Brackets (3/3)
title: Brackets
fandom: Heroes
summary: When Matt Parkman has a vision of Elle Bishop holding a key to the end of the manhunt, he urges the others to devise a plan to save Elle from her death. What Matt doesn't tell them, however, gives way to another, more complicated journey for Elle Bishop, along with making her a larger target if Sylar were to find everything out.
characters: Elle Bishop, Peter Petrelli, Claire Bennet + main ensemble (to a lesser degree)
genre: Action/Drama/Friendship/General
rating: T
note: Spoilers up through 3x24, AU from Volume Four. I am suddenly very nervous about this part. So here it is, I hope you've enjoyed the series, and well, here's hoping my crazy plot bunnies are crazy tired from this story to the point where they'll let me rest for awhile. ;)
~*~Peter had called his brother in for a favor, but Nathan had lost the lot of his life due to Sylar taking over so much of it, that Peter had to turn to his mother. Angela Petrelli was far from pleased that his son was out of the country, aiding Elle Bishop, but she couldn’t leave him hapless. Not if she wanted a good night’s sleep. So she said she would give Noah Bennet an envelope with money and passports to give to Peter when Noah briefly met with him for Claire.
“Peter, thank you,” Noah shook Peter’s hand, expressing gratitude for him once again saving his daughter’s life.
“Don’t mention it,” Peter genuinely smiled.
Claire had already gone to her dad’s car and sat down, still irritated at the manner she was treated.
“Your mother told me to give you this,” Noah said, pulling out an envelope from his jacket.
Peter took the envelope without looking at the contents, trusting that his mother gave him what he needed.
“No one knows where you are, right Peter?”
“I just told my mom I was out of the country. Just…don’t drill Claire about where we were.”
“I won’t fight you on that. The minimal amount of people who know about the girl’s whereabouts, the best. Good luck, Peter.”
They shook hands again, Peter waved Claire and Noah off, and he transported to the hotel room where they had stayed overnight.
*
When Peter returned, Elle was sitting cross-legged on the bed with baby Mason playing with a toy on her lap.
“How’d it go?” Elle asked, flipping the channels.
“Good. She’s with her dad now.”
“Sure it was her dad?”
Peter sat on the edge of the bed, his back half turned to her.
“Yes, Elle, it was Noah.”
Elle turned off the television abruptly, and Peter felt the bed move beneath him. Elle stood from the bed, carried Mason from the bed to the floor where she had spread out a blanket and some pillows, and sat next to Peter.
In a low voice, she said, “he could find us so easily. And…I think he knows about the baby. You said Sylar could see the history of the object or whatever. He was in the house full of memories.”
Elle’s eyes shifted between his nervously, more nervous than he had ever seen her.
“I can’t promise anything, Elle, but I’m going to do my best so he never hurts Mason.”
Elle mustered up a smile, which she offered to him for a millisecond, then she knelt down onto the floor to be near Mason.
*
Elle walked around the apartment three times, examining the two bedrooms she considered so small, that together they would not make a decent-sized bedroom. It was even smaller than the bedroom in the facility she had lived in for so many years of her life. Three times she went around, scowling at the half kitchen, half living room and the restroom squeezed into the corner of the supposed living room.
“Elle,” Peter stopped Elle from pacing another time by pulling her arm, “when I leave, you’ll have an extra bedroom. And in time, maybe you’ll be able to afford one of the larger apartments upstairs.”
Elle rolled her eyes and yanked her arm from Peter’s.
“I’m getting a job,” she announced. She wasn’t throwing an idea out there, suggesting something, or proving a point by saying something one may consider ridiculous. It was a fact.
“I’m getting a job,” Peter rushed to say, “you’re going to stay with your son.”
“I’m done just standing by. Fine, I can’t fight Sylar, at least not yet. And you won’t let me help the people getting captured. On top of all that, we have to stay low-key because we’re getting hunted like animals. But you can’t stop me from actually living and doing stuff to help my son. I’m getting a job.”
Peter saw her point, understood it, but he didn’t know how both of them could get jobs without them getting a babysitter for Mason. It could be dangerous to entrust a child born from two humans with extraordinary abilities to an…ordinary individual.
Peter mulled over the situation for a moment, and came to the only conclusion he could.
“I’ll find a job where I can work grave shifts. You’ll find something where they can work you in the morning or the afternoon shifts. We’ll take turns.”
“But, then I’ll only get to see him late in the day.” As the words left her mouth, Elle found that the idea of not seeing her son around the clock sounded so strange to her own ears. How could she go missing something she wouldn’t be seeing for some hours when she had previously lived so long without it?
“Okay,” Elle said, ignoring her previous statement, unsure what to make of the thoughts in her head. She still was having a hard time getting used to Mason.
Peter noted the confusion playing out over her face, and it were these rare moments in which Elle was so completely stuck in that state of knowing and not knowing what her life suddenly was, that he was reminded of how saving her had been a good thing--and not for the reason Matt had given them. That was a plan, a way to expand the blueprint. This was humanizing. This and Mason.
Then Elle broke into a smile, a wide bright smile, and she leaped from her toes into Peter’s arms, and squealed, “I’m going to find a job!”
She jumped back out of his arms, twirled around until locating his jacket, and jogged to the door.
“Watch Mason,” she instructed, and with an affirmative gesture from him, she ran out of the door and out to find herself a job.
*
It may have taken Elle a few days to find a job (a lifetime to her, and extremely quick to Peter), but people appeared less eager to give Peter a job, that is until Elle told him, “I told this one lady that I just had a kid and I needed to support him, blah, blah, and she referenced me to another lady whose son owns the antique store I’m working at.”
Right, the kid aspect. But Peter wasn’t up to guilt-tripping people into giving him a job--not that he thought Elle did it purposely, but he knew from experience she was a little too clever with some things.
After a couple of weeks, Peter found a job in none other than the same hotel where he had spent a night the day he arrived there with Elle and Claire. They gave him a job as the night custodian, and it was a bit of a distance from the apartment where he was staying, but it wasn’t something he couldn’t handle.
Right from his first night on the job, however, he missed the relaxation of spending the day with Mason. Peter liked a good, honest, hard-working job. He liked feeling useful and all. But after two weeks of watching Mason, feeding him, playing with him, soothing him as he cried, and changing diapers, no work felt so hard but satisfying. He found himself wanting to stay just some minutes longer with Mason before leaving to work, but as soon as Elle would get to the apartment, she would pick Mason up and spend every minute possible with the little boy. Not that he blamed her--Mason was after all, her son. Besides, that boy lit up Elle’s face more than when she had the opportunity to use her electricity.
*
Elle flipped on the lights of the apartment when she walked in to find it completely obscure.
From the sofa, she saw Peter sit up abruptly and she laughed.
Peter rubbed his eyes and squinted in the direction of Elle until his eyes adjusted to the lights.
“Taking a nap?” Elle questioned.
“Noah…he fell asleep and I put him in his crib. I just laid down on the couch for a second…I must have knocked out.”
Elle grinned, threw her keys on the kitchen counter, and raided the refrigerator. She took out a few ingredients to make a sandwich and proceeded to make herself one.
“Want a sandwich?” she asked as she sliced a tomato.
“No, I’m fine, thanks. How was work?”
Elle pulled the knife from the tomato, and raised her hand with knife in hand so it paralleled her head. Nonchalantly she told him, “almost got fired.”
Peter stood from the sofa at her statement and casually walked over to the kitchen counter so as to not scare her off.
“Fired?”
“Yep. Mr. Bridges told me I was being way too friendly with the customers. I’m getting a reputation with his female customers, he said.”
Peter stuck his hands in his pockets, and cringed at that. “Flirting with the male customers?”
“How’d you know?” she inquired with a smile, as if she were proud of her flirting. She brought the knife back down and set it to the side.
“A hunch,” he waved it off. “You should be more careful, Elle. Aggravating customers like that…”
“I was flirting, Peter. How is that aggravating?”
She leaned over the counter and gazed at him intently, genuinely seeking an answer as to how flirting could be in any way, bad.
“It gives people the wrong impression. Like you’re interested in a person, despite any relationships they could be involved in. And at work, you gotta be professional, Elle.”
“Hmm,” Elle vocalized. She pushed herself off the counter, and went back to making her sandwich, and amidst doing this, she said, “okay, I get it now.”
Peter watched her fingers fold the ham and put it on a slice of bread, and then she gently took to laying the lettuce over the ham, when she said, “thanks for the answer, Peter. Sometimes people talk to me like I won’t understand what they’re saying, so I’m told to just trust them…which is annoying.”
Peter trailed his eyes up to her face, surprised at her confession. A confession he understood very well. Getting treated like an adult was something he still had to fight for a lot. But her admittance of this reminded him of something he had on his mind for a long time, but never got the courage to ask.
“Do you still question us telling you that Sylar would have killed you?”
Elle’s hand immediately stopped moving. She stared at the nearly, but not yet, finished sandwich-in-progress for several seconds, before her mouth twisted in a half-smile, half-frown.
She brushed back her hair, licked her lips, and slowly met Peter’s eyes.
“I believed it the moment Noah told me. I was half-unconscious and I could hear Mohinder screaming something over Noah, but all I had to hear was Noah saying that Sylar was going to kill me before the next morning for me to believe it.”
Elle looked back down, finished her sandwich, grabbed a napkin, wrapped half of it around the sandwich’s lower half, and set it down. She looked back at Peter.
