirk. "Must be nice to be so forgiving." Once more, Sylar pushed past the smaller man with a gentleness Peter wouldn't have expected from him. "But I didn't come here for a lecture, Peter."

Only now did Peter think to ask, or even notice a paper file clutched in Sylar's hand. "Why did you come here?" Two guesses said Noah's old Primatech boxes were tucked away in the shadowy shelf Sylar had just emerged from.

A pause, like the guy was deciding whether he wanted to answer or not. "Searching for my father." Peter couldn't help but glance around the large, ominous-looking trunks stored around the room, as if a person might be tucked away inside one. Truthfully, it didn't sound too off-base for The Company. "I need to know where I really came from. Meet the man who made me this way."

These words landed somewhere deep within Peter's ribcage. He could no longer muster the rage to sound affronted when he asked, "are you gonna kill him?"

Another pause, but this one lasted a beat too long.

"No."

The sound that escaped Peter was half a hopeless laugh, half a sigh of frustration. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe people would help you if you tried to be better for longer than five minutes?"

In response, Sylar's hand tightened slightly around the file he was holding. Peter squinted at the faded lettering across the front, making out the name Gabriel Gray.

His stomach jolted at the sight. Gabriel was the name a version of this man had gone by in the future, when he'd greeted Peter lovingly, held him in his arms and trusted him, helped him, and suffered the worst pain imaginable for it. So Gabriel was his real name, then? Where had 'Sylar' come from, Peter wondered. At what point had he veered so terribly off track from the man he'd used to be, before all this? The one Peter had seen fight to the surface more than once, now, only to keep slipping back below the depths?

"You think you'll feel better when he's dead, like he can't have power over you anymore," Peter hated that the words dredged themselves up from the well of personal experience. "You won't."

"You reading my mind, Petrelli? I thought you lost your ability?"

Sylar turned on him, ready to be scathing, yet this time when he laid eyes on Peter something seemed to click into place in the killer's mind, appeasing him, as if he'd just solved a tricky equation that had been evading him until now.

Every time. Every single time, Peter forgot how revealing it felt to be on the receiving end of Sylar's undivided attention until he had it again. Back at the motel, he'd basically had to launch himself between Matt and Mohinder to remind the arguing duo he was there at all, but Sylar had always made this look easy. Not just noticing him, but seeing him.

"No. A new one...?" He continued, his gaze burning stronger, even more intense, like he was seeing through Peter's skull and into his brain with the power to understand how things worked. Peter resisted the urge to cover his forehead with his hands. "It works through touch? My, my." A sound emanated from Sylar's chest then, deep and rich and unfamiliar, and it took a moment for Peter to realise he was laughing. "Oh, Peter. Someone's been naughty. You tried to kill your father to prevent him creating synthetic abilities, and in the end you helped yourself to one hot off the press. I've got to say, I didn't think you had it in you."

"That's none of your busin-"

BANG!

Peter's retort was cut off when something echoed off the reinforced door of the storage facility, causing both men to jump to the defence. While Sylar's chuckling died a sudden death, Peter didn't need x-ray vision to know Nathan's agents had found him. Oh shit.

"You really have been naughty, haven't you-?"

Bristling, Peter squared up to the taller man. "Listen," he heard himself say, "help me get supplies back to Matt and Mohinder -" (Sylar's nose wrinkled in distaste at the names), "get us outta this in one piece and I swear, I'll help you find your father."

BANG!

Yet again, Sylar seemed only to be taken by surprise. Dark, heavy brows furrowed ever so slightly, like a motion he tried and failed to contain. "Why?"

BANG!

Peter sighed, pained. "Because you helped me with mine."

BANG!

He didn't want to recall the events back at Pinehearst, never mind say them aloud. Peter hadn't even let himself process his father's sudden resurrection, betrayal and subsequent death yet, if only in an attempt to stay relatively sane. And right now, as a fugitive on the run inside a Company Man's secret stash, under intense scrutiny from Sylar of all people, wasn't going to be the moment he finally let it all catch up to him.

Cogs whirred madly behind the killer's eyes as he took his time to process, with only the luxury a Swiss-army knife of superpowers could take in the face of an ambush. "Why would I need you?" He mused eventually.

BANG!

The latest impact of the battering ram sent the door bending in on its hinges. Any moment now, it would burst free and armed agents would flood inside and surround them. Adrenaline kicking in for the fight, Peter hastily recovered his pre-packed bag of weapons, hoisting it onto his shoulder.

