Black Sundays (HR,XO,UC,Mature) COMPLETE 4-23-08

[vaifeal]

Big thanks to Blink1lit for making the kickass banner.

Title: Black Sundays

Category: XO /Roswell/Heroes

Pairing: Peter/Liz

Rating Mature

Summary: It was a concept that Liz had long ago taken as gospel - there was no escaping what you are and the things you've done.

Disclaimer: I don't own Roswell or Heroes but I wish I did because season 2's Peter is just damn sexy.

A/N: I wasn't going to post this for a while but it won't stop nagging at me. Here's to hoping that I'll be able to concentrate more fully on finishing my Term papers. Some parts will be longer some shorter. Updates will be once a week. If I miss a week I'll double up.


Part I

She woke when the door to the van slid open, letting in the cool crisp night air. It caressed her warm skin and sent a chill through her. Liz waited to feel the smooth tickle of her curtains, they always fluttered against her when she forgot to close the window but instead rough hands dragged her from the hard steel floor and her eyes snapped open.

Drugs were coursing through her body slowing her mind and making it difficult for her to focus. Her vision was blurry but just enough to see where she was going. They took her into a large building and down a series of halls. White tiles on the ceiling rushed past her from her position on the gurney. White. Too white. Memories of what that color meant flashed through her mind. She wasn't going to let them get her. Not again.

Panic built, electric in its intensity pulsed through her but something was keeping it from finding an outlet. There was no buzzing beneath her skin just a growing sickness in her gut.

Not again.

Liz swung her leg toward the nearest man and using the self-defense classes that she had taken since she was sixteen drove her foot into his side. He grunted and staggered away. The momentum tipped the gurney, sending her to the floor. She tried to scrabble to her feet but hands were on her again, both sides this time, pulling her down a flight of stairs.

A large door stood open at the end of the hall, florescent light spilling out of it. She pulled her arms desperately. Not in there, they couldn't put her in there. Her feet caught on the frame stopping them from going any farther. One of them let her go, throwing her off balance and giving them enough time to grab her legs.

Again she tried to wiggle out of their grasp but it was ineffective as they carelessly tossed her into the cell. The impact with the cement floor sent shockwaves of pain through her. The door swung shut.

No. No. Not again. They couldn't do this to her. Not again.

Ignoring the bruises and scrapes that now littered her body, Liz pushed herself to her feet. There was a bed and a combination sink with toilet. That was all. Less sparse than her last accommodation but still a cell. They were going to hold her here. Her hand slapped down on the two way mirror that shared a wall with the door.

To observe.

They wanted to observe.

What where they going to do with her?

“Let me out!”

Again and again she hit it. A part of her knew they wouldn't listen but she needed to believe that someone in this building might see her and let her go. It had happened before. Topolski had led Valenti to her. Someone here could see her as the human she was.

The drugs had worn off, the effects pushed away by the adrenaline rushing through her system but her head was still swimming. Black itched at the edge of her vision. A sob ripped from her throat.

Make it stop.

“Please let me out!”

There had been a time when she had thought she was normal. Smart. Intuitive. Able to use reason to predict how people would react. Above average but completely and utterly normal. She was her grandmothers granddaughter.

But that was a lie.

She was never normal. Even before Max and the shock he gave to her system when he had brought her back from the edge of death. She had never been normal.

“Let me out!”

Liz had finally admitted that to herself years ago. Normal teenagers couldn't read someone by skin-on-skin contact. Normal teenagers didn't have instincts that were always right. Normal teenagers didn't intuitively know a person when they saw them. Normal teenagers could be touched when they felt threatened.

She had never been normal.

As an adult, especially after the changes Max had wrought, thinking that she was normal was heresy.

Her palms were stinging from the continued slaps to the glass but the pain was the only thing keeping her grounded. On a normal days she could stop her gifts from jumping ahead of her, however that took concentration: something she hadn't had when they'd grabbed her bare arms.

“Let me-”

A little boy ran across the beach, a small kite flying behind him. Wild exuberant laughter rippling through him. He did it. It was flying.

