A Certain Kind of Stupid

"It's them, alright."

For finding himself in a dark, rainy parking lot, on the outskirts of a cordoned off crime scene, Agent Danko had to admit he was enjoying himself a little too much.

"One strangled, the rest in shock..." He cast a glance across the parking lot, watching the shadows of a crowd bustling within illuminated laundromat windows. "I'd say you just bought yourself a slew of voters here, Senator."

There was a tight pause on the other end of the phone call. "I trust you're... taking care of it?"

"As we speak, Petrelli." Danko watched the tall silhouette of the Haitian currently swooping between amassed witnesses and law enforcement, alike, with a grace that was, grudgingly, rather impressive. Most likely, by the time he rejoined the team Danko would be surprised to find a single mention of superpowers across any of the sworn statements.

The agent had to admit that he might have been too hasty in discounting the Special when he'd first arrived on the road, as eerily silent as he was observant, practically gift-wrapped by headquarters to read 'because you can't do your job yourself'. And while, even now, Danko stood by his sensible wariness of one of them lurking among his team, he couldn't deny that the Haitian's particular ability for damage control had already come in handy.

( )

Admirably, Nathan thought, he managed to cling to his patience. "Find them."

"Don't trouble yourself, Senator. We keep heading West, follow the trail of destruction, I'm thinkin' they'll be kind enough to lead us straight to them. We can only hope," Agent Danko added, sounding like it was in fact the last thing he hoped, "that we catch them before the next victim is your brother."

Convincing himself he may well have told the guy to go fuck himself had he not currently been calling from a public place, Nathan said lowly, "For your sake, Danko, I'd make that a priority."

But the agent didn't appear to have heard him. "Don't let me keep you from your dinner, Petrelli. I hear the salmon there's a lil' pricey, but sublime."

"Remember, nobody moves without my say so –" Nathan ordered, but the call had already disconnected. Taking a moment to recover himself, he tucked his phone into his inside jacket pocket and returned to his meal. Once the cord to work was severed the chattering crowd of a restaurant bloomed back into focus, accompanied by the soothing, elegant tones of classical music.

"He didn't catch them?" Angela Petrelli surmised from across the table, her eyes boring into Nathan over the rim of a lightly bubbling champagne flute. The Senator just downed the dregs of his own glass before hailing a passing waiter for a refill. Angela politely waited for the waiter to leave before continuing. "Of course, they'll be long gone by now. Sylar isn't going to wait around." She took a sip.

"No need to sound so relieved about that," Nathan grumbled, stabbing his salmon with perhaps more force than was necessary. He wasn't hungry anymore. "You realise Peter ran off with the guy who killed Dad? Not to mention has a history of slaughtering his way across the country? A cry for attention if I've ever seen –"

"As far as protectors go, he couldn't have chosen a stronger one."

It took a moment for Nathan to register what his mother had just said. "Protectors? You mean protect him from me?" Angela made no move to deny this, dining peacefully. "I'm the one looking out for him, Ma," Nathan reminded her, lowering his voice as to not draw attention from neighbouring tables. "Are you forgetting Sylar already killed him before? Twice! What's to say he won't do it again as soon as he gets bored?"

Angela lightly neatened her fringe as if merely in thought, but they both knew an old scar lay hidden under there, out of sight. "He also saved him. At Primatech, and Pinehearst, Sylar demonstrated a protectiveness for your brother even I didn't anticipate. We can only hope it has endured. As for Peter? You know as well as I do that he can't resist a damaged soul. Perhaps we should have seen this coming."

Frozen with his glass halfway to his lips, Nathan squinted at her. "You're not behind it, are you? You didn't pair them off to keep Peter... outta this?"

"Don't be ridiculous." Angela delicately lifted an oyster from her plate and slurped it. "First of all, I haven't forgotten my last encounter with Sylar." She pulled a tight expression, either at painful memories of being trapped and terrorised within the walls of her own Company, or at the downing of the oyster. "Beyond that, I know who's keeping me safe, Nathan. I can live my life in peace thanks to your generosity. I wouldn't betray that."

Nathan rubbed a hand over his tired face, believing her. But perhaps it would have been better for Peter's latest rebellion to have been another of their mother's schemes after all? That way she'd have the power to call him back home.

"It's getting outta hand, Ma. Peter shacking up with a wanted serial killer doesn't exactly instil confidence in me. There are people who want him dead, and the longer this goes on the less say I have in the matter." Nathan couldn't tell whether the lump in his throat came from another forkful of overpriced fish, or the thought of what Danko would do, and greatly relish, when he finally located Peter.