"Telepathy?" he supplied. "Might come in handy when you find the guy who's hidden from you all your life, right?"

Honestly, Peter wasn't certain what had possessed him. Sure, maybe this was a terrible spur-of-the-moment proposal, and yeah, maybe it hadn't been thought through in any capacity whatsoever, but all he was thinking of was the Gabriel from the future who had helped Peter when he'd gone to him and asked, and had his home, life and family wrecked for his efforts. If Sylar disappeared now, Peter might never see him again. He couldn't bear to leave things forever unresolved. He owed the guy – the entire world was intact due to his sacrifice, and nobody knew the pain he'd given. Not even Sylar, himself.

Peter had to make amends, whether in an erased future or this one.

But agents were now clambering at the burst seams of the door, peeling it away from the frame, and with each second Sylar studied him like there was a crossword puzzle stamped across Peter's face, the idea became less and less appealing.

"Look, d'you want my help or not?" Peter stood his ground before the killer towering over him, and struggled to recall a time when he'd used to be afraid of him. At what point had that changed, and Peter hadn't even noticed? Was it when Sylar had rescued him from becoming Pinehearst's latest lab rat? Was it when he'd seen him in an apron cutting waffles for his beloved young son? Peter would likely never be sure, but all that mattered was he wasn't afraid anymore.

Sylar, it seemed, found Peter's lack of apprehension immensely intriguing. It looked more like curiosity than anything else, more like amusement, that led him to wordlessly concede to the empath's offer.

BANG!

Finally, the door slammed open and scraped noisily across the floor. Peter braced himself for battle, gripping a flash grenade from his bag and ready to fly through the distraction, but Sylar effortlessly sent the first wave of agents flying with a flick of two fingers before Peter could even pull the pin.

And when he glanced at the guy, and Sylar attempted not to look too smug for putting Peter's plan to shame in seconds, Peter found that he couldn't feel too sorry for it.

( )( )( )

"Where is he?"

The beeping and clicking of the computer lab droned past as Nathan Petrelli marched through, still in his overcoat and cufflinks. Agent Danko patiently awaited his approach with hands on his hips and a shit-eating grin that he wasn't even attempting to hide.

Somehow, Nathan suspected that look was only partly due to calling him away from a $300 lunch meeting.

"It's not his location that concerns me most." Danko drawled, stepping aside to reveal a wide-screen monitor. "It's his choice of company."

Refusing to give the agent the satisfaction of a reaction, Nathan employed his unreadable politician's mask as he processed the dark video feed on screen. He had to squint past boxes and shelves obstructing the foreground of the recording before locating two figures caught deep in conversation. One, the unmistakable floppy-haired and bandy-legged form of the youngest Petrelli brother. And the other –

Nathan's stomach plummeted to the polished toes of his shoes.

"I thought you said Sylar always works alone."

"He does."

"Really?" Danko mused, before fading into the background of Building 26's headquarters to bark a new set of orders to the team. But Nathan didn't hear them. He only watched the recording of his brother and the man who'd murdered their father fighting their way through agents together, before disappearing into the night.

The panic and slew of curse words that arose at the sight stayed trapped inside the clenching of Nathan's jaw: his mother had taught him well. All that revealed itself to the world was the slight pursing of his lips, and a murmur nobody heard but himself.

"What the hell are you doing, Pete?"

( )( )( )

"What the hell is he doing here?!"

"It's alright, I asked him to come -"

"He's supposed to be dead!"

"I didn't think you cared, Mohinder. I have to say I'm touched."

"Touched in the head, is more like it!"

"Hey, we don't have time for this," Peter had to nearly shout to raise his voice above the din.

While a welcome relief to discover Matt and Mohinder hadn't killed each other, or Bennet, in his absence, that small win was short-lived upon walking back into the same buzzing hornet's nest he'd left. Peter had almost forgotten he was pissed at these guys' behaviour until the tension smacked him in the face the second he'd re-entered the room.

Or perhaps that had something to do with the killer who had loomed around the motel doorway beside him, scanning the fugitive's desperate scene with but a mild look of interest.

Okay, so maybe dragging Sylar into this wasn't one of Peter's better decisions.

