A Walk in the Park
TITLE: A Walk in the Park
AUTHOR: barhaven
CHARACTERS: Lyle, Mr. Muggles, Sandra, Sylar, a few others
RATING: PG
NOTES: This spun off from a one-shot joke I wrote for the non-pr0n meme, and somehow ended up being SERIOUS instead of crack. Go figure. I think it was the result of a random desire to write Mr. Muggles having an adventure, Lyle getting to do something brave, and Sylar being a bastard. Just as well to combine them all into one story.
Huge thanks to nowhack for beta reading.
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There was a monster in the park. That's what the dog told him. But Mr. Muggles didn't believe her.
Up until the last few months, Mr. Muggles hadn't thought much about the world outside the house. Now he was suddenly spending far too much time lying in back seat of the car, trying not to be pushed aside or stepped on by people too tired to notice. At least Sandra took him for walks wherever they stopped. Even if it was just a few hours break from driving, or a few days in a hotel while they waited for a phone call.
Sandra never looked happy after those calls. She seemed to appreciate Mr. Muggles' company more than the toys he brought her. Which was fine, if a little baffling to him. They were nice toys.
The sunlit park was crowded with people. Walkers. Runners. Bikers. Skateboarders. A group of kids with a soccer ball. More running around the playground, pushing each other off the merry-go-round, and jumping from moving swings in a contest that was guaranteed to end in a bad fall and a lot of tears.
It was near the playground that Sandra's attention slipped. It did that a lot lately. Mr. Muggles got distracted by a strange-looking bug, and followed it across a nearby flowerbed. Behind the rows of impatiens was the shadows of a thick treeline, solid and imposing as a stone wall.
That was when a tennis ball chewed to wet fuzz bounced next to him, and the dog that rushed to fetch it nearly bowled him over.
Don't go in the woods. That's what she told him. There was a monster in the park.
There's no such thing as monsters, Mr. Muggles said. There were very very weird things in the world. Occasionally very very scary things. He'd seen a lot of both. But no monsters.
The other dog looked at him curiously. She leaned down from her towering golden retriever height, until he could see the tag glinting on her red collar. You're obviously not from around here, she said. Everyone knew the monster was real. The woods ran on for a long, long way. Far beyond the boundaries of the park. Thick and dark and tangled as a black forest beyond the path. Something bad happened there, not long ago. Everyone stopped going to the park for weeks afterwards.
If you smell blood, she told him, run away. As fast as those little legs will carry you.
Then she grabbed the tennis ball and bounded away, careful to skirt around the treeline.
A second later, Sandra scooped up Mr. Muggles from the flower bed. On the walk back to the hotel, she gently fussed and admonished him for getting his paws dirty, but her heart didn't seem to be in it.
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A few days later, there was a phone call. One of the sporadic calls they'd gotten since Claire and Noah Bennet left to go save the world.
Or something. Lyle wasn't sure what they were doing. Just that Claire and dad had gone off to do something Very Important. Capital 'V' and 'I'. Something no one would tell him about, and he hadn't yet been able to eavesdrop. He and his mother were left moving from place to place for the last few weeks, like they were in witness protection or something.
This time last year, he might have thought that was kind of cool. After living it, it was mostly just frustrating, tiring, and involved a lot of waiting around with nothing to do. Not to mention making him very, very sick of hotels, driving, and take-out.
None of it seemed fair. He shouldn't have to be torn between wishing dad and Claire were here, and being grateful that they weren't. As much as he missed them sometimes, he could live without the radioactive freaks or lightning-shooting psycho bitches showing up at the door every week.
"Lyle," Sandra said. She cupped her hand over the hotel room's phone. "It's your father. Can you..."
"Get lost?" he muttered.
"Lyle-"
"No, I know. Got it. You and dad have to talk. You always have to talk. Don't let me stop you." Lyle wondered why his mom was even going along with this. Something to do with Claire, probably. It'd have to be Claire. Not with how often the phone calls with dad turned into arguments.
"I promise we're going to talk about this later, honey," Sandra said.
Yeah. Of course they would. They just wouldn't tell each other anything. No one in this family did. At least there were up sides to being ignored: people either didn't notice or didn't care when you were quietly figuring things out on your own.
Lyle grabbed a leash from on top of a barely-unpacked suitcase. He reached under the table, and clipped it roughly to Mr. Muggles' collar. A sharp tug forced the dog to leave behind a particularly wily rubber ball. The ball rolled across the carpet until it disappeared under the bed.
"Tell dad and Claire I said hi," Lyle said as he dragged Mr. Muggles outside. The door slammed shut before his mother could reply.