“-go.”

It had been stupid for her to take off her sweater. Even if she had been alone and it had been hot in the lab. It was always warm in the lab. She should have left it on. Her head pressed against the glass temporarily chilling her burning face.

Why had they come now? It had been years since she'd been taken last. At sixteen she'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She'd taken the fall for people long gone. People who had left for their own good not realizing that the ones left behind were still in danger. She still didn't know if they knew.

She didn't care anymore.

The office was intimidating and the balding man behind the desk didn't ease the feeling. He hoped to hell that he wasn't in trouble but the boss rarely called in men like him if they weren't.

Unable to support her weight and the mental onslaught her legs gave out and she sank to the floor. Eyes shut tight she tried to block out the coming images.

“Please...”

Her parents never knew what had happened to their suddenly hermit like daughter but they had agreed to send her away when Topolski had gotten her a scholarship at a private school in Vermont. Liz had hated it there and had tested out after a semester, choosing instead to go right to college.

She had tested out of most of her classes there. School was a means to an ends. She was smart enough that pushing herself meant finishing long before she should have. It had been hard but necessary. She wanted to know why she could do these things and access to the technology she needed only came from a PhD. That's what she had been doing when they took her. From the faint smell of smoke entrenched in her hair she doubted that her work had survived.

The world around her was spinning as her body slumped to the floor and the exhaustion she had been fighting finally caught up to her.


Thanks for checking it out. Hope you do next week too.

[vaifeal]

Part II

The thin sharp blade cut into her skin letting the blood bubble out and spill over her pale skin, leaving red trails in its wake. It slowly dripped on to the floor in dark drops than faster as a stream when the blade went deeper.

One of her arms was strapped down, the arm they were cutting into. The other was being held down by a gloved man. When the blood loss was enough to threaten consciousness he let go, giving her the opportunity to heal herself.

But she couldn't.

She wouldn't.

It was what they wanted. They wanted to push her gifts as far as they could to see her boundaries. It was systematical and cold. The perfect scientific experiment violating every human rights law that had been established in the last sixty years.

The first time Liz had been abducted they had told her she had stopped being human the moment Max healed her. These people, whoever they were, admitted that she was human but kept saying over and over again that they wanted to help her and people like her. She hadn't known that there was others like her out there. In noway could she see this as a way of helping.

Her head lolled to the side. Too heavy at the loss of essentials.

Let them bleed her dry. They wouldn't get what they wanted.

“If you don't heal yourself you are going to die.”

They'd tested some of her abilities, not all of them, just the most obvious ones.

She'd been lightly drugged as numerous people touch her so that they could see how many it would take for her to black out. When she woke up they made her tell them what she had seen. They'd threatened her and stepped over the line into violence to see how strong her skin could shock.

Even if that meant fatally.

And now, now they wanted to know about her healing ability. Max's ability. What would they say if she told them that she had gotten it from an alien?

At first it had started with small wounds as a test. If she had been at home she would've healed them without a second thought. They knew that: Liz wanted to know how long they had been watching her. The main spark to their interest had been when they had been testing her skin and had taken it too far.

All she had wanted was to make the pain stop.

A sharp blow across her cheek made her open her eyes, “You're going to die Ms Parker.”

Liz smiled.

It would be over. No more tests. No more desperation. She'd get to rest. Maybe see Alex. Sweet, sweet Alex who had gotten caught in the crossfire saving Kyle.

Saving her.

The hum of voices buzzed around her. They were discussing her. They were disappointed in her reaction to the test. She wouldn't heal herself so they were weighing their options. It was what scientists did. They wanted answers she wasn't willing to give.

It wasn't the end yet.

“What do you want to do?”

“Patch her up.”

“If it was too much?”

“Give her some of Adam's blood.”

*

[vaifeal]

Part III

The Haitian was here.