"You're in charge." Angela surveyed him with hard, unblinking eyes over her next oyster. "You can keep him safe."

"Right now I'd settle for just keeping him alive," Nathan muttered into his champagne. Because even if he did manage to get to his brother first, and even if he could rein in Agent Danko and his dogs, there was no telling what fearsome dangers Peter faced each minute he spent out there with Sylar.

( )( )( )

Sylar swore loudly.

"I can do the light if you'll just let me use –"

"Nice try, Petrelli!"

The rain had finally lessened to a fine, drizzling mist to wash across the evening, but Sylar barely registered this from within a cloud of smoke billowing from the clunker's open hood.

With only a handful of flickering electricity to light the nightfall it was impossible to assess the cause of the breakdown, never mind understand how to fix it. Even if Sylar could have seen in the dark (a power he was, regrettably, yet to come across) it turned out neither he or Peter had paid much attention in auto shop. Transmission fuels, engines and wire casings had just never piqued Sylar's curiosity, nor ability, like the rare and unique beauty of timepieces. And Peter, of course, had never taken much interest in anything without a heartbeat.

In reality, it shouldn't have taken too long for their combined telekinesis to drag the broken car out of a ditch, away from the eyes of the road, and into the shadowy treeline to await the light of day. It was the having-to-coordinate-with-each-other part that slowed them down.

It seemed Petrelli was determined to misunderstand Sylar's every direction, until Sylar couldn't help but wonder with each attack on his patience whether it would have been such a bad thing for Peter to have hitch-hiked home, after all. The pair hauled the clunker through facefuls of low-hanging branches, both breathless and sweaty and more irritated each time they tripped on a twig or cruelly placed tree root. When the empath finally ducked away to re-search the car for anything that might take the edge off (a mini tow-truck, maybe? A magic wand? Even a sledgehammer to smash the damn thing to pieces, for all Sylar cared!) he got the distinct impression Peter only went for the escape from his cursing. And when the fumbling sounds stopped and Peter emerged, tousled but looking pleased with himself, holding only a crushed old map, a packet of expired, mushy peanuts and half a bottle of some questionable-looking liquid, Sylar seriously considered whacking him over the head with such junk.

It was hardly a magic wand. Yet Sylar couldn't explain how, barely half an hour later, he felt calmer than he had in years, sitting beside Peter Petrelli in the open trunk of the car, in the middle of a small clearing, the fights forgotten, the mushy peanuts eaten, their legs dangling side by side as they enjoyed a small but cheery campfire crackling on the ground before them.

This certainly wasn't how he'd intended to spend his night. Yet, with invisible crickets singing nearby and the fuzziness of a whiskey jacket to warm him, and when it was dark enough here in the clearing to glimpse stars emerging between branches and dissipating rainclouds like they never quite did in the city, Sylar found he didn't mind the delay as much as he thought he would.

Was this the sort of thing normal people did all the time? Sit with someone sharing a drink under the stars?

"Sorry 'bout the hostage thing."

Sylar wished he could unsay something so vulnerable as soon as it blurted out. But if this superhuman was anything, it was brave in the face of fear. And so he waited it out amid the gentle crackling of the campfire and light tapping of raindrops on the car, preparing himself for another lecture on morality to follow the last.

But Peter just passed him the bottle. "S'alright."

Sylar busied himself taking a sip of whiskey, enjoying the burn on the way down. He'd never been much of a drinker, and despite regeneration nullifying the effects of alcohol he'd swear he felt a little drunk anyway. "I just wanted outta there, fast. I've wasted so much time already..."

"Your father," Peter supplied quietly, saving Sylar from having to find the words, himself.

"He could die before I get the chance to look him in the eyes."

Peter hesitated, revealing his question had burned within him for a while. "What are you hoping to see in there?"

Now that he'd started, it was easier to let the words escape. Sylar watched them float up through moonlit-tipped branches with the rising campfire smoke. "Where I came from, I guess? Why I turned out this way. If he's like me, if he found a way to live with it..." Suddenly extremely aware of observant, hazel eyes upon him, the killer took another, more generous, drink. "I'm just thinking he'll have some answers, that's all."

Claire Bennet's ability be damned. The alcohol was definitely affecting him. How else would it feel simply allowed to talk about things here in the privacy of the forest that he'd normally kill for before confessing?