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A few blocks later, Lyle was twisting the leash in one hand, kicking at things on the pavement, and wondering when everyone's life had gone insane.
Mom. Dad. Claire. Lyle cared about his family. Really. He'd even use the L-word if he had to, whatever stupid mocking or eye-rolls he might get from Claire or his friends. Not that he had friends any more. Not here. Dad and Claire were off doing...whatever. Wherever. With whoever. And he and mom were left waiting, like dad just wanted them out of the way. Or he'd forgotten about them.
"Just saving the world." That's what dad joked the few times Lyle spoke to him on the phone. That just made it hurt more, that he wouldn't tell the truth. At least Lyle realised it now. Dad hadn't really been the same since he stopped being dead and went to hunt superheros again, but he was still the same in all the ways that mattered. You'd think the world really was going to end or something.
That should be way too much weirdness to cram into one thought. Should. These days, it seemed like too little.
"At least you don't have to care about this stuff," Lyle said, tugging the dog away from someone's flower boxes. Mr. Muggles panted, sniffed at an interesting-looking lamp post, and generally ignored the person holding his leash.
When they entered the park, family problems were distraction enough. Neither of them was thinking about monsters.
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There were still people in the park, even late. Apparently, whatever happened here was being slowly forgotten. The cloud of paranoia and fear had eased off enough for people to come out to enjoy the unseasonably warm evening.
For a while, Lyle wandered back and forth along the park's main road, tugging Mr. Muggles this way and that. He made up a lot of excuses not to go back to the hotel. Eventually, he accepted that he just wanted to make his mother worry. Great. Real mature.
Lyle sullenly sat down in the grass. A group of drama students were taking advantage of the warm evening. For lack of anything better to do, he watched them bang wooden swords and shout out over-acted lines.
As dusk trickled over the park, he was thinking more than watching. So he didn't notice Mr. Muggles wander away with the leash jerking through the grass behind him.
Mr. Muggles didn't notice much either. Not until there was suddenly a familiar scent creeping up. He looked up from staring at a beady-eyed, bad-tempered pigeon, and saw the familiar golden retriever slip out of the tight line of trees.
Everyone seemed to have something on their mind tonight. She glanced around, and sniffed at the air, and barely seemed to know he was there.
At first he thought she was lost, the way she was wandering uncertainly back and forth. Then she noticed him, looked at him, and he saw nothing but her frantic determination.
It's the monster, she told him.
Whatever scent she was looking for, she caught it. She plunged into the undergrowth with a rustle of leaves and crack of twigs, without a backwards glance.
There was no such thing as monsters. But she wouldn't hear it.
If Lyle glanced over, he would have seen Mr. Muggles' trailing leash disappear into the trees.
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The retriever knew the woods well. She led them along root-paved trails carpeted with dead pine needles. Then onto a series of old, overgrown paths. Then through trail-less tangles of bushes and clustered trees with looming branches. Deeper and deeper, darker and darker, until the glaring dusk-light was drowned to shadows and heavy, wet earth caked their paws.
The evening was alive with sounds that Mr. Muggles wasn't familiar with. Mostly insects and animals crawling around the undergrowth, just out of sight. The retriever seemed to know exactly what she was following now, without a shadow of doubt.
Mr. Muggles' leash snagged and choked him a dozen times as he ran, until it finally caught in a thorny lump of weeds. He whined, and pulled against the leash until he thought he'd strangle himself. Thankfully, his collar snapped off with a few more tugs. He left collar and leash twisted in the weeds, and kept following the retriever.
Even without the cumbersome leash, the fact that the other dog was four times his size left Mr. Muggles struggling to keep up. He also struggled to figure out what she was following. There were bugs, and animals, and the smell of random people who had passed through-
And then, blood.
Soon there were muffled sounds up ahead. Different. Not forest sounds. The retriever slowed, padded more quietly through the bushes. The closest thing to stealth Mr. Muggles ever needed was going unnoticed when someone slipped him food under the dinner table, but he tried.
Then there was a narrow clearing in the trees. And there was the monster.
The monster and a victim. A woman lay on the muddy ground, broken and wide-eyed. A violent struggle's worth of dirt and tree sap and blood caked her fingers. Half of a red leash was still hooked around her hand. The ground was smeared a deep, angry red under her head, her hair tangled with mud and twigs.
Some of it, at least. The rest was still attached to her severed skullcap, lying in the grass nearby. There was only a gaping, hollow space where her brain should be.