That was the only thought circling through the head of the jackass who had foolishly grabbed her by the neck without gloves. Her blood absent of the drugs they usually put in her system to keep her docile, there hadn't been anything to keep her from giving him second degree burns by from getting a brief insight into his mind.

It had been a while since she was in control and the testing had made her abilities stronger but damn if it didn't feel good to do only what she wanted and not what they wanted her to do. The poor sucker hadn't known what hit him.

Liz's gleeful chuckle had earned her a nastier than usual manhandling when they had shoved her into the chair despite that she hadn't fought them. Her smile was victory enough.

The Haitian was here.

She had no idea what that meant for her. The mix of relief and apprehension didn't seem like it would be a good thing. Who the hell was the Haitian?

The lock to her cell grinded open and the balding man who had rarely visited before entered. He was one of the leaders or the leader of the people who were holding her. Most of the people she had had contact with were intimidated by him. Liz just thought he was a creep.

And what kind of name was Bob?

It seemed like a name only used when mom and dad couldn't think of anything better.

'Oh, honey I don't know why don't we just go with Bob?'

Bottom of the barrel Bob.

The only other Bob she had known was the snapping turtle at the Zoo that Sean had named when Maria's mom had taken them there when she was ten. She'd had a panda shaped Popsicle with bubble gum eyes. Sean had called that Bob too and laughed. They hadn't gotten it.

She still didn't get it.

“Glad to see you're in such good spirits Ms Parker.”

“Bob,” he smiled his creepy little smile and looked at her with pride. Like a father whose kid had won the spelling bee. She had never been told his name.

Of the handful of times he had come to the facility she was being held in this was the only time that he wasn't standing on the other side of a wall watching through a window.

“I thought you'd like to know that you are being moved today,” he motioned to the door and two suited men came in, a third – a tall black man with a clean shaved head – hung back, choosing instead to stand stoic in the hall.

Was that the Haitian? She tried to charge her skin to burn them if they tried to touch her but nothing happened. Was he why they were letting her be clear headed?

“Home?”

“Unfortunately not,” she didn't think so. “You'll be taken to a facility better equipped to treat you. We're days away from creating a cure and we'd like you to be one of the first to get it.”

“There's nothing wrong with me for you to cure,” it was an argument that always fell on deaf ears with the doctors. Liz believed it though.

There was nothing wrong with her. She was different but nature of a mélange of diversity. By evolution or mutations triggered by increasing pollution humans were changing. Granted absorbing memories wasn't being born with an extra toe but who the fuck decided that she needed to be cured.

“We've been over this Ms Parker,” why did he always say we? She had yet to hear him say I. Her high school AP psych class would call it displacement. She called it being an ass. “Your abilities are a danger to society. So far the damage you've inflicted has only been material but that could always change.”

Liz lifted herself from the chair and was quickly pressed back into it. He knew nothing about her or her past except poorly drawn conclusions derived from inadequate information. How dare he make the assumption that he knew what was best for her.

Sure there had been a time when she had wanted someone to take her gifts away. That was before she had spent years learning how to control them. Besides the worst she'd done was accidentally blown a street lamp... and the door to her parents’ liquor cabinet after their funeral.

“Why do you all insist on talking to me if you don't listen to a thing I have to say?” Bob moved towards the door signaling the end of the conversation. The man whose grip hadn't loosened since she'd moved finally slackened.

“It's for your own good,” that phrase was really starting to piss her off.

Before her guards could react, Liz was out of the chair and lunging at Bob. It was futile. That didn't stop her. In the months – she thought it had been months – which they had kept her captive, she had never stopped the useless fighting.

They wouldn't break her.

The second man who had stayed near his boss easily crushed her to him just as her hands reached their target. Bob was staring at her as if he had seen her for the first time and did not like what he saw.

The Haitian moved closer.

“Come now Elizabeth we're just trying to help,” he was smiling widely now.

Liz really wanted to be in on the joke.

“I don't need your help,” the man holding her tightened his grip. She hadn't felt so small in years. For the first time she noticed how much weight she had lost. They fed her but the drugs that they were always pumping into her for their tests kept her from eating most of it.