“That’s how little faith I had in Gabriel. None of it was real,” she blinked furiously suddenly, “we were just stuck in a bubble, like they say, and even in that bubble I knew everything could end with a snap of his fingers.”
She blinked a few more times, slapped on a smile, picked up her sandwich, stepped around the kitchen, and brushed past him. Peter caught her forearm, and she turned around to face him.
“What?” she sniped.
“You always made it sound like you didn’t believe that Sylar would kill you.”
“I didn’t believe. I did believe. It depends on the day.”
Exasperated, Peter furrowed his brows at Elle and frustratingly said, “Elle…”
“I don’t know, Peter!” she screamed. “When I was half-unconscious, I had no doubt that Noah was telling the truth. But when I recovered, and I was sitting in that cold room Mohinder and Noah had stuffed me in, and they were telling me what would have been…I couldn’t believe them!”
“But you’ve gone along with it so far.”
Elle laughed at this. “Because I don’t want Mason to be like me! To not trust anyone but his daddy. To grow up dysfunctional. To not know about personal space. I don’t want him to wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares about him being tested on because of some powers! I don’t want him to be running when he could be finding himself!”
Peter took half a step back, because as she screamed, bolts of electricity jilted free from her body, a few even shocking him in his place. He stopped himself from showing any indication of affliction from her jolts, but his step back was pure reflexes. Elle didn’t notice.
Elle’s screams stopped, but a few tears escaped her eyes. She made no effort to wipe them from her face. She only gave Peter half a smile as the electricity dwindled from her. Then she looked down at her sandwich, realized it had mostly gone to waste from over-frying, cursed below her breath at the sandwich, and walked back to the kitchen.
Peter watched her as she threw it away and took to making herself another one. She never looked back at him, but she was clearly nervous under his stare. When he realized this, he stepped away and went to check on Mason.
**
The nightmares were what most scared Peter.
He realized that Elle’s tantrums (those moments where she just screamed, remarked at everything with cynical words, or was overly hyper) were abnormal. During the tantrums, he would usually take Mason to another room, not wanting Elle to lash out at Mason. Not that she had done anything extreme…yet. Her tendency to spark when she was too temperamental, he realized, was a reflex all her own. Fortunately, she always pent up her frustration to only act out when she was at home. This meant Peter reaped the lot of the consequences from her anger, but so far they had just been mild sparks. Some days, he feared she would lash out when he wasn’t there--just Mason. A grown adult would have trouble taking the jolts. A baby could not handle them in the least.
Still, Elle hardly ever used her powers when Mason was in sight (this was her fear of Mason being like her restraining her), and along with the fact that her tantrums were gradually dimming, he had faith she wouldn’t accidentally hurt the baby.
It was really the nightmares that would not dim.
He remembered that as he dropped Claire off with her dad, Claire warned her about Elle’s nightmares.
They were intense. When she was pregnant, they weren’t quite as intense, but as soon as she gave birth, the screams and the flickering lights at night pierced through the house.
Sometimes Claire would run to Elle’s room and find Elle gripping the mattress so hard, her fingers tore through the fabrics. Other times, Elle’s body would be vibrating with electricity, and Claire came to the realization that Elle’s nightmares were the reason she insisted on the baby never sleeping with her. The baby always had to sleep at the opposite end of the room in a crib. And Elle didn’t like it, but she strongly opposed any suggestion of the baby sleeping in the same bed with her.
Peter came to see all of these things for himself, and eventually, Elle herself asked Peter if Mason could sleep in the same room with him. He obliged, but he wished he could do more. Childhood trauma was what afflicted most troubled adults, and from her nightmares, Peter saw that her traumatizations manifested most in her sleep.
When he finally asked her what she was so plagued with, why her nightmares frequented her so often, she spilled the truths in a quick motion.
He knew about the blackouts she caused in the and the birthday she spent in a glass room with an IV of lithium in her arm, but he didn’t know about the several birthdays she spent in similar rooms, testing wracking her body at her father’s bidding. He didn’t know about the mother who had abandoned Elle with her father, afraid of both of them. He didn’t know that all she had ever wanted was to make her daddy happy.
“I’m sorry,” he had told her when she finished, and as always, she plastered on a smile and rolled her eyes, called him silly for apologizing as if it had been his fault, and that, that never sat well with him. She just pushed it all off and lived in such denial. The nightmares would never stop if she never faced them. The tantrums would always return if she didn’t forgive the self she became over her father’s doing.
And this he finally told her the night before he left her to be on her own. In response, her shoulders drooped and she said, “you’re leaving, huh?”
“Yes,” he answered truthfully, “before the sun comes up.”
She flitted her eyes from the floor to his eyes.
“I’m not a good person, Peter. Even if I forgave myself, it wouldn’t mean anything.”
She was so somber in that moment, he nearly convinced himself to stay just another day.
“You’re doing good by Mason. You haven’t hurt him and you obviously love him. You’ve kept your job and haven’t tried hurting anyone. Just keep doing good, Elle, and you’ll see that you do mean something.”
In the small time he spent with her, and the many things he shared and told her, he hoped that was the thing that stayed with her. He hoped it was that thing that stayed with her so that the nightmares could finally leave.
**
It had all been a learning process leading her to figuring out a life in which she had to watch after another person.
Throughout her pregnancy and after Mason’s birth, someone had been there, holding her hand. She supposed she had to do the hand holding for someone this time, and that chance wasn’t an option. If she wanted to protect her son and keep him away from Sylar, independence was not an option but rather the only way to go.
***
two years later
Elle wiped her hands on her apron when she felt the sudden urge to look out of the diner she was working at. That’s when she spotted him.
She smiled to herself and didn’t bother to notify her supervisor that she was running out for a second. She just ran to the door, threw it upon, and jogged up to him. It wasn’t hard to spot him down the street since the sidewalks were practically empty anyway.
She hugged him from behind, and heard him grunt in surprise. She let him go so he could turn around, and the contorted face of confusion that twisted into a grin just washed back a rush of familiarity that did her system good.
“Peter!” she yelled happily, and threw her arms back around him.
Peter was stiff in her embrace for a moment, but he cautiously returned her hug. He pulled his head back and studied her.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Working, silly.”
“What are you doing in California?”
“Oh,” she laughed, “I got tired of hiding. Plus, you said I had to face my past, blah, blah. I couldn’t do that in Canada.”
Peter raised his eyes at her, then remembered that he was still holding her. He retracted his arms and breathed in.
“What about…Mason’s father?”
“Mason doesn’t have a father,” Elle sneered. She relaxed back into a smile, and told him again, “I got tired of hiding.”
“So you returned to the states? When?”
“Just like six months ago. I had to save a lot--a lot of money. Do you know how expensive it is to live here?”
Peter chuckled at that. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, so I had to stop buying clothes. But now I’m back.”
“And Mason?”
Elle gleamed at him. “You want to see him?”
Peter ran the proposition over in his head. It was far from safe for Elle to be in the states. Even more dangerous for her to be seen with him.
The streets of California and states of the like were more vacant for a reason.
“Please Peter?” she pleaded, and he found it hard to say no to that.
*
Elle strolled over to her son, who was watching cartoons, poked him, and the boy jumped into his mother’s arms the instant he saw her.
Peter blinked a few times, surprised at how much Mason had grown. He had sand-ish blonde hair, with a few curly tresses near his forehead, larger blue eyes, and bigger hands. His nose was still exactly like his mother’s.
“Hey Mason, this is Peter. He’s mommy’s friend.”
Mason stuck by his mother, arms around her neck, as he looked Peter up and down. After a minute, the little boy waved and gave him a small smile. Peter looked at the little boy in awe and slowly walked over to him.
“Hey Mason,” Peter greeted him as he knelt down to the boy’s level, “it’s nice seeing you again.”
“Peter used to take care of you a whole lot when you were a baby,” Elle explained.
Mason was a little too young to really comprehend that, but Peter looked far from anything less than friendly.
“Hi!” the boy yelled and hurdled into Peter’s arms. Just like his mother.
**
All it took was one day. The day after Peter went to see Mason.
Elle walked into her apartment, and it wasn’t abnormal for it to be so quiet. It was around Mason’s naptime, and his babysitter was usually the quiet type.
It took Elle four minutes to realize the babysitter wasn’t watching her son. She threw her keys on the kitchen table, went to the kitchen for a drink, picked up some scattered toys in the living room, and then went on to her son’s room.
Sylar knelt by Mason’s bed, watching the boy sleep soundly. Her heart stopped, and it resumed beating when she remembered her logic. She had been expecting this since the day Noah faked her death. She had expected Sylar to take her son away. She had expected to fight. Instead, she was frozen. She could hear her telling herself to do something, to fight, to…but her body wouldn’t move.
Sylar looked up from Mason to Elle, and grinned.
“Mason, huh?” he probed.
“You leave him--” Elle began when Mason stirred.
Both Elle and Sylar turned their attention to Mason. His eyes sprung open, and he stared widely at the ceiling, then shifted his eyes to Sylar. Sylar watched Mason ever so carefully as he sat up in bed, his eyes on Sylar.
Mason’s eyes then turned to Elle, Elle’s whose own eyes were dilated and mouth hung open, the fear and tension clearly written on her face and over her body. Mason looked back at Sylar, and shockingly he jumped into Sylar’s arm.
Elle gasped when this happened, surprised and confused at what was occurring. Whatever it was, Sylar seemed to be enjoying this.
“Boy’s got good instinct,” he muttered as he held Mason close to his chest with an eye on Elle.