Peter released him from that gaze to rip a generous chunk out of the crushed old map sitting between the pair. Paper crumpled loudly in his hands before he chucked it onto the dwindling pile of already blackened, burning pages on the ground. It ignited quickly despite the drizzling rain. "Y'know, it's okay to be scared," he said, warming his hands over the fire. That damned Superman "S" on his chest glittered in the light. "But tryna hurt everyone else isn't gonna make you hurt any less."

Sylar's immediate, unnerved reaction was to attack. "What, like you've never done that?" Peter's lips just tightened into something of a patient grimace, and a split-second later Sylar realised without another word being said: of course, Mr Golden Heart had probably never done that. Rather than lash out when wounded, he'd likely dance on rainbows and sprinkle candy for the poor peasants below, for all Sylar knew. He scoffed, the fight leaving him as quickly as it had come. "Well not all of us were born Saints, Peter."

"I'm not a Saint," Peter shot back, and for a moment his voice didn't quite sound like him. "I just don't think my problems are an excuse to bully people."

Bully people? It sounded very childish and embarrassing when put like that. Unbidden, Sylar remembered something Angela Petrelli had called him during his last venture within the labyrinthian halls of Primatech: 'a child starved for attention throwing a temper tantrum'... He wished he couldn't recall how elaborately he'd gone out of his way to terrorize Little Miss Cheerleader and the Ice Queen that night. For the first time, he wondered how many of the security guards he'd killed purely for dramatic effect had left families behind to mourn them.

It all felt very far away, now. Maybe in his prime Sylar had been brutal, sharper, stronger, incensed with the rawness of heartbreak and the energy to do something about it. Back then he'd have made anyone regret calling him a bully, just for funsies. But something had broken the last time he'd died, and hadn't reformed the same. He felt older now. Slower. The perpetual rage that simmered within him, his lifeblood, had remained but been quieter since, more private than it used to be. Like when he'd picked himself up from the ashes of Primatech the man he'd used to be had stayed behind with the shard of glass that had killed him.

Frowning into dancing amber flames (the current extent of his wrath), Sylar was aware of Petrelli shifting in his peripheral vision, searching for a more comfortable position. His shoulder gently jostled Sylar's. "You realise you gave Nathan exactly what he wants, right? Why get off his ass when he can get the entire country hunting us for him?"

"Work smarter, not harder."

"That's Nathan."

"He has a habit of that, doesn't he?" Sylar prodded, grateful for the change of subject. "Throwing you under the bus?" It hadn't escaped his notice that this was the first time so far the other guy had instigated the topic of his brother. Maybe the alcohol was affecting him too? "Siding with your father at Pinehearst, selling you out on the news, kidnapping and hunting you... Why you keep going back to him is beyond me."

No matter how many times he easily accepted the bottle, it didn't lose its novelty when Peter did so again now. "Nathan's always been there for me, even when he's not," he said softly. As if that explained it, like it was law, unshakable, endless.

Sylar chortled. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"He's my brother."

"He's a jackass, Peter."

"Oh yeah, he's a jackass." The pleasant burst of sound beside Sylar startled him, and was over far too soon. His first thought was that Peter's laugh didn't suit him. It was too loud, a little goofy. The next was that he wished he didn't want to chase the illusive thing, just to hear it again. "But I love him."

Sylar watched the younger man drink, his lips touching the place Sylar's had before them, and he didn't gag or flinch or recoil like it was poisoned. He never had.

( )

"Why?"

The only reason Peter didn't punch the other guy in the nose for asking such a thing was because he realised, with a start, that the question was genuine. Behind the usual, arrogant mask sparkled something tentative, a want to understand something deeply confusing for him.

A knot formed tightly in Peter's throat. Hadn't Sylar ever experienced unconditional love?

"There's no 'why'," he explained with difficulty, struggling to recall the last time it didn't hurt to speak of Nathan. "I just do. I can't help it. And I know he loves me too, even with all that's happened."

Something that sounded like a snort nearby hastily morphed into a yawn.

"You don't know him, Sylar. He's not heartless. Okay? He's afraid," Peter insisted. Sylar jabbed a finger at the dying fire, zapping it back to life with a crack of blue that illuminated the clearing like a mini-lightening bolt. "I know how it looks, but I can tell you: right now? He's terrified. For me. For his reputation." Peter glanced sidelong at the other man. "Of you."

Unless he was mistaken, Sylar looked rather pleased at this information.

"Nathan's problem is that he's selfish, even in his generosity. It's just the way he is." The knot slipped down into Peter's rib cage and lodged itself somewhere familiar, close to the heart. It ached now. "He's in too deep and not ready to admit it, but I know he'll come 'round. He always does."