The Haitian stepped forward and placed his hand on her head. At first nothing happened than her head felt like it was on fire. Liz fought not to scream and to stay awake.

She could hear Bob just as she was lost.

“I beg to differ.”


*

[vaifeal]

*

Part IV

Elle walked into the room flanked by one of her fathers’ henchmen. He was unneeded, unwanted, and a hindrance but dad had insisted than ordered her to take one with her when she went to distribute pills. All because of this little girl.

She'd made him carry the 'Haitian Pills' as Peter called them.

The room was the same as all the rest. The same furnishings and wall colors. As with all the rooms the only difference was the position of the stuff. The Company liked consistency. Her clothes were the mostly the same too except for her long sleeve shirt. Apparently her strongest powers were triggered by touch. A guard at the facility she had been kept in previously had learned that the hard way.

“Elizabeth,” her short black hair was pulled back tightly standing out starkly against her pale skin. Sickly pale. The girl was obviously not well. How could she possibly be a threat? She was sick, had just been moved from a facility where she had been kept mostly comatose, and she couldn't be much older than she herself was.

She herself was only dangerous because her ability had been nurtured. People on the outside let their gifts go untested.

What was her father thinking?

“I have your pills,” still no response.

They really were no fun when they were unresponsive.

Elle ran her hand just above Elizabeth's head where it was bent, hiding her face. Her hand was close but not quiet touching. It wouldn't do to give Elizabeth the opportunity to retaliate before being declawed. She let a spark jump from her hand.

Just a small one. Enough to wake the girl up.

“It's time to play.”

“Ok,” a voice raspy with disuse said, the dark head rising. Elle took a surprised step back at the green currents running across the woman’s skin, “if you want to.”

Her head cracked against the wall as she collided with it. The bitch had thrown her across the room. Her. Electricity crackled. No one did that to her. No one.

The man she came with had tackled Elizabeth to the floor and was holding her struggling form down. She could tell that the minx was preparing to attack again and quickly knelt down beside her. Elle let a stronger jolt hit the struggling form.

“That wasn't very nice Elizabeth,” her hand was still letting a continuous stream of electricity out and into her new plaything. “Now are you going to be a good girl or should I continue?”

She finally laid still, though that seemed more from exhaustion than resignation.

Retrieving the pills she noticed the girls lips were tightly pressed together. She nodded at her dad's henchman and he held the girls nose. The situation was extremely annoying.

“Take the damn pills.”

Finally the girl opened her mouth to breath and they forced the pills in. After some more coercion she swallowed them. Leaving the henchman to ensure that they weren't thrown up, Elle left the room.

She was not doing that again. Her father could get someone else to deal with the girls temper tantrums.

*

A/N: I know very short but it's just a filler. Next post on New Years Day.

[vaifeal]

Part V

There was nothing on the other side of the window but lights and walls. It was possible that there was another room but all he could see was a florescent glow and cinderblock walls. Little interest could be gleaned from the view except that it wasn't sitting on his bed staring at the opposite wall yet again.

Peter could imagine that prison would be more interesting than this; prisoners at least didn't spend all their time in their cells. They were let out for yard time among other things. Here though there was nothing to do but eat, sleep, think, read, and talk to Adam.

He didn't want to talk to Adam too often.

At times he was grateful that the man was there to break up the monotony that his life had become but it felt like every time they started a discussion it ended in the same place. At first they could pass on small talk, antidotes about their lives, soon though the topic turned to the nature of the Company. While Peter would admit that covert agencies were inherently problematic, he was in this room for a reason.

A reason that was becoming harder to quantify the more time passed but that didn't change that it was still his reason.

He wouldn't let himself become a danger to anyone again.

All his arguments and the catalog of excuses that he had built up in the weeks that he had been sequestered in the basement of this building had one faltering point. All of it paled when Adam began talking about how his blood could help Nathan. How it could heal the burns that his explosive heat had wrought on his brother.

That argument stilled him every time.