A few feet away, leaning against a tree, was the monster. He was holding something fleshy and dribbling in his bloody hands. Occasionally he prodded a particular piece with a severing flick of his fingers, carefully sussing out something hidden within.
Mr. Muggles looked over at the retriever. After everything she'd told him, she seemed just as surprised as he was.
He was too afraid to tell her he'd seen this monster before.
"-barely even worth coming back for," the monster was saying to no one as he turned the lump of grey matter over thoughtfully in his hands. "If I weren't passing through anyway, I wouldn't even have bothered."
He looked up when he heard a growl from the trees. The retriever had curled her lips back, bared her teeth, and forgotten stealth. She tore out of the tangled cover of the bushes before Mr. Muggles could even think to stop her.
Bloody mud churned under her paws as she crouched protectively next to the dead woman. Too little, too late, and too anguished to care. Then the retriever was barking until her lips frothed with saliva, snarling her anger through the trees for anyone who could hear.
The monster looked at her. There wasn't any fear. Just annoyance at the interruption. "Shoo," he said dismissively. A flick of his hand, and the retriever was knocked back as if she'd been kicked in the ribs.
Mr. Muggles had experience dealing with intruders. So he did the only thing he could think to do: he barked. A shrill little yip-yip-yip that always brought someone running. Pathetically tiny compared to the retriever's booming, trembling anger, but better than nothing.
A spark of familiarity flickered across the monster's face. He glanced down automatically. He squinted in the dim light, trying to see through the weeds and branches.
The distraction gave the split second necessary for the retriever to lunge at him and sink her teeth into his hand.
Before she could even try to drag him down or land another bite, an invisible force lashed out again. It knocked her away with an agonised yelp. Twigs and leaves scattered as she crashed to the ground next to the woman's body and the remains of the snapped leash.
Mr. Muggles watched as the monster stared at the bleeding bite mark with a deep, angry scowl. He watched as the monster's hands lit up with a familiar, burning, poisonous taint of glowing light. A glow that recalled something very frightening and very destructive.
He watched until the monster glanced in his direction again. Then he ran.
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Lyle hadn't realised how late it was getting. Not until the amateur dramatics were cluing up. Mostly because Mr. Muggles chose that moment to appear out of nowhere and jump onto his lap, successfully scaring the crap out of him. The dog was also minus one leash and collar, trailing mud, and making sure to spread it thick over Lyle's jeans.
"Oh, man..."
Yeah, this was exactly what he needed right now. Great. Storming out might get him a lecture. Bring Mr. Muggles back looking and smelling like he'd just rolled through a compost heap, and... Well, it wasn't exactly going to make things better.
Mr. Muggles relaxed a bit in Lyle's lap. The dog had never paid any particular attention to him unless he was slipping forbidden food under the table or throwing a toy. Lyle glumly assumed that the spoiled little furball just enjoyed sharing his muddiness around.
"You know, my life sucks enough right now," he told Mr. Muggles. "You don't have to try so hard to make it suck more." Who knew where the dog had been rolling around to get this filthy. It was sort of impressive.
Lyle glanced towards the trees. By the lingering bits of light the evening had to offer, he saw someone emerge from the shadowed line of a footpath. And he nearly choked on his next breath.
No...
No way.
Couldn't be. It just couldn't. Life couldn't possibly hate him this much.
As self-centred as Claire could be, she didn't completely neglect her duties as a sister. Like telling your siblings things you didn't mention to you parents. She'd provided that one morning a month or two ago, after she rescued her brother's burning breakfast from the stovetop with her bare hands. Over a few messy, blackened, syrup-drowned pancakes, she told him about the homecoming night in Odessa that had been the catalyst for all this. What happened back home. What happened with dad. All the general insanity and drama.
Lyle hadn't been able to remember anything happening on that long-ago homecoming night. His head hurt when he tried. But Claire remembered. She told him what happened. And she told him about the man who'd tried to kill her.
Lyle looked away from the trees. Too quick for it not to be obvious, he realised. So he put a hand on Mr. Muggles' head, and tried desperately to pretend he'd never looked at all. The dog squirmed in his lap, heartbeat shivering. Lyle's had to be beating just as fast.
No way. Not here. Now now. Not him.
That couldn't be who he thought it was. It was late. Getting dark. The guy's weird expression was just creeping him out, that's all. Some people were just creepy in general. Something about the eyebrows. It was-
-exactly what Claire described, EXACTLY-
-nothing. Looking creepy didn't equal serial killer. Besides, Dad and Claire were the ones off dealing with superpowered crazies. They didn't care about anyone else. They weren't here-
Lyle reminded himself to breathe. Okay, even he thought those excuses were lame. And he was the one making them.