In response, Sylar tugged the whiskey bottle rather roughly from his grasp and lifted it in a toast to the Senator's honour. "As soon as he succeeds in fitting his entire head up his ass." He took a languid swig.

Peter wrapped his arms around himself against a bitterly cold gust of drizzling rain. Somehow defensiveness never flared this time. Honestly, he didn't expect Sylar to understand: how could he if he'd never known such a love, himself, (that knot twinged again at the thought) not to mention Peter was starting to sound less and less sane even to his own ears.

Maybe it was sitting so close that he could almost feel the other man breathing, or the secret solitude of the clearing around them, or simply drinking whiskey on an empty stomach that made it feel easier tonight to voice things to a murderer that Peter had been avoiding even thinking to himself for weeks? Because it hadn't been that long ago, really, that he'd still believed nothing could ever come between him and Nathan. No manner of distance, job titles or girlfriends had made a dent growing up. Even Heidi and the boys hadn't changed things too much between them, which Peter guiltily knew she hadn't always been happy about. It still touched his heart to recall the way Nathan would insist family always comes first, and when Peter reminded him 'they're your family now!' Nathan would just smile, ''course they are', and it never seemed to matter that his wife and kids were the sweetest wife and kids he could have asked for, because everyone knew Nathan's soft spot had always been for Peter.

But now? He hoped no one found out how long he'd held onto the belief that, someday, things might go back to the way they were in a world before abilities. When it had never mattered how many times he fell for the tricks or covered for charming but flimsy excuses: the moment Peter's big brother came back to him to make amends, all the rest just... faded away.

This time, he didn't want to forgive so easy. He still couldn't un-see Nathan flying into the sky and leaving him stranded, both in a Haitian warzone and as Pinehearst burned in the distance, consuming their father's remains. And the memory of Nathan's last hug lingered on him still, sticky and sore like a stain he couldn't wash off.

"I know what he's done, okay, I'm not excusing that." Peter spoke a little huskily, choosing to blame the prickling in his eyes on the wind changing direction and wafting campfire smoke into his face. "But just 'cause I don't like him right now doesn't mean I don't love him. That sounds pretty stupid, huh?"

Avoiding another of those steady, deeply perplexed stares from the killer, Peter tipped his face into the rainy mist of the night. Its touch was soothing as it clung, cold and wet, to his heated skin despite the way it made him shiver.

Much too late, he regretted starting this conversation. His anger was so strong it bruised him internally with the force of keeping it contained. So hurt he felt sick each time he thought of Nathan rounding up innocent people like cattle. But the worst part was he feared, deep down, that if Nathan were somehow to teleport right here into this little clearing, drop to the ground and beg for absolution? Peter wasn't sure he could deny him.

So maybe it was just easier not to think of him at all?

( )

"No matter what he does, you're always going to forgive him, aren't you?"

Having been listening raptly, Sylar said it as soon as the cogs span into place in his mind. He could tell he'd overstepped the mark an instant before Peter dipped his head and the dark veil of his hair fell forward faithfully, concealing him from sight.

Shit. Unstoppable, that same dreadful silence from the drive descended upon them, broken only by the singing of invisible crickets, the whisper of pattering rain all around, and Peter quietly clearing his throat. Mortified at the thought he might be crying, Sylar offered back the whiskey as a peace offering of sorts, but Peter only took it on auto-pilot and this time didn't touch his lips to the tainted bottle.

The desperate, awkward urge to change the subject, pick another fight, confess something, anything – he wasn't sure what – pat the guy on the head, even, overtook Sylar until he felt his own laughter bubble forth from his chest, taking him by surprise.

It was an unexpected, uninhibited sound he hadn't heard from himself in a long time, far too loud in the deserted clearing. When Peter swiped that dew-speckled veil of hair back to investigate, thankfully he looked normal, if curious, and it might have just been rain sparkling on his eyelashes.

"You really are something, Peter." Sylar itched at his own lack of self-control, but if it averted the dreaded prospect of crying and disrupted more silence then there were worse things out there than laughing, right? "You're right. It takes a certain kind of stupid to trust someone like Nathan. Probably the same kind of stupid to end up drinking in the dark in the middle of nowhere with a wanted murderer." He cackled helplessly, in danger of rocking back too far and being swallowed by the depths of the old clunker's trunk.

To Sylar's continued astonishment, the hero's face softened as if relieved from the tension his brother had put there, either at the ludicrousness of the truth or at the giggling, itself, Sylar couldn't be sure. "I guess I'm just not afraid of you." Peter smiled into the bottle, proving this by yet again drinking from the shared glass without breaking their eye contact.