What was better: to stay in this place and seek help or to leave and help Nathan?

Doubt was becoming a permanent fixture in his mind. There still wasn't a cure. The room was beginning to feel more like a cell. His family thought that he was dead. Elle was a sadistic little girl in the body of a gorgeous blond. Something was off about Bob. Claude had said that to control the abilities they had to be exercised not suppressed.

Claude had once worked for the Company before he had run for his life.

Bennett now worked against them.

Peter shook the thoughts out of his head.

People change, organizations change. These people had sworn that they could help him. They would do it. He had to believe that his time here wasn't in vain.

The familiar itch to get up and move around pulsed through him, he squashed it down. Pacing only made it worse. Lately he had started to do push ups and other activities to keep busy but he wasn't in the mood.

A groan escaped his lips. He had always believed that he was meant for something greater than his life had been and he had stepped into the role easily when the time had come. There was nothing ordinary about the things he could do.

Things had been easier when he had just been a hospice nurse.

Elle came in a dark frown marring her face. She dropped the cup with his pills on the desk and waited impatiently for him to get up. In the time he had spent with the Company he had come to appreciate that the woman’s moods fluctuated like a yo-yo but he had never seen her quite like this.

She looked murderous.

“No jolt today?” Peter wasn't sure why he asked. They hurt like a bitch so a day without it wasn't upsetting. Her expression softened lightly and her hand gingerly touched the back of her head.

“Not today,” he picked up the cup with his pills and examined the littering of shapes and colors.

“What happened?”

Teeth lightly gnawed the inside of her cheek, “Some people aren't as appreciative as you are.”

Elle took the empty cup and left the room. He watched her as she walked past his window.

-

A/N: I'm not going to be around for 2 weeks. I'll post again on the 13th. Check out: http://oddended.livejournal.com/ for more info.

[vaifeal]

Part VI

“Down by the bay
where the watermelon grow”

Attempts to sleep were becoming futile.

And even though he had been restless all day, Peter was blaming the very low singing that had filled his room the last twenty or thirty minutes. Not only was it a uninterrupted stream of nonsense but the song was one that he couldn't get out of his head.

It was children's song that nephews use to sing. It got stuck in his head then too.

“Back to my home
I dare not go”

He rolled out of bed and tried to find where the voice was coming from. It was female so that ruled out Adam, that and he didn't seem like the type of person that sang. But it wouldn't be a far stretch for Elle to sit singing outside his door to annoy him. Even that didn't feel quite right. Elle was the type of woman to do things in person. She'd want him to know it was her.

Slowly he circled the room carefully concentrating on the sounds. It brought him to the sink. He bent down. There had to be a grate for the noise to come through so clearly. Cement wasn't a good conductor. Running his hands along the wall he stopped as he felt metal beneath his finger.

There it was a slotted vent, painted over to match the walls.

“For if I do
My mother will say.”

He can't stop the words as they pass his lips, “Have you ever seen a bee with a sunburned knee?”

They'd been at the tip of his lips since he first made out the song. That had been Monty's favorite line; he'd deliver it with a giggle whenever it was sung in class. Which when he was in kindergarten had been often. Very often.

There's rustling and a thud. The noise was almost vindication, they'd kept him up and now they'd fallen out of bed. Good on them.

“Hello?” It's a woman. He knew that but it was still surprising to hear her. So was the relief bleeding through the voice.

“Hello,” she didn't make a sound. “So you're the one who's been me keeping up.”

It was meant to be a joke.

“I'm sorry. The last place I was...” he's not sure if he’s supposed to give her a prompt. Suddenly he doesn't mind that Adam carries the conversations between them. “It's just been a while.”

“I'm Peter.”

“Liz.”

He thinks about returning to bed. His goal has been reached. The singing has stopped. He can be left in peace now. But something keeps him crouched beneath his sink. Maybe it's the tone of her voice or maybe that she's the first contact he's had that's doesn't seem to have an agenda or a penchant for sadism.

“Peter?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are we?” the question shocks him.