Elle’s hands balled in two fists. Sylar grinned from ear to ear, meanwhile raising a finger in the direction of Elle, and that was his last movement before Sylar’s features were frozen in stone.
Mason slipped his fingers from Sylar as the stone crept from Sylar’s legs to his torso, from his arms, to his head. Mason ran to his mother, looked up at her, then ran out of the room. Her own eyes were still fixated on the stone Sylar had become, and she realized why the second before she walked into that diner where she would tell Claire, Noah, and Angela Petrelli that she was pregnant, Angela placed her hand on the small of Elle’s back, pressed one hand to the diner’s door, and whispered close to Elle’s ear, “name him Mason”.
It was strange and Elle had no idea what the older woman had meant by that.
On another day, Claire told Elle that Angela had visions of the future in her dreams.
On the day her son was born, Elle put together that Angela had meant for Elle to name her son Mason, and Elle liked the name enough to give it to him.
On another day after that, Elle decided to check the meaning of “Mason”.
On this day, she put together that her son was a mason.
She just had to finish the job. She balled up her right hand, concocted a strong jolt of electricity, made another strong bolt in her other hand, put her hands together, and shot out at the stone that was Sylar. She blasted at the stone until it completely disintegrated, and then she fell to her knees.
*
Peter came two minutes too late to the battle, but everything was done by then anyway.
He rubbed Elle’s arms, sighed, and picked up the remaining disintegrated pieces of Sylar.
“Elle, you alright?”
She didn’t respond.
“I’m going to take Mason out for a bit, okay?”
At that, Elle just uttered, “okay.”
*
Peter had the instinct to leave the apartment building with Mason through the back alley stairs. That should have been his first clue.
When he made it outside, he heard Elle yell, and then he spotted a conspicuous black truck parked by the street. He zoomed his hearing in to Elle’s apartment, and he could hear them carrying Elle out of the building, could hear the cocking of the rifles, and the search of the other rooms. They were looking for Mason. And Peter couldn’t let them find Mason. It didn’t leave room for him to get Elle by then.
**
Peter vigilantly kept looking over his shoulder and at his surroundings as he knocked once, twice, thrice.
The door opened and Claire stared at Peter in surprise and irritation.
“Jesus Peter, you want to make my apartment the focus of my neighbor’s attention,” she whispered harshly, but then her eyes fell to the hand Peter was holding.
“Um, come in,” she whispered and Peter walked in with the little boy.
When the door closed, Peter eyed Claire to tell her, “this is Mason, Elle’s boy.”
Claire broke into a small smile, and she leaned down. “Hey, Mason. I’m Claire. You know, I was there when you were born.”
The little boy stared up at her with wide eyes, and he inched closer to Peter. Claire looked back over at Peter and she asked, “what’s going on, where’s Elle?”
Peter rubbed his mouth and looked at Mason. “You have someplace he can play?” he asked Claire.
Claire looked around the small space of her place.
“I have the smallest backyard,” she laughed, “and there’s a ball or two that some kids threw in the other day. Keep forgetting to give them back.”
*
“He’s gotten so big,” Claire said as she watched Mason play with the balls.
Peter nodded, not really listening to her. He paced Claire’s living room, mad at himself for not retrieving Elle.
“Peter, you had to get Mason to a safe place.”
Peter shook his head. “I could have transported him. I could have gotten Elle. I--”
“From what you told me, Peter, they already had Elle when you realized what was happening. They knocked her out and were already leaving with her.”
Peter stopped pacing and collapsed on Claire’s couch.
“When is Hiro executing the plan?”
“Last I heard, our inside man defected.”
“How long, Claire?”
“Hiro isn’t sure. We were depending on our insider for the prisoner lock codes. Without them, it would take too long to free everyone without the enforcers ganging up on us and the media catching on to further slander us. And your brother--”
“Sylar’s dead.”
Claire was sure she’d heard wrong. “Sylar’s what?”
“Elle killed him. Just before she got captured.”
“Peter, that’s it!” Claire exclaimed.
“What?”
Claire had to stop herself from slapping Peter upside his head for not seeing the solution.
“Nathan can get his life back. The real Nathan can run for presidency. The real Nathan can air all of those tapes we’ve collected on how they treat us, and how they’ve lied about our purpose. He can finally prove the world that people with superhuman abilities are still human.”
**
But there was still the other obstacle at hand--the imprisonment of the real Nathan in the first and foremost camp of those with abilities.
They couldn’t waste any time, Peter knew this. They had to release Nathan as soon as possible, and that required Peter to do something he never wished to do, but everyone had to make their sacrifices.
Peter closed his eyes, not wanting to see the transformation until he had to, chanting to himself that he had to do this. For his brother, for all those prisoners, for all of those families who had lost their loved ones because of ignorance and a smear campaign against people like him, Peter.
When he felt the transformation to be complete, Peter walked toward the closet mirror, trailed his eyes up from the reflection of his feet, all the way up to the face. He flinched at the face staring back at him, and revulsion twisted in his stomach.
He had thought he would never have to see Sylar again, but there he was, staring at him in his reflection.
Peter looked away from the mirror, took a deep breath, and left Claire’s apartment before she noticed that he had already shape shifted. Because he knew she would want to go with him, but he wasn’t going to waste time looking for someone else to look after Mason when he was already in the capable hands of Claire.
Claire made it clear to him that with Sylar gone, all they needed to do was get Peter’s brother to show the tapes of people getting beat up, killed, tortured--sometimes in front of their families--by the government that was actually working under the hand of a mass murderer, Sylar. And Peter could only think of one way of getting that done.
Peter had to become Sylar, go to Danko to show him that he (Sylar) was alive. Thereafter, he would go to the camp disguised as Nathan Petrelli, go to Nathan’s isolation room, free him and the others, and with Matt Parkman’s help, they would gather the press and show the videos Micah had taped.
*
“Danko.”
Danko let out a sigh and slowly turned to Sylar.
“Where have you been?” Danko muttered.
Peter ruminated over how to answer, and already this was requiring too much concentration from him.
“Do I answer to you,” Peter said as forcefully as he could.
Danko stared at him for a good second before biting the inside of his cheek and through gritted teeth saying, “No.”
Peter grinned, knowing he had to remain just as in command from there on out. “I’m going to pay Nathan Petrelli a visit.”
“I’ll accompany you,” Danko said, already heading to the door.
“No,” Peter protested.
Danko cocked an eyebrow at him and Peter looked away quickly. “This is a personal matter,” Peter said calmly as he touched the contents on Danko’s table, hoping to get the location of the camp Nathan was being held at.
“Well if you’re here to check if we caught your precious Elle, the answer is yes, we have her. She’s being transported to the same facility as Nathan Petrelli as we speak. She should be arriving at Facility 12 in minutes.”
Facility 12, Peter repeated the words inwardly, recognizing the name from one of the object’s history, and before he had to converse any further, Peter flashed out of Danko’s office to the facility.
*
Peter stood in a soil field, only an outhouse visible from where he stood. He treaded softly to the outhouse, and once there, touched the door of it with his index finger. Seeing Sylar constantly shape shift into Nathan there, Peter braced himself for another transformation and turned into Nathan.
He pulled open the old wooden door, felt for the key contraption along one of the walls, turned it with one of his abilities, and the floor beneath him gradually opened, revealing a strip of stairs which he walked down.
There, he followed the pipes to a door which automatically opened for him.
There were people everywhere, but most of them were outfitted in military uniforms, rifles at their sides. No one seemed to notice him at first, at least not until he reached the center of the room, and one man began walking in stride with him.
“We’ve had nine civilian casualties in the last two weeks, sir, down from the last three months average. Men in uniform lost are greater, but we’ve given the media reports to contradict the facts.”
Peter shifted his eyes around nervously, the bustle and noise in conjunction with this man talking at his side distracting him too much.
“You alright, sir?” the man asked.
“Uh,” Peter hesitated, “yes, of course.” Peter quickly stepped away from him and marched up to another door, which led to a hallway much quieter than the room he had just been in. Peter looked around at the suits calmly walking through, each one of them courteously greeting him. He smiled politely in turn, and then walked in the opposite direction most of them were walking in.
He walked close to the walls, his shoulder brushing against them. The rooms were empty, but he saw that it was where they did the testings. Peter shuddered at the images of people like him being tormented and tested on, like lab rats. Lab rats didn’t even deserve such things.
Peter came to a halt when he realized he had just passed security, and he retraced his steps back to that room. He stopped right outside the door, froze time, and walked in.
Two security officers sat frozen, their eyes on the various screens.
Peter looked at every screen carefully. There was footage of the bustling room he had walked through, footage of the hallway he was just in, and footage of various prisoners. None his brother.
He looked around the security room and saw a filing cabinet. He pulled the cabinets open, looking for any clue of his brother, when finally he found a file that read Gabriel Gray. Inside were useless bits of information, but there was a sketch of a room that fit into the blueprint of the facility Peter was in.
Peter studied it for a minute, attuned his senses to the building, until he got a feel for where the sketched room was. Quickly he put the file back in order, stuck it back in its cabinet, left the security room, closed the door, walked forward some steps, and set time back in motion.
*
“Sir,” a young man, younger even than Peter, jumped up from his seat at a table outside the room Peter knew his brother was in.
“I’m here to see Mr.--” Peter began, but the boy began fumbling.
“Yes, yes,” of course, he nervously moved out of Peter’s way and waved to the door.
Peter breathed in deeply, walked past the young man, opened the door and stepped inside.
*
Peter didn’t even have the opportunity to say a word to his brother before Nathan gripped his neck and twisted his arm.