It was the lack of lie-alarm-bells in Sylar's head that sobered him. Suddenly it wasn't a laughing matter to be sitting alone with the only person he'd ever met who knew exactly who he was, held no illusions as to the things he was capable of, and still wasn't afraid of him.

Somewhere far away, the woman Sylar had once called 'mother' was sobbing, telling him he was damned. He heard the tiny breath, the whimper, as Elle recoiled from his last caress. Arthur Petrelli was too proud to cower, but the unmistakable flash of terror glinted in his eye the moment he knew he'd lost. Even Angela, so unbreakable for the rest of the world, shrank back in her seat at the mere sight of him, repulsed and undignified in a way she'd never let herself become for anyone else...

It didn't matter what promises they'd made him, what lies they'd once spun that he was accepted, wanted, that he was trusted. None of it had stopped their fear inevitably rising to the surface, one by one. And and none of it had spared them each from a fate of pain and blood.

When something bottle-shaped tapped against Sylar's knee and waited for him to collect it, he only noticed the handprint bruise marking the empath's wrist, forgotten until now. A manacle of possession, a reminder of the sudden, violent madness that had previously consumed Sylar out of nowhere. It seemed impossible, right here in this moment, to believe Peter would ever set him up for the Company, but the hurt from earlier lingered still, tender like an over-exerted muscle Sylar hadn't used in a long time. He refused to dwell on it purely because, he told himself, it was embarrassing to have reacted so volatile only to have jumped to the wrong conclusion.

'I guess I'm just not afraid of you...'

"Maybe you should be," he said, carefully accepting the whiskey.

( )

Peter hadn't noticed the dull throbbing pain in his wrist until Sylar stared at it, and promptly crossed his arms to hide the bruise from sight.

It wasn't that he was willing to let the killer off the hook for his crimes, nor the pain he'd caused so many. But with every minute together Peter felt it stronger, just being near him, that he did suffer for it. Every day.

"What happened to you?" The empath asked, letting a surge of liquid courage consume him, because it didn't feel risky to ask what surely would have gotten him killed at any other moment than this. He bent forward under the pretence of getting closer to the dampening little campfire, better to catch the other man's eye. "How did you get like this? You must've had a normal life once? A family?"

Sylar didn't answer. Toying absently with the bottle's ripped label, his ebony hair and dew-speckled brows dappled with hundreds of tiny gold diamonds, Peter was struck out of nowhere by just how real and tired the man looked. How human. True, if you didn't count unconsciousness, Peter hadn't slept in days and he doubted Sylar was much better. It was certainly catching up to the empath, but somehow he'd imagined Sylar was impervious to such things as fatigue. He'd never considered that despite all the power in the world this man needed rest just like everyone else. A strangely comforting thought.

"Gabriel Gray?" he continued carefully. "I just have a hard time believing you wanted to be a serial killer when you grew up-"

"I'm not a serial killer," Sylar snapped, so certain of it that Peter only had time to blink, questioning his own logic, before the guy sighed. "Okay, technically I'm a serial killer. But that wasn't exactly the plan."

Half expecting a sarcastic retort to come his way, instead Peter caught the other guy's fleeting, pained expression in the flicker of firelight. Not for the first time, he marvelled at this man's ability to shape-shift so seamlessly between a hundred different faces, and make each so convincing. Were any of them real? Or maybe they were all his true self, bursting through in fragmented pieces? Despite himself, Peter couldn't help but wonder what Sylar might be like were he ever entirely whole.

"That wasn't a life." The killer chuckled hollowly, jabbing another bolt of electricity at the dampening fire, re-igniting it. "Mommy collected snow globes to fill the void Daddy left when he ran to the tobacco store and never came back, as if he couldn't think of anything more cliché. I think I knew they weren't my real parents. They were never like me." Sylar clicked his tongue. "Enter: Papa Suresh."

Listening past the pounding of his own heart, afraid to mishear or interrupt, Peter tried desperately not to picture a young, bespectacled Gabriel sitting alone in a quiet room surrounded by snow globes, abandoned by every parent he'd ever known. No wonder it was so difficult for him to trust. Peter would swear he physically felt the pain that cracked across the other man as he spoke, it held the sense of prying open ancient, rusty hinges. Was this the first time Sylar had ever spoken about his past? Was this the first time anyone had ever asked him?