"We gotta hurry, if they found me they're gonna find us." He continued anyway, bypassing a trance-like Matt Parkman (currently lost deep in the depths of mining Bennet's mind for golden breadcrumbs) to kneel before the hostage and check his vital signs. Noah, while barely conscious and duct-taped to a chair in the centre of the room, was at least breathing. At least he was alive. Which was a relief considering Peter hadn't been entirely sure what state of life he'd be returning to. "Sylar helped me escape, alright, if Nathan's guys ambush us here we could use him on our side -"

"You can't be serious, Peter?" Mohinder's face twisted from the corner of the room. Sylar had barely twitched when the geneticist had shrank as far from him as the space would allow, instead shamelessly entertained by the chaos his arrival had caused. "He's probably working with them already! Have you forgotten he's incapable of caring about anyone other than himself?"

"That's not true." Focused on taking Noah Bennet's pulse, Peter missed the surprise that coloured both Mohinder and Sylar's expressions at this. Pushing past pained memories of the future he'd erased from time, Peter got to his feet and raised his hands in a display of truce. At this rate he likely wouldn't get close to checking on Matt as well, never mind borrowing his telepathy.

"We can fight about this later, alright, but we have to get outta here now."

A poisonous-looking mask had befallen Mohinder as he pried himself from the wall, stepping into Peter's path and reaching the telepath first. Peter had never seen him consumed by such toxin before, not even when infected by a faulty, home-grown ability. It was chilling. "If you think I'm going anywhere with him, I'm sorry to disappoint."

Mohinder spoke quietly but clearly, and when he raised a hand the group's only original pistol held steady within it. So he hadn't gone for Matt, after all, but for his weapon. Damn it.

"Choose wisely, Peter. If you're with him, you're against us."

Peter bit back the disappointment forming on the tip of his tongue. It was difficult not to respect Mohinder's rage, forged of a pain that would never go away: he could never forgive Sylar for murdering his father, and Peter understood that, truly. But if Mohinder was really willing to choose anger over sparing the lives of his friends, then he wasn't the man Peter had thought he was.

"Can we speed this along?" Unfazed by the gun pointed unyieldingly at his chest, Sylar smoothly stepped up to Peter's shoulder. The geneticist recoiled further and shook Matt awake with his free hand. "Some of us have better things to do than stand around waiting to be captured."

Nobody answered Sylar.

Mohinder's eye twitched a little, and Matt spluttered awake in breathless confusion while he slowly caught up to the scene, and Peter would swear he heard a countdown ticking louder and louder somewhere behind him, but couldn't make his feet move in either direction. He parted his lips to speak. But before he could make a sound, Sylar instinctively snapped his attention to the locked door. Apprehension fizzled like static through the air.

For a split-second nothing happened. Then -

BANG!

A blinding white blast threw the door inwards, smoke pooled into the room like water and shadows swarmed inside like the following tide.

Another ear-splitting bang sent deafening bells ringing in Peter's head – either a gunshot or another grenade, he couldn't identify – and then he couldn't see, couldn't breathe, couldn't hear, and couldn't fight the arms that grabbed him from behind and dragged him off his feet.

And slowly, but surely, everything went dark.

( )( )( )

It might have been minutes later, or days, when a disorienting lurch threw Peter into consciousness. He awoke clumsily, mouth very dry and eyes itchy like sandpaper. A moment later he identified the rough fabric he was laying flat across as a car seat, and another dizzying lurch to be caused by a moving vehicle.

When he twisted to locate a window he noted the sky was still dark outside, now a rich royal blue tinged turquoise at the corners. It was still night, then.

Peter pushed himself up on his hands from the back seat of a car, wrestled with two seatbelts fastened awkwardly across his prone form, and met familiar, amused eyes in the rear-view mirror.

Again, perhaps stupidly, it was relief that flooded him first.

"What happened?" Peter croaked. His hoarse voice and dry throat reminded him of breathing in too much grenade gas. He hadn't seen a thing. Had only been aware of someone strong holding onto him, carrying him away. Had that been an agent Sylar had fended off at the last second? Or... had it been Sylar?

The killer's eyes turned back to the headlights paving the road ahead of him. "Ambush. You went out quick but I managed to lose them for now." A moment of trundling silence, then, "Were you going to tell me the government's rounding us up, or was running away from it all supposed to solve that conundrum?"

It was still far too sore to think of Nathan's actions, never mind talk about them, so Peter just squinted blearily through the unfamiliar car windows rather than reply. He couldn't make out where he was from only the snatches of highway visible past the scrolling glow of streetlamps – they could be anywhere. In the back of his mind, it should have been frightening to be driven by Sylar, alone in the dark in the middle of nowhere, but instead a strange sense of calmness settled about the scene. Considering the last time he'd passed out he'd awoken inside a cargo jet in mid-air, things could have been much worse, Peter reasoned. Or perhaps he'd bumped his head during the ambush.