“Nathan,” Peter gasped.
“What do you want now, Sylar,” Nathan ignored Peter.
In a hardly audible gasp, Peter told him, “it’s Peter.”
Nathan shook his head, pushed who he thought was Sylar, and kicked him in the spine.
Peter recoiled as he fell, and he turned out his back, reached into the pocket of his suit jacket, and pulled out a small red pebble that Nathan recognized as part of his mother’s strange collection.
Nathan scoffed. “What do you want Sylar?”
Peter stood and slowly walked up to Nathan.
He placed his arm on his shoulder, leaned over, and whispered, “Sylar’s dead, Nathan. It’s me, it’s Peter.”
Nathan pulled his head back and pushed Peter to further himself from him.
“I contacted Micah,” Peter continued, “and he’s getting in touch with Matt as we speak to prepare to air the tapes.”
Nathan’s brows furrowed at that, and his mouth jilted open.
“This could be a trap,” Nathan said.
“Nathan, this is our shot to end this.”
“If that’s so, how do you plan on getting me out?”
Peter smirked, and put his hand back on his brother. “You’re going to walk right out.”
*
Nathan really had to watch his step now, because if he didn’t, his foot would land on his brother, and he’d never forgive himself for killing his brother in the form of a cockroach.
Nathan hurriedly bypassed the boy who stood watch, his eyes on the floor where the cockroach scurried along the wall.
He sighed in relief when they turned the corner and there was nothing in sight except for a camera that he quickly put out of use. He watched the cockroach as it slowly contorted back into the shape of his brother, Peter.
Peter shook his shoulders and rubbed his arms. Nathan grinned and said, “alright, let’s get everyone out of here.”
*
Peter and Nathan didn’t have to go far to find the prisoners, mostly because they found them. They were scattered about the hallways, some yelling at them to run, others frozen in place since they were confused, and others still sat in their rooms, despite the doors being wide open.
“It could be a trap,” some muttered to themselves, while others shouted, “we have to get out” and finally, one spotted Nathan and ran straight toward him, anger all over their face.
Peter stood in front of his brother, and yelled, “we’re here to set you free!”
Everyone looked at Peter, then Nathan.
Nathan pushed past his brother, cleared his throat and told them, “I know you have no reason to trust me, but the man with this face who set off the manhunt against you wasn’t me, but rather a man named Sylar. This doesn’t make any sense, but there will be time for explanations later. Right now, we have to run.”
The crowd of people looked around, silent, for a moment, then Peter blasted through one of the steel walls, blasted until the field of soil outside was visible.
“Let’s go!” Peter yelled, and they ran.
Peter and Nathan pushed through them, needing to get to the other prisoners of other levels as well. They had to convince even more to leave their rooms, had to make them trust that Nathan was on their side, until they finally ran down the stairs to the level where Peter had blasted through to the outside. The whole time, they fought off the regiment, with a few others sticking by them to help fight.
When they were confident that they had gotten everyone out, Peter pulled his brother to him, hugged him, and transported himself and Nathan to the field.
*
There was the issue of getting them out of the field and somewhere safer. Of getting them back home. Peter could transport everyone in groups. From his count, there were 80 to 100 freed prisoners. But where would he take them before they could safely return home.
As he and Nathan discussed the possibilities, Peter heard a voice call out his name, and he stopped speaking. He turned in his heel, searching the voice out, when he spotted the flash of blonde hair.
She waved at him from a small distance, and he smiled. She jogged through the crowd until making it to him.
“Well there’s our hero,” she said in a mocking tone.
“It’s good to see you Elle,” he said.
“We just saw each other like some hours ago,” she reminded him.
“It’s felt like days.”
She laughed at that and wrapped him in a tight hug. “You missed me,” she squealed when Nathan shot her a look.
“If we’re done with this little reunion, can we get back to the matter at hand.”
Elle rolled her eyes at Nathan. He just had to ruin her fun.
“What matter?” Elle inquired.
“We have to get these people somewhere safe before we hold a press conference where we’ll reveal what the government has been doing to people like us.”
“Why do they have to go anywhere? Hold the conference here. We can all get some airtime!”
Nathan explained, “no one in the facility can harm us right now, but I’m sure reinforcement has already been called in. By the time we had things set up, they will have arrived.”
“Then another big place,” Elle said as if it were so simple.
Nathan and Peter exchanged glances, actually pondering on that.
“Get Matt to set everything up at in Kirby Plaza. No civilians, just the press, their cameras, our videos, our faces,” instructed Nathan to Peter, “get Hiro down here so that when the set up is done, you and he can get all of us down there in groups.”
Peter nodded and closed his eyes to leave, but he felt Elle’s hand grab his hand first. “Mason, is he--?”
“He’s with Claire. He’s fine, I promise.”
Elle sighed in relief and visibly blinked back a tear or two. “Thank you,” she mouthed, released his hand, and stood next to Nathan as he faded from sight.
**
Nathan met with the president just hours after the press conference, and the two men talked with a camera as a witness to the dissolution of the act that limited the rights of people with superhuman abilities.
The president was desolate, ashamed of how he had been fooled by a mass murdered whom he openly endorsed as the man to take his place as president the coming year.
Nathan, however, did not abdicate the campaign trail. He was intent on being in a position of power to make sure that every camp was destroyed, every family could be at peace, and that people would not be wrongfully hunted ever again.
When the president did away with the act that hurt so many citizens and non-citizens alike, another act to amend the lives of those hurt was put on the table, signed, and was law. And then everyone was able to return home safely. Well, not everyone. For over three years, the hunt had gone on, and the fallout from that could never fully be corrected--some lives could just never be the same, but at least they had their lives.
*
Before Elle walked into Claire’s place to pick up her son, she turned to Peter and said, “when I first found out I was pregnant, I told Mohinder to take it away. That I would screw it up and that I could never really love it. Every day, he told me that my baby wasn’t an ‘it’. That it was a baby, a he or a she. I was so scared, Peter. When I--the whole time I was pregnant, I acted like I was okay, but I wasn’t. It just felt so weird. So when Claire was around when the baby was born, I was glad she was there even if I hated her, because she could help me from completely screwing up. And then you were there. When you left, I had never been so scared, Peter. But I remembered how it felt when I first held Mason in my arms, and I felt like I was part of something. I felt that everyday after that, and that helped me from screwing up. But now he has this power, Peter. He…he did that to Sylar. My baby--”
Elle stopped speaking as her throat clogged up, and tears came rushing out. Peter didn’t know how to respond when she so suddenly began to cry. Except for the one thing.
He rubbed her forearm, turned her to him, and held her in an embrace, all the while rubbing her back, not saying a word. She cried for a few minutes, and when he no longer heard her sniffling, he loosened his hold.
“He’s a good kid, Elle. What he did…kids have this intuition. He must have known that you were scared of that man, and he did what he did to protect what he loved best.”
“Love,” Elle chuckled, wiping at her tears, “a barely three year old knows more about love than me, huh?”
Peter grinned at her, but didn’t reply to that answer. She knew more than she realized, but that was just something else she’d have to figure out on her own.
*
Elle waited until her son took his nap to leave, and when he did, Peter offered to transport them home, to which Elle did not protest.
“I’m too tired to hail a cab,” she said, “plus I am not borrowing any money from Miss Pom-Pom. She’d always hold it over my head.”
“Are you seriously still calling me that?” Claire griped.
“You like it,” Elle pronounced which further irked Claire.
“Just get her out of here before I kick her out,” Claire grumbled to Peter.
“Well technically you’ve already kicked me out,” Elle expressed.
Peter picked Mason up from the couch he had fallen asleep on, and wrapped an arm around Elle’s bicep to take them home.
*
Elle stood leaning against the door to her apartment, arms crossed over her chest, waiting for Peter to return from Mason’s bedroom.
“Alright Elle, I’m taking off.”
“Walking or…whatever you do when you do…whatever with your powers?”
He smiled softly. “Walking. I’ve had enough of the powers thing.”
“Forever or for today?”
“Ask me another day.”
Elle pushed herself off the door and uncrossed her arms. She stood toe to toe with Peter and peered up.
“Where are you going?”
“Home,” he answered, “New York. You staying in California?”
“Yep,” she said, looking around her apartment, “I like it here.”
He nodded. “Good luck then, Elle. Guess I’ll just see you if we ever run into each other again.”
“When we run into each other,” she corrected him. Peter chuckled at that. “Yeah,” he said, sent her a quick shot of a smile, and reached his hand to the doorknob. Just as his hand touched the doorknob, Elle’s hand landed on his arm, she tiptoed, and kissed the corner of his mouth. She bit her lip, locked her gaze on his, and grinned. “Later, alligator,” she breathed.
She stepped out of his way, Peter watching her move, and he blinked.
He opened her door, stepped out into the doorway, gave her the briefest of waves, and closed the door.
Outside the door, with a grin similar to hers, Peter nodded to himself. “Later, Elle.”
***
There are the orphaned children who are robbed of a parental bond. Whether physically or emotionally robbed, some of these children may be forever robbed of other bonds, leaving them scarred, isolated, and alone.
But these cases are rare, because people tend to cross other people‘s paths, orphaned or not. Mentors, friends, lovers--children of orphaned children. They are there, and they leave a mark much more lasting than the physical and are nearly impossible to wash off.
It is the basis of foundation that urges us to continue past the broken ruins of our lives: that we are a part of something more important, regardless of how small or large its shape in the world. It is how we survive despite the fear of the unfamiliar.
