Title: Unsavoury Reputation

Disclaimers: I don't own any supernatural powers or anything else to do with Heroes. If I had, the series would continue, no matter what.
Genre: angst, supernatural, hints of hurt/comfort and romance.

Rating: PG-15

Summary/Set: post Pass/Fail. Matt knows Peter shouldn't be behind the wall, but can't convince him not to go in for Sylar. Would Claire?

Pairing: mild/budding Sylaire.

Prologue

Claire pouted, starting at length at her pink phone, the object indirectly responsible for her current problems. Couldn't she have just a day where everything was normal? Now that her and Gretchen more or less admitted their feelings for each other, all she wanted was spending some time with her. Sylar was of course as usual the last person she wanted to hear about, regardless of how peculiar and relatively painless and what's more, surprisingly sociable she could consider their queer last encounter in the closet. When she could be bothered thinking about it for a moment or two, she was a bit puzzled by the killer's noticeably different and insecure attitude, but mostly she just wanted to pretend he didn't exist.

Instead, here she was, looking at a road map to find Matt Parkman's house following a phone conversation with the cop where she eventually and willingly nillingly had agreed to go LA to let herself get involved in one of Peter's no doubt repeatedly suicidal and ill-advised mission. Wasn't her uncle supposed to be the wiser one? If Matt had trapped Sylar, good on him, why did Peter need to get implicated?

Unfortunately for her, Claire cared for the Petrelli's wellbeing and she could not ignore what had happened. She could also relate to Parkman's reluctance to contact her father or god forbid Angela, and Peter was looking like he needed assistance from someone he trusted where he was, seemingly unconscious in a basement. Not to mention that it was rather concerning that the telepath didn't really seem in his right mind. It all meant that Claire could do nothing else, but disregard her reluctance and hatred of powers and abilities, and board the next plane to California.

"Any new developments?" The blonde asked as she was let into the house by a dishevelled and sweaty looking Matt.

The policeman only gave a half-hearted shrug, "you'd better follow me. Peter's downstairs," he led her.

"Where's Sylar?" She started, but the answer became clear as the house owner stepped aside. Claire rushed to her uncle's side, frowning, and shaking him, even though given what she already knew, it was unlikely for Peter to react to her being there. "Oh, Peter!" She shook her head in dismay. It was quite a miracle the younger Petrelli brother was alive, he'd always done the most daring things, regardless of consequences. Now her attention was seized by the unfinished wall behind the unconscious paramedic though and she looked back and forth from the lifeless Sylar and Parkman. "Why are you trying to wall him in? Its no match for his powers. And in your house? You wanna use him as a foundation pillar of something?" The blonde took in the scene confused. She couldn't see how Parkman's deeds benefited him or anyone. The officer of the law looked decidedly drunk, in fact a lot worse than that, indicating a state of mind that had nothing to do with alcohol. His eyes didn't focus, or perhaps he was simply trying to look away, he had a foot on the stairs still, a hand on the railing as if he would've not been wanting to be there at all. "So how are we getting Peter back to normal?" She asked, eager to get the unpleasantries over with and herself back to college as well.

Parkman gave the same noncommittal shrug, "I'm not. I'm having nothing to do with Sylar ever again, if Angela serves my head on a plate or not. I've always known it had been a mistake to try to wipe out a mind like his. A mistake I had to pay for dearly over the last few months. You can't imagine how it was, with him living in my brain. As far as I'm concerned, this house is no longer ours. I'm going after Janice and we're starting anew like we should've in the first place. I just thought you'd want to know about Peter before I disappeared. If you want him out, you'll have to get him out yourself. I tried to stop him, he didn't listen to me anyway."

"What do I do?" The blonde student volunteered impatiently. She would get herself into the most risky situations lately as well, but at least she had the excuse of being indestructible. The mind reader walked over with a certain reluctance in his step, but knelt down by the ability replicator nevertheless and with a last mental shrug over the validity of what he was doing, he put a palm on each of the two present born Petrellis foreheads.

Claire wasn't sure what to expect. Perhaps a blurring of her surroundings, a swirl of colours, a long tunnel that signified entering somebody's mind. Instead, without any warning or transition whatsoever, she found herself on an portentously empty street, surrounded by skyscrapers while her real body slumped down next to Peter's in Parkman's basement.

tbc