The students were cluing up their practice. In a few minutes he'd be alone, but he wasn't sure he could move. The thought of drawing even one flicker of a crazy psychopath's attention kept him frozen in his spot on the grass.
He patted Mr. Muggles' muddy fur, and tried to look as casual as possible. When he snuck another glance toward the edge of the trees, the man was gone. Apparently his knack for being ignored had finally come in handy for something. That or he had imagined it. Maybe the last few weeks sucked enough that they were finally getting to him through Claire's bad memories. That or he was buying into dad's superhero-hunting paranoia. Great. So much for anyone in the family getting through all this drama without going nuts.
"Hello, Lyle Bennet."
Lyle tensed. He clenched a fistful of Mr. Muggles' fur, and barely noticed when the dog let out a sharp, protesting little yelp. Instead Lyle took a breath, reminded himself that no one paid attention to him, and looked up.
He didn't have to look far. The man was standing only a few steps away, hands tucked casually in his coat pockets, staring down at Lyle. And he was undeniably, unmistakably, exactly who Lyle thought he was.
Why he hadn't noticed the black-coated man get this close was a moot point. It was a distant second priority to doing what he did best these days: nothing. With all the conviction of determined obliviousness, he stared at the man blankly and said, "Am I supposed to know you?"
The man shrugged. "Your heartrate says you do."
"Uh... Yeah. Um. Great. That's not creepy at all."
Lyle immediately wished he could go back in time and kill the words before they'd ever left his mouth. It was a pretty spectacular amount of failure if he couldn't even be ignored properly. This must be why dad and Claire didn't want he and mom involved in their crazy lives. Apparently he was so useless under pressure that he couldn't even fake ignorance.
"It's a talent," the man said with a hint of an amused smirk. "I'm a friend of your father's. Met your mother, too. Where are they these days?"
Lyle closed his eyes. He took a breath that sounded more like a a gasp than he would have liked.
"Leave us alone."
The man tilted his head. "Excuse me?"
"Mom, and dad, and Claire. Leave us alone." Mr. Muggles squirmed in his lap, and Lyle mentally added the two of them to the list as well.
"Well," the man said. "That's different. Not many people think to ask."
"Like that means you will."
"No. Nice try, though."
Mr. Muggles chose that moment to start barking his fuzzy little brains out. Just in case Lyle had any notion that nothing else could make things worse.
The man looked at Mr. Muggles. There was a surprising amount of annoyance there. And something stronger than annoyance. So much so that Lyle clamped his hand over the dog's muzzle to muffle the barks.
"My dad kidnaps people," Lyle said. Even with his mouth gone dry and the dog squirming in his lap and a serial killer standing a few inches away... He tried to make it sound like a threat. "If you even try to touch my sister, he'll-"
"-lock me up? Torture me? Shoot me? Drill a hole in my skull?" The man laughed, and touched the side of his head. "Your dad and I have played that game. I won."
Lyle said nothing. Though apparently he couldn't even do that right.
"Try not to look surprised," the man said. "I bet there's a lot you don't know about your father, Lyle. He has a strange idea of keeping people safe. Whether it's his family or the rest of the world. I could tell you all the torture and murders I know about. And that's not even the half of Noah Bennet."
"He's my dad."
"Yet if I decided to kill inconvenient you and your obnoxious little dog right now, he wouldn't be here to save you."
Lyle swallowed. "Didn't say he was a great dad."
"They never are."
The man reached deeper into his coat pocket. A chainlink leash clattered and coiled into a pile in the grass near Lyle's feet. A broken collar was still attached. Complete with the little tag that read Mr. Muggles in flowing cursive letters. All of it now smeared with blood.
Lyle saw a flash of wet, jagged red as the man's hand slid back into his pocket. If he looked carefully enough, he could see a dark stain seeping though the material.
"See you around, Lyle. I'll tell Claire you said hi."
The man walked away. Mr. Muggles barked intermittently, but he seemed content to stay rooted to Lyle's lap.
Lyle watched until the man disappeared from sight. Then he waited until the last of the actors cleared out. Then he counted to 100 for good measure before scooping up Mr. Muggles and the broken leash, bolting up from the flattened spot on the grass, and running.
The entire uncomfortable trip back to the hotel, Mr. Muggles wondered what had happened to the retriever. All he'd smelled from the monster was the sharp, acidic taint of residual energy, and mixed traces of blood on his hands.
He'd never find out. He probably wouldn't like the answer.
Either way, he wouldn't sleep much that night. Neither would Lyle.
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