Without that mark, we are just skins scrubbed raw.
fandom: Heroes
summary: When Matt Parkman has a vision of Elle Bishop holding a key to the end of the manhunt, he urges the others to devise a plan to save Elle from her death. What Matt doesn't tell them, however, gives way to another, more complicated journey for Elle Bishop, along with making her a larger target if Sylar were to find everything out.
characters: Elle Bishop, Peter Petrelli, Claire Bennet + main ensemble (to a lesser degree)
genre: Action/Drama/Friendship/General
rating: T
note: Spoilers up through 3x24, AU from Volume Four. I am suddenly very nervous about this part. So here it is, I hope you've enjoyed the series, and well, here's hoping my crazy plot bunnies are crazy tired from this story to the point where they'll let me rest for awhile. ;)
~*~Peter had called his brother in for a favor, but Nathan had lost the lot of his life due to Sylar taking over so much of it, that Peter had to turn to his mother. Angela Petrelli was far from pleased that his son was out of the country, aiding Elle Bishop, but she couldn’t leave him hapless. Not if she wanted a good night’s sleep. So she said she would give Noah Bennet an envelope with money and passports to give to Peter when Noah briefly met with him for Claire.
“Peter, thank you,” Noah shook Peter’s hand, expressing gratitude for him once again saving his daughter’s life.
“Don’t mention it,” Peter genuinely smiled.
Claire had already gone to her dad’s car and sat down, still irritated at the manner she was treated.
“Your mother told me to give you this,” Noah said, pulling out an envelope from his jacket.
Peter took the envelope without looking at the contents, trusting that his mother gave him what he needed.
“No one knows where you are, right Peter?”
“I just told my mom I was out of the country. Just…don’t drill Claire about where we were.”
“I won’t fight you on that. The minimal amount of people who know about the girl’s whereabouts, the best. Good luck, Peter.”
They shook hands again, Peter waved Claire and Noah off, and he transported to the hotel room where they had stayed overnight.
*
When Peter returned, Elle was sitting cross-legged on the bed with baby Mason playing with a toy on her lap.
“How’d it go?” Elle asked, flipping the channels.
“Good. She’s with her dad now.”
“Sure it was her dad?”
Peter sat on the edge of the bed, his back half turned to her.
“Yes, Elle, it was Noah.”
Elle turned off the television abruptly, and Peter felt the bed move beneath him. Elle stood from the bed, carried Mason from the bed to the floor where she had spread out a blanket and some pillows, and sat next to Peter.
In a low voice, she said, “he could find us so easily. And…I think he knows about the baby. You said Sylar could see the history of the object or whatever. He was in the house full of memories.”
Elle’s eyes shifted between his nervously, more nervous than he had ever seen her.
“I can’t promise anything, Elle, but I’m going to do my best so he never hurts Mason.”
Elle mustered up a smile, which she offered to him for a millisecond, then she knelt down onto the floor to be near Mason.
*
Elle walked around the apartment three times, examining the two bedrooms she considered so small, that together they would not make a decent-sized bedroom. It was even smaller than the bedroom in the facility she had lived in for so many years of her life. Three times she went around, scowling at the half kitchen, half living room and the restroom squeezed into the corner of the supposed living room.
“Elle,” Peter stopped Elle from pacing another time by pulling her arm, “when I leave, you’ll have an extra bedroom. And in time, maybe you’ll be able to afford one of the larger apartments upstairs.”
Elle rolled her eyes and yanked her arm from Peter’s.
“I’m getting a job,” she announced. She wasn’t throwing an idea out there, suggesting something, or proving a point by saying something one may consider ridiculous. It was a fact.
“I’m getting a job,” Peter rushed to say, “you’re going to stay with your son.”
“I’m done just standing by. Fine, I can’t fight Sylar, at least not yet. And you won’t let me help the people getting captured. On top of all that, we have to stay low-key because we’re getting hunted like animals. But you can’t stop me from actually living and doing stuff to help my son. I’m getting a job.”
Peter saw her point, understood it, but he didn’t know how both of them could get jobs without them getting a babysitter for Mason. It could be dangerous to entrust a child born from two humans with extraordinary abilities to an…ordinary individual.
Peter mulled over the situation for a moment, and came to the only conclusion he could.
“I’ll find a job where I can work grave shifts. You’ll find something where they can work you in the morning or the afternoon shifts. We’ll take turns.”
“But, then I’ll only get to see him late in the day.” As the words left her mouth, Elle found that the idea of not seeing her son around the clock sounded so strange to her own ears. How could she go missing something she wouldn’t be seeing for some hours when she had previously lived so long without it?
“Okay,” Elle said, ignoring her previous statement, unsure what to make of the thoughts in her head. She still was having a hard time getting used to Mason.
Peter noted the confusion playing out over her face, and it were these rare moments in which Elle was so completely stuck in that state of knowing and not knowing what her life suddenly was, that he was reminded of how saving her had been a good thing--and not for the reason Matt had given them. That was a plan, a way to expand the blueprint. This was humanizing. This and Mason.
Then Elle broke into a smile, a wide bright smile, and she leaped from her toes into Peter’s arms, and squealed, “I’m going to find a job!”
She jumped back out of his arms, twirled around until locating his jacket, and jogged to the door.
“Watch Mason,” she instructed, and with an affirmative gesture from him, she ran out of the door and out to find herself a job.
*
It may have taken Elle a few days to find a job (a lifetime to her, and extremely quick to Peter), but people appeared less eager to give Peter a job, that is until Elle told him, “I told this one lady that I just had a kid and I needed to support him, blah, blah, and she referenced me to another lady whose son owns the antique store I’m working at.”
Right, the kid aspect. But Peter wasn’t up to guilt-tripping people into giving him a job--not that he thought Elle did it purposely, but he knew from experience she was a little too clever with some things.
After a couple of weeks, Peter found a job in none other than the same hotel where he had spent a night the day he arrived there with Elle and Claire. They gave him a job as the night custodian, and it was a bit of a distance from the apartment where he was staying, but it wasn’t something he couldn’t handle.
Right from his first night on the job, however, he missed the relaxation of spending the day with Mason. Peter liked a good, honest, hard-working job. He liked feeling useful and all. But after two weeks of watching Mason, feeding him, playing with him, soothing him as he cried, and changing diapers, no work felt so hard but satisfying. He found himself wanting to stay just some minutes longer with Mason before leaving to work, but as soon as Elle would get to the apartment, she would pick Mason up and spend every minute possible with the little boy. Not that he blamed her--Mason was after all, her son. Besides, that boy lit up Elle’s face more than when she had the opportunity to use her electricity.
*
Elle flipped on the lights of the apartment when she walked in to find it completely obscure.
From the sofa, she saw Peter sit up abruptly and she laughed.
Peter rubbed his eyes and squinted in the direction of Elle until his eyes adjusted to the lights.
“Taking a nap?” Elle questioned.
“Noah…he fell asleep and I put him in his crib. I just laid down on the couch for a second…I must have knocked out.”
Elle grinned, threw her keys on the kitchen counter, and raided the refrigerator. She took out a few ingredients to make a sandwich and proceeded to make herself one.
“Want a sandwich?” she asked as she sliced a tomato.
“No, I’m fine, thanks. How was work?”
Elle pulled the knife from the tomato, and raised her hand with knife in hand so it paralleled her head. Nonchalantly she told him, “almost got fired.”
Peter stood from the sofa at her statement and casually walked over to the kitchen counter so as to not scare her off.
“Fired?”
“Yep. Mr. Bridges told me I was being way too friendly with the customers. I’m getting a reputation with his female customers, he said.”
Peter stuck his hands in his pockets, and cringed at that. “Flirting with the male customers?”
“How’d you know?” she inquired with a smile, as if she were proud of her flirting. She brought the knife back down and set it to the side.
“A hunch,” he waved it off. “You should be more careful, Elle. Aggravating customers like that…”
“I was flirting, Peter. How is that aggravating?”
She leaned over the counter and gazed at him intently, genuinely seeking an answer as to how flirting could be in any way, bad.
“It gives people the wrong impression. Like you’re interested in a person, despite any relationships they could be involved in. And at work, you gotta be professional, Elle.”
“Hmm,” Elle vocalized. She pushed herself off the counter, and went back to making her sandwich, and amidst doing this, she said, “okay, I get it now.”
Peter watched her fingers fold the ham and put it on a slice of bread, and then she gently took to laying the lettuce over the ham, when she said, “thanks for the answer, Peter. Sometimes people talk to me like I won’t understand what they’re saying, so I’m told to just trust them…which is annoying.”
Peter trailed his eyes up to her face, surprised at her confession. A confession he understood very well. Getting treated like an adult was something he still had to fight for a lot. But her admittance of this reminded him of something he had on his mind for a long time, but never got the courage to ask.
“Do you still question us telling you that Sylar would have killed you?”
Elle’s hand immediately stopped moving. She stared at the nearly, but not yet, finished sandwich-in-progress for several seconds, before her mouth twisted in a half-smile, half-frown.
She brushed back her hair, licked her lips, and slowly met Peter’s eyes.
“I believed it the moment Noah told me. I was half-unconscious and I could hear Mohinder screaming something over Noah, but all I had to hear was Noah saying that Sylar was going to kill me before the next morning for me to believe it.”
Elle looked back down, finished her sandwich, grabbed a napkin, wrapped half of it around the sandwich’s lower half, and set it down. She looked back at Peter.
“That’s how little faith I had in Gabriel. None of it was real,” she blinked furiously suddenly, “we were just stuck in a bubble, like they say, and even in that bubble I knew everything could end with a snap of his fingers.”