He knew where he was so did Adam. Two different men with two different stories to explain their presence, they knew where they were. His mind searches for a reason why she wouldn't know and settles on her having fallen asleep on her way.

When Elle or Bob came around they'd answer all her questions. They had to.

He forces those thoughts from his head. It's not his problem if she doesn't know. Peter doesn't know her and she doesn't know him. There is a possibility that she's done harm. She could be a female Sylar or something equally as heinous.

Once again he shakes the thoughts away. It's not his problem.

“New York.”

“Ok... Peter?”

“Yeah.”

“Who's holding us?”

[vaifeal]

A/N: Because I've been so bad at posting lately, here's the part that you would have gotten yesterday if I hadn't gone away.


Part VII

“Where are you from?”

“Roswell, New Mexico.”

“You're a long way from home.”

“Roswell hasn't been home in a long time.”

“Doesn't your family miss you?”

“My parent's are dead.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's been years.”

“How did they pass away?”

“My mom got caught in the crossfire of a robbery. My dad had a stroke shortly after.”

They had decided to let each other ask whatever questions they wanted. The other person didn't have to answer but they couldn't lie. It was odd sharing details of your life with someone that you'd never met and had never seen but liberating. Peter was glad to have something to pass the time.

“That must've been hard,” he'd seen how tough it was to lose parents.

“At the time I was still close with my best friend. What about you?”

“My mom is still alive but our relationship isn't as good as it once was, I'm closer to my brother Nathan. What happened with your friend?”

“Too many things for her to handle. Do they know you're here?”

“They think I'm dead. Like what?”

“Our other best friend being killed. Why do you let them think that?”

“It's dangerous. How’d they die?”

“You're protecting them,” she avoided the question. He let it go.

“Yeah,” they fell into silence momentarily.

“Is your brother a good man?”

“He can lose his way but he’ll always find it again,” he can feel her understanding nod. “You ever wish you had siblings?”

“All the time when I was little. What did you do for a living?”

“I was a hospice nurse.”

“How did you get into that?”

“I wanted to help people and even the dying need someone to be there for them. What about you?”

“I was a scientist.”

“That's interesting.”

“Parts of it.”

“So, were you trying to cure diseases?”

“No, studied protein sequences mostly. Where you still working when they took you?”

“No. Where were you living?”

“Boston. You?”

“Lower East Side.”

“So you’re a New Yorker.”

“Born and raised.”

“I knew a girl at school who was a New Yorker. She was a food snob. She always said that outside of New York City you couldn't get good bagels or pizza, among others.”

“You can't. Are you still in touch with her?”

“No. The only reason we talked was because we were lab partners and then she transferred to Penn State.”

“You've never visited New York?”

“Nope.”

[vaifeal]

Part VIII

“Maria and I use to make him put dresses on and parade through my parent's restaurant. They were the most ridiculous things we could think of. Once it was just a baby blanket tied to him with necklaces. We knew it embarrassed him but it was Alex. He was one of the girls.

“And then one day, I knew. I knew that he was the best person I had ever met and there was not a bad sliver in him. That he loved us so much that he was willing to put up with the mortification without a complaint. He was our brother in all but blood and he'd be there for us no matter what.

“I couldn't do it to him anymore,” her voice is low and slightly muffled but Peter can almost feel the bittersweet smile. “That's when some of my abilities started to show... What about you? When did you know that you were different?”

He was leaning on the wall besides the sink. The conversations that they were sharing were becoming longer and he found himself finding ways to make himself more comfortable, like the pillow at his back. The safe topics had already been covered. He'd even answered Liz's questions about the Company.

Was it government?

What were their intentions?

But this was the first time they had broached their gifts.

“I knew I was meant for something bigger than the life I was living then I started having dreams about flying. They were precognitive but I didn't know that... I jumped off a building.”

“And flew.”

“No, Nathan flew and caught me,” She knew he would continue without prompt, she didn't want to seem rude. Peter wasn't sure if the ease he was adjusting to read her silences should unnerve him. “I slipped from his grip and then I flew. I figured out later that I can absorb other people’s abilities.”