"Did you kidnap me?" He asked, changing the subject. Somehow it didn't muster itself as accusing as it should have.

Thick, dark brows frowned in the mirror. "Why, you'd rather I left you behind to be captured, or worse, taped to a chair by Dumb and Dumber? No, I didn't kidnap you." The back of Sylar's head somehow managed to look indignant even silhouetted in the dark. "We had a deal, Petrelli. I help you, you help me, remember."

A particularly hard jostle shook the car, and in his sleep-addled state Peter almost lost his balance. He clambered to settle himself properly in one of the back seats, doubting Sylar had just avoided a convenient pothole in the road. "But I never got Matt's ability. I didn't get close enough."

It was only when Sylar didn't have anything to say to this that Peter realised the guy could have left him at the mercy of Nathan's goons but he hadn't, even though there was no longer anything in it for him. Silence leaked throughout the car, until someone had to break it.

"Where are we going?" Peter asked, instead.

As if grateful for the change of topic, Sylar lifted his Primatech file from the dashboard and held it up in the air. "Bennet had an address logged on file. It's old, but it's a lead."

Sylar's father? So he really was holding Peter to his end of the bargain, telepathy or not? What could he possibly gain from that? Currently, the killer was avoiding Peter's gaze in the mirror, but that didn't undo the fact that he had rescued Peter from the bad guys, twice in one night, laid him down safely and even fastened his seatbelt. And for the first time, it struck Peter that maybe this Sylar really was capable of becoming the man who had once welcomed him into his home in the future. Even if deep, deep down.

"I won't leave my friends," Peter insisted, regardless. "They were in trouble back there, I can't just run away."

With a roll of his eyes, Sylar drew the car to a stop by the side of the road. When he turned around and leaned over the back of his seat, it seemed strange, somehow, that he looked just the same as he always had. Like something unspoken hadn't just shifted between the pair. Peter didn't flinch when the guy lifted two fingers, and the back door beside him sprang open.

"If you're gonna make a fuss about this, get out now. I never asked for your help, Peter, and I sure as hell don't need the headache."

Cool, night air swirled in through the open door, trailing Peter's hair over his face while he considered. Then, casting a glance at Sylar, he climbed out the car.

( )

It was hard to say which surprised Sylar the most. The way a sudden chill unfurled inside the vehicle when the door slammed shut, or the fact that he hadn't expected the empath to actually leave. When death, itself, couldn't seem to keep him away, was Sylar the fool for assuming there'd have been more of a fight?

But when the front door opened with a clunk and Peter dropped into the passenger seat, Sylar was forced to acknowledge that he didn't know this little hero at all. Not really.

Killing, fighting and dying with someone could only tell you so much about a person, it seemed. And to be honest, neither of them had had a minute of downtime to split between them since being thrust into one another's life and off a stadium wall. Who were they to each other without all that? Who was left in the moments between the madness?

Peter met Sylar face on, daring him to lie. Up close like this, it was impossible not to notice the striking sincerity in his features. "Are Matt and Mohinder alive?"

He didn't have to specify. The government agents were shooting to stun, not kill. They both knew what Peter was really asking; who he was really accusing of foul play. And damn it, if Sylar didn't want to hand it to Peter Petrelli for his brazenness. It had been a long, long time since anyone had looked at him with anything other than terror or hatred, and while he wasn't quite sure what to make of it, the unfamiliar substance Peter was holding for him now didn't feel like either of the above.

Sylar found that the truth came easy, for once. "They were when I left them."

For what felt like a long few seconds, Peter studied him the same way he had done back at Bennet's storage facility. Like he knew more than he was letting on. Like he was seeing another face, or at two faces at once, trying to gauge which was real and which was the lie. It was far too exposing for Sylar's liking, but he couldn't look away.

Finally, Peter raised his eyebrows. "Okay." He shut the door and nodded to the road ahead.

And Sylar thought he ought to cast the arrogant little fucker out on his ass just to knock him down a peg or two. Instead, he tried to hide his touch of amusement from the other man's sight as he turned the engine over and pulled the car back onto the road.

If they were really going to do this (and, however unexpected it may be, Peter truly seemed committed to the deal), there would be plenty time to get back at him later.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter I hope you'll stick around for the rest of the story to come X) Comments are always appreciated, please don't be shy to tell me what you thought or even to guess what road trip shenanigans our boys might get up to next!

Chapter 2 should be posted in the near future, stay tuned!