She blinked a few more times, slapped on a smile, picked up her sandwich, stepped around the kitchen, and brushed past him. Peter caught her forearm, and she turned around to face him.
“What?” she sniped.
“You always made it sound like you didn’t believe that Sylar would kill you.”
“I didn’t believe. I did believe. It depends on the day.”
Exasperated, Peter furrowed his brows at Elle and frustratingly said, “Elle…”
“I don’t know, Peter!” she screamed. “When I was half-unconscious, I had no doubt that Noah was telling the truth. But when I recovered, and I was sitting in that cold room Mohinder and Noah had stuffed me in, and they were telling me what would have been…I couldn’t believe them!”
“But you’ve gone along with it so far.”
Elle laughed at this. “Because I don’t want Mason to be like me! To not trust anyone but his daddy. To grow up dysfunctional. To not know about personal space. I don’t want him to wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares about him being tested on because of some powers! I don’t want him to be running when he could be finding himself!”
Peter took half a step back, because as she screamed, bolts of electricity jilted free from her body, a few even shocking him in his place. He stopped himself from showing any indication of affliction from her jolts, but his step back was pure reflexes. Elle didn’t notice.
Elle’s screams stopped, but a few tears escaped her eyes. She made no effort to wipe them from her face. She only gave Peter half a smile as the electricity dwindled from her. Then she looked down at her sandwich, realized it had mostly gone to waste from over-frying, cursed below her breath at the sandwich, and walked back to the kitchen.
Peter watched her as she threw it away and took to making herself another one. She never looked back at him, but she was clearly nervous under his stare. When he realized this, he stepped away and went to check on Mason.
**
The nightmares were what most scared Peter.
He realized that Elle’s tantrums (those moments where she just screamed, remarked at everything with cynical words, or was overly hyper) were abnormal. During the tantrums, he would usually take Mason to another room, not wanting Elle to lash out at Mason. Not that she had done anything extreme…yet. Her tendency to spark when she was too temperamental, he realized, was a reflex all her own. Fortunately, she always pent up her frustration to only act out when she was at home. This meant Peter reaped the lot of the consequences from her anger, but so far they had just been mild sparks. Some days, he feared she would lash out when he wasn’t there--just Mason. A grown adult would have trouble taking the jolts. A baby could not handle them in the least.
Still, Elle hardly ever used her powers when Mason was in sight (this was her fear of Mason being like her restraining her), and along with the fact that her tantrums were gradually dimming, he had faith she wouldn’t accidentally hurt the baby.
It was really the nightmares that would not dim.
He remembered that as he dropped Claire off with her dad, Claire warned her about Elle’s nightmares.
They were intense. When she was pregnant, they weren’t quite as intense, but as soon as she gave birth, the screams and the flickering lights at night pierced through the house.
Sometimes Claire would run to Elle’s room and find Elle gripping the mattress so hard, her fingers tore through the fabrics. Other times, Elle’s body would be vibrating with electricity, and Claire came to the realization that Elle’s nightmares were the reason she insisted on the baby never sleeping with her. The baby always had to sleep at the opposite end of the room in a crib. And Elle didn’t like it, but she strongly opposed any suggestion of the baby sleeping in the same bed with her.
Peter came to see all of these things for himself, and eventually, Elle herself asked Peter if Mason could sleep in the same room with him. He obliged, but he wished he could do more. Childhood trauma was what afflicted most troubled adults, and from her nightmares, Peter saw that her traumatizations manifested most in her sleep.
When he finally asked her what she was so plagued with, why her nightmares frequented her so often, she spilled the truths in a quick motion.
He knew about the blackouts she caused in the and the birthday she spent in a glass room with an IV of lithium in her arm, but he didn’t know about the several birthdays she spent in similar rooms, testing wracking her body at her father’s bidding. He didn’t know about the mother who had abandoned Elle with her father, afraid of both of them. He didn’t know that all she had ever wanted was to make her daddy happy.
“I’m sorry,” he had told her when she finished, and as always, she plastered on a smile and rolled her eyes, called him silly for apologizing as if it had been his fault, and that, that never sat well with him. She just pushed it all off and lived in such denial. The nightmares would never stop if she never faced them. The tantrums would always return if she didn’t forgive the self she became over her father’s doing.
And this he finally told her the night before he left her to be on her own. In response, her shoulders drooped and she said, “you’re leaving, huh?”
“Yes,” he answered truthfully, “before the sun comes up.”
She flitted her eyes from the floor to his eyes.
“I’m not a good person, Peter. Even if I forgave myself, it wouldn’t mean anything.”
She was so somber in that moment, he nearly convinced himself to stay just another day.
“You’re doing good by Mason. You haven’t hurt him and you obviously love him. You’ve kept your job and haven’t tried hurting anyone. Just keep doing good, Elle, and you’ll see that you do mean something.”
In the small time he spent with her, and the many things he shared and told her, he hoped that was the thing that stayed with her. He hoped it was that thing that stayed with her so that the nightmares could finally leave.
**
It had all been a learning process leading her to figuring out a life in which she had to watch after another person.
Throughout her pregnancy and after Mason’s birth, someone had been there, holding her hand. She supposed she had to do the hand holding for someone this time, and that chance wasn’t an option. If she wanted to protect her son and keep him away from Sylar, independence was not an option but rather the only way to go.
***
two years later
Elle wiped her hands on her apron when she felt the sudden urge to look out of the diner she was working at. That’s when she spotted him.
She smiled to herself and didn’t bother to notify her supervisor that she was running out for a second. She just ran to the door, threw it upon, and jogged up to him. It wasn’t hard to spot him down the street since the sidewalks were practically empty anyway.
She hugged him from behind, and heard him grunt in surprise. She let him go so he could turn around, and the contorted face of confusion that twisted into a grin just washed back a rush of familiarity that did her system good.
“Peter!” she yelled happily, and threw her arms back around him.
Peter was stiff in her embrace for a moment, but he cautiously returned her hug. He pulled his head back and studied her.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Working, silly.”
“What are you doing in California?”
“Oh,” she laughed, “I got tired of hiding. Plus, you said I had to face my past, blah, blah. I couldn’t do that in Canada.”
Peter raised his eyes at her, then remembered that he was still holding her. He retracted his arms and breathed in.
“What about…Mason’s father?”
“Mason doesn’t have a father,” Elle sneered. She relaxed back into a smile, and told him again, “I got tired of hiding.”
“So you returned to the states? When?”
“Just like six months ago. I had to save a lot--a lot of money. Do you know how expensive it is to live here?”
Peter chuckled at that. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, so I had to stop buying clothes. But now I’m back.”
“And Mason?”
Elle gleamed at him. “You want to see him?”
Peter ran the proposition over in his head. It was far from safe for Elle to be in the states. Even more dangerous for her to be seen with him.
The streets of California and states of the like were more vacant for a reason.
“Please Peter?” she pleaded, and he found it hard to say no to that.
*
Elle strolled over to her son, who was watching cartoons, poked him, and the boy jumped into his mother’s arms the instant he saw her.
Peter blinked a few times, surprised at how much Mason had grown. He had sand-ish blonde hair, with a few curly tresses near his forehead, larger blue eyes, and bigger hands. His nose was still exactly like his mother’s.
“Hey Mason, this is Peter. He’s mommy’s friend.”
Mason stuck by his mother, arms around her neck, as he looked Peter up and down. After a minute, the little boy waved and gave him a small smile. Peter looked at the little boy in awe and slowly walked over to him.
“Hey Mason,” Peter greeted him as he knelt down to the boy’s level, “it’s nice seeing you again.”
“Peter used to take care of you a whole lot when you were a baby,” Elle explained.
Mason was a little too young to really comprehend that, but Peter looked far from anything less than friendly.
“Hi!” the boy yelled and hurdled into Peter’s arms. Just like his mother.
**
All it took was one day. The day after Peter went to see Mason.
Elle walked into her apartment, and it wasn’t abnormal for it to be so quiet. It was around Mason’s naptime, and his babysitter was usually the quiet type.
It took Elle four minutes to realize the babysitter wasn’t watching her son. She threw her keys on the kitchen table, went to the kitchen for a drink, picked up some scattered toys in the living room, and then went on to her son’s room.
Sylar knelt by Mason’s bed, watching the boy sleep soundly. Her heart stopped, and it resumed beating when she remembered her logic. She had been expecting this since the day Noah faked her death. She had expected Sylar to take her son away. She had expected to fight. Instead, she was frozen. She could hear her telling herself to do something, to fight, to…but her body wouldn’t move.
Sylar looked up from Mason to Elle, and grinned.
“Mason, huh?” he probed.
“You leave him--” Elle began when Mason stirred.
Both Elle and Sylar turned their attention to Mason. His eyes sprung open, and he stared widely at the ceiling, then shifted his eyes to Sylar. Sylar watched Mason ever so carefully as he sat up in bed, his eyes on Sylar.
Mason’s eyes then turned to Elle, Elle’s whose own eyes were dilated and mouth hung open, the fear and tension clearly written on her face and over her body. Mason looked back at Sylar, and shockingly he jumped into Sylar’s arm.
Elle gasped when this happened, surprised and confused at what was occurring. Whatever it was, Sylar seemed to be enjoying this.
“Boy’s got good instinct,” he muttered as he held Mason close to his chest with an eye on Elle.
Elle’s hands balled in two fists. Sylar grinned from ear to ear, meanwhile raising a finger in the direction of Elle, and that was his last movement before Sylar’s features were frozen in stone.