"It felt like destiny. Chandra showed up outta nowhere with his wild book of theories, promising the power to change the world. Well, Gullible Gabriel Gray, how could he resist?" Lost deep in memories, Sylar spoke sightlessly, picking up speed, apparently unaware he was gripping the whiskey bottle so tightly it might shatter any second. "He said I was special. And I knew it was finally my turn to be somebody. I knew that feeling I'd always had inside me was real, and it meant I was supposed to dosomething, be something... more."

Peter nearly slipped off the edge of the car's open trunk into the campfire.

Fighting the intense, unbearable urge to reach over and touch the other man, ground him with a comfort words simply couldn't provide, assure him that he wasn't alone, Peter settled on rescuing the bottle from Sylar's vice-like grip instead. His fingers brushed the killer's during the handover, surprisingly warm for such a cold night, and that would have to be enough for them both.

"Something extraordinary," he croaked.

Peter felt, more than saw, a tremor of regret and understanding at what he'd just confessed wash over the other man, but he couldn't take it back. Peter wouldn't want him to, anyway. Perhaps something showed in his face, then, because Sylar seemed to snap back to himself and looked away over the dark clearing.

Watching the final dregs of amber liquid swirling around the bottom of the bottle, Peter felt queasy all of a sudden. The alcohol burned in his throat, sloshed inside his painfully empty stomach and made the forest spin hazily around him. Maybe he was a little drunk, or maybe he really was out of his mind.

Were they the same? Had he and Sylar really been out there once, unaware of each other, both wanting to change the world? Could Gabriel's dreadful fate possibly have been Peter's, if only for the luck of the draw in abilities?

Maybe they weren't that different. Maybe Peter was just as damaged and abandoned as the killer sitting right beside him: two masochists swept up in a desperate escape from the cage of normal life. Because Sylar was right and nobody was forcing Peter to stay. Yet here he was, despite a recent front row seat to the terrorising of innocent people, and secretly he still wondered whether he might not survive this man in the end, but none of this changed the fact that although Peter knew he should be terrified right now, he wasn't. And although he had every reason to pack it all in and go his separate ways from Sylar, he didn't want to leave him.

And as certainly as he had once known he could fly, that his brother wasn't lost to him forever, Peter knew it was already too late to go back to what they were before tonight.

"It doesn't matter who I was, Peter."

The familiar voice drew Peter back to the misty clearing like a lifeline out of dreams.

"Gabriel Gray is dead. He died a long time ago." Sylar's profile was striking in the firelight, strong in a way Peter had never noticed before. He looked like a survivor. Like the closest he'd ever been to the man from the future. "He was the first person I ever killed."

And when the killer turned his deep, dark eyes upon him, steady and serene and not a hint of emotion escaped his impeccable control this time, Peter believed him.

( )

"It's a shame." When another of those small, sad smiles came Sylar's way, he found the asymmetry of it wasn't as jarring on that face as the last time he'd seen it. "I'd have liked to meet him."

And that was that, it seemed. With a jaw-breaking yawn, the empath clambered stiffly out of the open trunk, stumbling a little as the alcohol caught up to him. He steadied himself quickly and climbed into the back seat of the car, and Sylar was pleased he'd withheld the offer of help that had sprung unbidden to the tip of his tongue.

For a moment he simply sat there alone, accompanied by the perpetual pattering of rain and the creaking of branches overhead. There was a small part, a secret box, safe in an abandoned corner of Sylar's mind that still belonged to Gabriel, he realised. Because it couldn't help but wonder (shy and self-conscious of its desperation) what Peter might have thought of him had he truly met him back then.

Blinking away the after-image of that crooked little smile, Sylar rose on numb limbs, stamped out the remains of the campfire and followed Peter into the car.

The clunker provided a pathetically weak reprieve from the open air. It was hardly any warmer in here and the pinging raindrops sounded magnified on the roof, but it felt more private. Everything was closer. Sylar creaked the driver's seat into as much of a recline as it could take, pondering whether that fringe-lined denim jacket he'd left back at the laundromat couldn't have been salvaged into a blanket, after all. The silence stretched again over a taut few minutes, maybe longer, but this time it was more awkward than stifling. Sylar wondered if it was only him or if Peter, too, didn't want to be the first to fall asleep. To willingly let down his guard.

They only had a few hours to steal some rest: the plan was to set off again as soon as there was light enough for Sylar's intuitive aptitude to examine the old clunker's innards. But despite exhaustion and whiskey weighing down his limbs like lead, the killer's spinning thoughts refused to let him sleep.

"If I'd left with you in Pinehearst, when we thought we were brothers?" Sylar's sudden, unplanned question sounded too loud in the tin can of the car. "Would you have forgiven me like you forgive Nathan?"

While his heart raced, he found himself praying Peter was already asleep and hadn't heard him. But then a very awake, very certain voice answered him, "I never believed that."

Frowning, Sylar propped himself up on an elbow to look into the back seat for the first time, to see Peter curled along it, his head propped on the make-shift pillow of his arm. Hazel eyes opened and focused upon Sylar behind that stubborn veil of his hair, spilling dark and silky over his face as ever. Perhaps it was the way he'd said it that made Sylar forget to consult his lie-detector power this time.

"But you stayed," he accused, uncaring that confusion had to be scrawled across his face. "You came back for me. They were gonna kill you. Why would you do that if I wasn't family?"

Peter just shrugged, his lips curving a little at the working side. "'Cause you came back for me."

Sylar turned again to lay flat on his back, the damp-speckled interior of the car and gentle tap of raindrops on the roof very intriguing all of a sudden.

Tap-tap-tap. 'I wasn't gonna leave you.' Tap-tap-tap. 'I know what he's done, I'm not excusing that.' Tap-tap-tap. 'I guess I'm just not afraid of you.' Tap-tap-tap. 'Just 'cause I don't like him right now doesn't mean I don't love him.'

It didn't make any sense. He didn't make sense. How could Peter move past the bad and ugly in order to forgive, again and again? How could he love someone even if, at times, he didn't like them? And how could he trust someone in full knowledge of their scars, knowing he'd only get hurt again? Yet, somehow, he did. Like it was easy, as natural as breathing, like he didn't even know that this maddening ability he possessed was the rarest treasure of them all, that it should be impossible.

And in the back of Sylar's mind, a small voice couldn't help but wonder. Maybe it would be different this time. Maybe it could only be him. Maybe it was always going to be.

No more than minutes had passed when Sylar suddenly noticed the little hero had weaseled out of answering his question, but when he rolled over again to confront the back seat, it took him a second to discern that Peter was asleep.

Then Sylar found himself fully awake, having forgotten anything he was about to say. So. He had succeeded in out-lasting Petrelli and won their game. Unless, that was, the other guy had never been playing.

Unable to shake the feeling he was intruding upon something he didn't deserve, Sylar couldn't help but watch as Peter simply slept, shivered and breathed in his dreams, that stupid front lock of hair fluttering where it lay across his face. It felt... weird, to be privy to something so vulnerable. Weird, but not unpleasant. Sure enough, only Peter Petrelli could drift off in the middle of nowhere beside his own murderer, Sylar mused, stricken by a sudden responsibility he hadn't felt even when carrying the guy out of that motel and the clutches of government agents. Because this time he was unconscious by choice. This time Peter had chosen to trust him.

If only Sylar could understand why.

And secretly, he knew it had been this all along: the intrigue. The addictive, unsolvable challenge of something that simply refused to be decoded, keeping him hooked all those times before, even making him agree to Peter's company here on the road so he could study it up close. Because he'd seen no trace of fear in those eyes for a while now, and just as Gabriel had once been tempted by a promise, how could Sylar resist the lure of a defect that shouldn't work yet did, anyway? How could he deny the desperate need to know how it worked? To learn what truly made it tick?

Or maybe it really was just stupidity.

Slowly, Sylar reached into the back seat. He could kill him. Easily. It might even be merciful to spare them both the inevitable pain of betrayal down the line. Peter didn't wake when Sylar finally, carefully flicked that front lock of hair away from tickling his nose, more for his own satisfaction than the sleeping man's, he suspected. There was a strange freedom to be had in studying the hero free from observation of those damned, judgemental eyes of his, yet Sylar was surprised to note he missed them.

Firmly, he settled back in his own seat, resisting the wild urge to cover the younger man in one of their still-drying jackets as well, and tried to get comfortable. Eventually the rain stopped pattering outside and blackness leaked over the last touches of twilight in the sky, and all the while Sylar didn't look back again even once, willing sleep to come take him. But no amount of counting sheep could tune out the sound of Peter Petrelli's breathing behind him, slow and soft and steady, un-ignorable in a way it never had been before tonight.

( )( )( )

The front door was open. He let himself inside.

The kitchen was the same, so was the waffle-iron, the plates, the apron. Gabriel beamed from ear to ear when he saw him, crossed the room in a few, long strides, and enveloped Peter in the warmth of his arms. "Peter, it's so good to see you! It's been so long."

It felt just like it had last time to be held by him now, and Peter couldn't help that he felt safe in the man's strong, secure embrace.