Mason slipped his fingers from Sylar as the stone crept from Sylar’s legs to his torso, from his arms, to his head. Mason ran to his mother, looked up at her, then ran out of the room. Her own eyes were still fixated on the stone Sylar had become, and she realized why the second before she walked into that diner where she would tell Claire, Noah, and Angela Petrelli that she was pregnant, Angela placed her hand on the small of Elle’s back, pressed one hand to the diner’s door, and whispered close to Elle’s ear, “name him Mason”.
It was strange and Elle had no idea what the older woman had meant by that.
On another day, Claire told Elle that Angela had visions of the future in her dreams.
On the day her son was born, Elle put together that Angela had meant for Elle to name her son Mason, and Elle liked the name enough to give it to him.
On another day after that, Elle decided to check the meaning of “Mason”.
On this day, she put together that her son was a mason.
She just had to finish the job. She balled up her right hand, concocted a strong jolt of electricity, made another strong bolt in her other hand, put her hands together, and shot out at the stone that was Sylar. She blasted at the stone until it completely disintegrated, and then she fell to her knees.
*
Peter came two minutes too late to the battle, but everything was done by then anyway.
He rubbed Elle’s arms, sighed, and picked up the remaining disintegrated pieces of Sylar.
“Elle, you alright?”
She didn’t respond.
“I’m going to take Mason out for a bit, okay?”
At that, Elle just uttered, “okay.”
*
Peter had the instinct to leave the apartment building with Mason through the back alley stairs. That should have been his first clue.
When he made it outside, he heard Elle yell, and then he spotted a conspicuous black truck parked by the street. He zoomed his hearing in to Elle’s apartment, and he could hear them carrying Elle out of the building, could hear the cocking of the rifles, and the search of the other rooms. They were looking for Mason. And Peter couldn’t let them find Mason. It didn’t leave room for him to get Elle by then.
**
Peter vigilantly kept looking over his shoulder and at his surroundings as he knocked once, twice, thrice.
The door opened and Claire stared at Peter in surprise and irritation.
“Jesus Peter, you want to make my apartment the focus of my neighbor’s attention,” she whispered harshly, but then her eyes fell to the hand Peter was holding.
“Um, come in,” she whispered and Peter walked in with the little boy.
When the door closed, Peter eyed Claire to tell her, “this is Mason, Elle’s boy.”
Claire broke into a small smile, and she leaned down. “Hey, Mason. I’m Claire. You know, I was there when you were born.”
The little boy stared up at her with wide eyes, and he inched closer to Peter. Claire looked back over at Peter and she asked, “what’s going on, where’s Elle?”
Peter rubbed his mouth and looked at Mason. “You have someplace he can play?” he asked Claire.
Claire looked around the small space of her place.
“I have the smallest backyard,” she laughed, “and there’s a ball or two that some kids threw in the other day. Keep forgetting to give them back.”
*
“He’s gotten so big,” Claire said as she watched Mason play with the balls.
Peter nodded, not really listening to her. He paced Claire’s living room, mad at himself for not retrieving Elle.
“Peter, you had to get Mason to a safe place.”
Peter shook his head. “I could have transported him. I could have gotten Elle. I--”
“From what you told me, Peter, they already had Elle when you realized what was happening. They knocked her out and were already leaving with her.”
Peter stopped pacing and collapsed on Claire’s couch.
“When is Hiro executing the plan?”
“Last I heard, our inside man defected.”
“How long, Claire?”
“Hiro isn’t sure. We were depending on our insider for the prisoner lock codes. Without them, it would take too long to free everyone without the enforcers ganging up on us and the media catching on to further slander us. And your brother--”
“Sylar’s dead.”
Claire was sure she’d heard wrong. “Sylar’s what?”
“Elle killed him. Just before she got captured.”
“Peter, that’s it!” Claire exclaimed.
“What?”
Claire had to stop herself from slapping Peter upside his head for not seeing the solution.
“Nathan can get his life back. The real Nathan can run for presidency. The real Nathan can air all of those tapes we’ve collected on how they treat us, and how they’ve lied about our purpose. He can finally prove the world that people with superhuman abilities are still human.”
**
But there was still the other obstacle at hand--the imprisonment of the real Nathan in the first and foremost camp of those with abilities.
They couldn’t waste any time, Peter knew this. They had to release Nathan as soon as possible, and that required Peter to do something he never wished to do, but everyone had to make their sacrifices.
Peter closed his eyes, not wanting to see the transformation until he had to, chanting to himself that he had to do this. For his brother, for all those prisoners, for all of those families who had lost their loved ones because of ignorance and a smear campaign against people like him, Peter.
When he felt the transformation to be complete, Peter walked toward the closet mirror, trailed his eyes up from the reflection of his feet, all the way up to the face. He flinched at the face staring back at him, and revulsion twisted in his stomach.
He had thought he would never have to see Sylar again, but there he was, staring at him in his reflection.
Peter looked away from the mirror, took a deep breath, and left Claire’s apartment before she noticed that he had already shape shifted. Because he knew she would want to go with him, but he wasn’t going to waste time looking for someone else to look after Mason when he was already in the capable hands of Claire.
Claire made it clear to him that with Sylar gone, all they needed to do was get Peter’s brother to show the tapes of people getting beat up, killed, tortured--sometimes in front of their families--by the government that was actually working under the hand of a mass murderer, Sylar. And Peter could only think of one way of getting that done.
Peter had to become Sylar, go to Danko to show him that he (Sylar) was alive. Thereafter, he would go to the camp disguised as Nathan Petrelli, go to Nathan’s isolation room, free him and the others, and with Matt Parkman’s help, they would gather the press and show the videos Micah had taped.
*
“Danko.”
Danko let out a sigh and slowly turned to Sylar.
“Where have you been?” Danko muttered.
Peter ruminated over how to answer, and already this was requiring too much concentration from him.
“Do I answer to you,” Peter said as forcefully as he could.
Danko stared at him for a good second before biting the inside of his cheek and through gritted teeth saying, “No.”
Peter grinned, knowing he had to remain just as in command from there on out. “I’m going to pay Nathan Petrelli a visit.”
“I’ll accompany you,” Danko said, already heading to the door.
“No,” Peter protested.
Danko cocked an eyebrow at him and Peter looked away quickly. “This is a personal matter,” Peter said calmly as he touched the contents on Danko’s table, hoping to get the location of the camp Nathan was being held at.
“Well if you’re here to check if we caught your precious Elle, the answer is yes, we have her. She’s being transported to the same facility as Nathan Petrelli as we speak. She should be arriving at Facility 12 in minutes.”
Facility 12, Peter repeated the words inwardly, recognizing the name from one of the object’s history, and before he had to converse any further, Peter flashed out of Danko’s office to the facility.
*
Peter stood in a soil field, only an outhouse visible from where he stood. He treaded softly to the outhouse, and once there, touched the door of it with his index finger. Seeing Sylar constantly shape shift into Nathan there, Peter braced himself for another transformation and turned into Nathan.
He pulled open the old wooden door, felt for the key contraption along one of the walls, turned it with one of his abilities, and the floor beneath him gradually opened, revealing a strip of stairs which he walked down.
There, he followed the pipes to a door which automatically opened for him.
There were people everywhere, but most of them were outfitted in military uniforms, rifles at their sides. No one seemed to notice him at first, at least not until he reached the center of the room, and one man began walking in stride with him.
“We’ve had nine civilian casualties in the last two weeks, sir, down from the last three months average. Men in uniform lost are greater, but we’ve given the media reports to contradict the facts.”
Peter shifted his eyes around nervously, the bustle and noise in conjunction with this man talking at his side distracting him too much.
“You alright, sir?” the man asked.
“Uh,” Peter hesitated, “yes, of course.” Peter quickly stepped away from him and marched up to another door, which led to a hallway much quieter than the room he had just been in. Peter looked around at the suits calmly walking through, each one of them courteously greeting him. He smiled politely in turn, and then walked in the opposite direction most of them were walking in.
He walked close to the walls, his shoulder brushing against them. The rooms were empty, but he saw that it was where they did the testings. Peter shuddered at the images of people like him being tormented and tested on, like lab rats. Lab rats didn’t even deserve such things.
Peter came to a halt when he realized he had just passed security, and he retraced his steps back to that room. He stopped right outside the door, froze time, and walked in.
Two security officers sat frozen, their eyes on the various screens.
Peter looked at every screen carefully. There was footage of the bustling room he had walked through, footage of the hallway he was just in, and footage of various prisoners. None his brother.
He looked around the security room and saw a filing cabinet. He pulled the cabinets open, looking for any clue of his brother, when finally he found a file that read Gabriel Gray. Inside were useless bits of information, but there was a sketch of a room that fit into the blueprint of the facility Peter was in.
Peter studied it for a minute, attuned his senses to the building, until he got a feel for where the sketched room was. Quickly he put the file back in order, stuck it back in its cabinet, left the security room, closed the door, walked forward some steps, and set time back in motion.
*
“Sir,” a young man, younger even than Peter, jumped up from his seat at a table outside the room Peter knew his brother was in.
“I’m here to see Mr.--” Peter began, but the boy began fumbling.
“Yes, yes,” of course, he nervously moved out of Peter’s way and waved to the door.
Peter breathed in deeply, walked past the young man, opened the door and stepped inside.
*
Peter didn’t even have the opportunity to say a word to his brother before Nathan gripped his neck and twisted his arm.
“Nathan,” Peter gasped.
“What do you want now, Sylar,” Nathan ignored Peter.
In a hardly audible gasp, Peter told him, “it’s Peter.”
Nathan shook his head, pushed who he thought was Sylar, and kicked him in the spine.
Peter recoiled as he fell, and he turned out his back, reached into the pocket of his suit jacket, and pulled out a small red pebble that Nathan recognized as part of his mother’s strange collection.
Nathan scoffed. “What do you want Sylar?”
Peter stood and slowly walked up to Nathan.
He placed his arm on his shoulder, leaned over, and whispered, “Sylar’s dead, Nathan. It’s me, it’s Peter.”
Nathan pulled his head back and pushed Peter to further himself from him.
“I contacted Micah,” Peter continued, “and he’s getting in touch with Matt as we speak to prepare to air the tapes.”
Nathan’s brows furrowed at that, and his mouth jilted open.
“This could be a trap,” Nathan said.
“Nathan, this is our shot to end this.”
“If that’s so, how do you plan on getting me out?”
Peter smirked, and put his hand back on his brother. “You’re going to walk right out.”
*
Nathan really had to watch his step now, because if he didn’t, his foot would land on his brother, and he’d never forgive himself for killing his brother in the form of a cockroach.
Nathan hurriedly bypassed the boy who stood watch, his eyes on the floor where the cockroach scurried along the wall.
He sighed in relief when they turned the corner and there was nothing in sight except for a camera that he quickly put out of use. He watched the cockroach as it slowly contorted back into the shape of his brother, Peter.
Peter shook his shoulders and rubbed his arms. Nathan grinned and said, “alright, let’s get everyone out of here.”
*
Peter and Nathan didn’t have to go far to find the prisoners, mostly because they found them. They were scattered about the hallways, some yelling at them to run, others frozen in place since they were confused, and others still sat in their rooms, despite the doors being wide open.
“It could be a trap,” some muttered to themselves, while others shouted, “we have to get out” and finally, one spotted Nathan and ran straight toward him, anger all over their face.
Peter stood in front of his brother, and yelled, “we’re here to set you free!”
Everyone looked at Peter, then Nathan.
Nathan pushed past his brother, cleared his throat and told them, “I know you have no reason to trust me, but the man with this face who set off the manhunt against you wasn’t me, but rather a man named Sylar. This doesn’t make any sense, but there will be time for explanations later. Right now, we have to run.”
The crowd of people looked around, silent, for a moment, then Peter blasted through one of the steel walls, blasted until the field of soil outside was visible.
“Let’s go!” Peter yelled, and they ran.
Peter and Nathan pushed through them, needing to get to the other prisoners of other levels as well. They had to convince even more to leave their rooms, had to make them trust that Nathan was on their side, until they finally ran down the stairs to the level where Peter had blasted through to the outside. The whole time, they fought off the regiment, with a few others sticking by them to help fight.
When they were confident that they had gotten everyone out, Peter pulled his brother to him, hugged him, and transported himself and Nathan to the field.
*
There was the issue of getting them out of the field and somewhere safer. Of getting them back home. Peter could transport everyone in groups. From his count, there were 80 to 100 freed prisoners. But where would he take them before they could safely return home.
As he and Nathan discussed the possibilities, Peter heard a voice call out his name, and he stopped speaking. He turned in his heel, searching the voice out, when he spotted the flash of blonde hair.
She waved at him from a small distance, and he smiled. She jogged through the crowd until making it to him.
“Well there’s our hero,” she said in a mocking tone.
“It’s good to see you Elle,” he said.
“We just saw each other like some hours ago,” she reminded him.
“It’s felt like days.”
She laughed at that and wrapped him in a tight hug. “You missed me,” she squealed when Nathan shot her a look.
“If we’re done with this little reunion, can we get back to the matter at hand.”
Elle rolled her eyes at Nathan. He just had to ruin her fun.
“What matter?” Elle inquired.
“We have to get these people somewhere safe before we hold a press conference where we’ll reveal what the government has been doing to people like us.”
“Why do they have to go anywhere? Hold the conference here. We can all get some airtime!”
Nathan explained, “no one in the facility can harm us right now, but I’m sure reinforcement has already been called in. By the time we had things set up, they will have arrived.”
“Then another big place,” Elle said as if it were so simple.
Nathan and Peter exchanged glances, actually pondering on that.
“Get Matt to set everything up at in Kirby Plaza. No civilians, just the press, their cameras, our videos, our faces,” instructed Nathan to Peter, “get Hiro down here so that when the set up is done, you and he can get all of us down there in groups.”
Peter nodded and closed his eyes to leave, but he felt Elle’s hand grab his hand first. “Mason, is he--?”
“He’s with Claire. He’s fine, I promise.”
Elle sighed in relief and visibly blinked back a tear or two. “Thank you,” she mouthed, released his hand, and stood next to Nathan as he faded from sight.
**
Nathan met with the president just hours after the press conference, and the two men talked with a camera as a witness to the dissolution of the act that limited the rights of people with superhuman abilities.
The president was desolate, ashamed of how he had been fooled by a mass murdered whom he openly endorsed as the man to take his place as president the coming year.
Nathan, however, did not abdicate the campaign trail. He was intent on being in a position of power to make sure that every camp was destroyed, every family could be at peace, and that people would not be wrongfully hunted ever again.
When the president did away with the act that hurt so many citizens and non-citizens alike, another act to amend the lives of those hurt was put on the table, signed, and was law. And then everyone was able to return home safely. Well, not everyone. For over three years, the hunt had gone on, and the fallout from that could never fully be corrected--some lives could just never be the same, but at least they had their lives.
*
Before Elle walked into Claire’s place to pick up her son, she turned to Peter and said, “when I first found out I was pregnant, I told Mohinder to take it away. That I would screw it up and that I could never really love it. Every day, he told me that my baby wasn’t an ‘it’. That it was a baby, a he or a she. I was so scared, Peter. When I--the whole time I was pregnant, I acted like I was okay, but I wasn’t. It just felt so weird. So when Claire was around when the baby was born, I was glad she was there even if I hated her, because she could help me from completely screwing up. And then you were there. When you left, I had never been so scared, Peter. But I remembered how it felt when I first held Mason in my arms, and I felt like I was part of something. I felt that everyday after that, and that helped me from screwing up. But now he has this power, Peter. He…he did that to Sylar. My baby--”
Elle stopped speaking as her throat clogged up, and tears came rushing out. Peter didn’t know how to respond when she so suddenly began to cry. Except for the one thing.
He rubbed her forearm, turned her to him, and held her in an embrace, all the while rubbing her back, not saying a word. She cried for a few minutes, and when he no longer heard her sniffling, he loosened his hold.
“He’s a good kid, Elle. What he did…kids have this intuition. He must have known that you were scared of that man, and he did what he did to protect what he loved best.”
“Love,” Elle chuckled, wiping at her tears, “a barely three year old knows more about love than me, huh?”
Peter grinned at her, but didn’t reply to that answer. She knew more than she realized, but that was just something else she’d have to figure out on her own.
*
Elle waited until her son took his nap to leave, and when he did, Peter offered to transport them home, to which Elle did not protest.
“I’m too tired to hail a cab,” she said, “plus I am not borrowing any money from Miss Pom-Pom. She’d always hold it over my head.”
“Are you seriously still calling me that?” Claire griped.
“You like it,” Elle pronounced which further irked Claire.
“Just get her out of here before I kick her out,” Claire grumbled to Peter.
“Well technically you’ve already kicked me out,” Elle expressed.
Peter picked Mason up from the couch he had fallen asleep on, and wrapped an arm around Elle’s bicep to take them home.
*
Elle stood leaning against the door to her apartment, arms crossed over her chest, waiting for Peter to return from Mason’s bedroom.
“Alright Elle, I’m taking off.”
“Walking or…whatever you do when you do…whatever with your powers?”
He smiled softly. “Walking. I’ve had enough of the powers thing.”
“Forever or for today?”
“Ask me another day.”
Elle pushed herself off the door and uncrossed her arms. She stood toe to toe with Peter and peered up.
“Where are you going?”
“Home,” he answered, “New York. You staying in California?”
“Yep,” she said, looking around her apartment, “I like it here.”
He nodded. “Good luck then, Elle. Guess I’ll just see you if we ever run into each other again.”
“When we run into each other,” she corrected him. Peter chuckled at that. “Yeah,” he said, sent her a quick shot of a smile, and reached his hand to the doorknob. Just as his hand touched the doorknob, Elle’s hand landed on his arm, she tiptoed, and kissed the corner of his mouth. She bit her lip, locked her gaze on his, and grinned. “Later, alligator,” she breathed.
She stepped out of his way, Peter watching her move, and he blinked.
He opened her door, stepped out into the doorway, gave her the briefest of waves, and closed the door.
Outside the door, with a grin similar to hers, Peter nodded to himself. “Later, Elle.”
***
There are the orphaned children who are robbed of a parental bond. Whether physically or emotionally robbed, some of these children may be forever robbed of other bonds, leaving them scarred, isolated, and alone.
But these cases are rare, because people tend to cross other people‘s paths, orphaned or not. Mentors, friends, lovers--children of orphaned children. They are there, and they leave a mark much more lasting than the physical and are nearly impossible to wash off.
It is the basis of foundation that urges us to continue past the broken ruins of our lives: that we are a part of something more important, regardless of how small or large its shape in the world. It is how we survive despite the fear of the unfamiliar.
Without that mark, we are just skins scrubbed raw.