Then when Gabriel pulled back, he was Sylar. His glasses and apron had disappeared and the soft grey hoodie was replaced by a stolen, black tailored fit shirt. But still he cupped Peter's face affectionately, and the smile he wore was the same. "If I knew you were coming, I'd have made extra." Numb, Peter followed the man over to the kitchen island, but the stool was empty and the little boy in pyjamas wasn't there.

"Where's Noah?" Peter asked, finally finding his voice.

"Who?" Sylar chuckled at the mistake, a familiar rumbling sound that Peter recognised easily.

He opened his mouth to elaborate, but as soon as he did the question was lost to him. Sylar beckoned him to a plate. "What's the magic word?" he grinned, and Peter responded automatically with "abracadabra". Sylar chuckled again when Peter approached ("well, that's a magic word") and when the waffle iron opened he saw blueberry pancakes and snow globes poured out instead.

Little footsteps slapped on the tile flooring, and a child giggled as he ran into the room. Peter could only watch, unable to move, as the young boy clambered onto a stool and heartily tucked into his pancakes, pushing his too-big, too-heavy magnifying glasses up his nose. His little red tricycle was nowhere in sight, but with the catching of his heart, Peter still recognised four year old Gabriel Gray.

He tried to warn him, but no sound came out. So he turned to Sylar instead, to make him swear to protect Gabriel, but Sylar wasn't there. Instead there stood the vague, dark shadow of an older man wheezing as he breathed and smoking around the edges, as if engulfed in a cloud of rancid cigarettes. The shadow didn't need a face in order to be Samson Gray, Peter knew it in his gut, but he couldn't intervene or make a sound when Samson walked away from Gabriel, leaving the boy to cry quietly into his pancakes.

Furious, something snapped and set Peter free to chase the shadow. He grabbed the man and hauled him around, only to be met by the sombre face of his own brother. Peter tripped backwards but there was nowhere to go, just Nathan's arms around him, holding him still for the needle and faceless agents to close in on him from behind –

Reality crashed in like a bucket of ice water, throwing Peter back into consciousness gasping for breath. He awoke with a force to rival a prophetic dream, although could tell before recalling which ability he held currently that this hadn't been one. Just a nightmare.

Immediately, Peter remembered where he was, even before the odd darkness made sense around him and the freezing stiffness of his limbs sank in. Jesus.

He'd never expected his reaction to waking up in a stolen car in a forest with Sylar to be one of relief, yet it was. Strange, how that feeling kept creeping up on him. The other man appeared to be asleep, at least from what Peter could see of the tousled back of his hair and the steady rise and fall of his chest. It was enough of him to be grateful for the real, living iteration rather than the dream spectres responsible for the tears currently stinging Peter's eyes.

Like a prophecy, like a lost future no one else would ever see, the dream lingered even though it was gone. Waking up didn't change the fact that Nathan had turned his back on Peter, on them. And it didn't save little Gabriel from having been abandoned by every family he'd ever known, or enduring a thousand more tortures that broke him into the man whose light snoring currently steadied the racing of Peter's heart.

And right then and there, Peter realised that they were in this thing together. It might be too late for little Gabriel from the past, and for Noah in the future, and it was Peter's fault. But that didn't mean it was too late to salvage Sylar a better life than this one, and if Peter couldn't save what was left of him this time, if Sylar fell again, then Peter was destined to fall with him, too. And maybe that had been his fate all along?

Swiping at his eyes, Peter shivered and tugged his discarded, still-slightly-damp jacket from the back shelf of the car, draping it around himself. He was so cold he could see his breath fogging in front of his face. After a moment's deliberation, he decided against throwing the other jacket over Sylar. At least he was immortal. He might wake up grumpy, but at least he'd wake up as something other than an ice cube.

Exhaustion still clinging to him like cobwebs, Peter rolled over on the backseat and curled up as best he could, drifting to the thought of strong arms holding him tight, keeping him warm. He fell asleep before learning who they belonged to.

A/N: Apologies for the delayed update yet again, I had some tech troubles so at least it wasn't all my fault this time (it was mostly my fault XD), but I hope you found this chapter to be worth the wait!

It's about time these two just sat down, got over themselves, and realised they have more in common than they might have expected, don't you think? I think they deserve it as much as we do after being robbed of any post-Villains moments in the show hehe

I hope you enjoyed our boys' quiet reprieve and heart-to-heart as much as I did writing it, but don't worry, we'll be back on the road next chapter where plenty more action and drama awaits X)

Thank you for your patience as always, and I'm so grateful you're still with me and my story so far!