“Are they permanent?”

“Initially it was just when I was near them but later I could recall them by thinking about how I felt about that person. The more I use them...”

“... the easier they are to use. Same here, the more they tested mine the stronger they got. Wait, you’re a mimic? So you can potentially do anything.”

“Basically, I've passed out from absorbing too much at once but there doesn’t seem to be a limit.”

“Overload. You push power too far before the vessel is ready and you're bound to get it,” he laughed. “What?”

“Nothing, it's just easy to see that you liked what you did for a living.”

“I went science geek on you, didn't I? I have a tendency of doing that. I can't stop myself, human potential is fascinating. The things I can do are the reason I went into genetics but it was the sheer diversity of the field that kept me interested. The first time I looked at a double helix it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen... and now I'm rambling. Sorry.”

“Don't worry about it; it's cute that you love your work so much. What was your field?”

“Us, actually. I mostly concentrated on mapping my DNA and comparing it to 'ordinary' humans, though I did do some research into the cognitive sciences. My doctorate was based on the work of this doctor who wrote about the emergence of people like us.”

“Chandra Suresh.”

“Yeah, how'd you know?”

“I've read his book,” he hesitated, “and I know his son Mohinder. He's continued his father's work; I contacted him when my abilities first developed.”

“I didn't know that. I'll have to talk to him...”

Liz's voice drifted off. He knew she was thinking that she wouldn't get the chance to talk to Suresh. There was nothing he could think to say. Her experience with the Company had been different than his own. Even if they hadn't really spoken about it, he knew that much.

Her views matched up with Adam's more then his own.

There was nothing wrong with her. There was nothing unnatural about the things she could do. Her presence in the facility was against her will and it even puzzled him.

“Are they really trying to help us?”

“I have to believe they are.”

“Goodnight Peter.”

“Goodnight Liz.”

[vaifeal]

Part IX

It started out low than slowly built in level. Crashes. Yelling. The heavy slam of the steel door that kept them in their rooms. There was more pounding and Liz's voice the loudest. It had taken a rough edge. The words she was yelling drifted into his room clearly.

She'd lose her voice if she kept it up.

Peter knew she wouldn't stop. She never did. The Company used force to make her take her medication. She used it to send a message that fell on deaf ears.

“Come back here you stupid son of a bitch. Let see how tough you are when you don't have you'r thugs with you. Open this door you fucking bastard!”

He watched Bob walk past his window with a smile and a nod. He rarely came down. Which as the leading figure in the organization wasn’t too surprising. Bob trusted Elle to care for Peter, another employee to deal with Liz, and virtually no one to interact with Adam.

Slipping from his bed he knelt next to the sink as he had done every time she had lost her temper and started to scream at the wall in an expression of frustration.

“Liz.”

“What?!”

“If you don't antagonize them maybe you could make it through this unscathed.”

“Why the hell would I make it easier for them?” She was always angry after she was given her pills but she was even more so now. The big wig had come down and talked to her.

“What did Bob want?”

“To tell me that if I didn't behave they wouldn't be able to help me.”

“Maybe he has a point.”

“It was a threat. The kind version of saying that if I don't settle down that I will be dealt with accordingly.”

“They're trying to help.”

“Bullshit. We're not here for them to help us. This is the abyss Peter. They haven't killed you or Adam because of your ability to heal. Same reason I'm still alive.”

“You can heal?” she went on as if she hadn't heard him.

He could picture what she looked like at the moment. Fierce eyes glaring at the wall face flush with anger. Peter had never seen her, couldn't even catch a glimpse in the grate. That didn't stop him from conjuring an image.

“This whole place reeks of deception. How you can trust them to cure,” she spit out the word as if it was dirty, “you is beyond me. Wake up Peter. You're here because you're a threat-”

“I know that. I'm a danger to my family, my friends, society as a whole. I almost blew up New York that's been made clear.”

“No, you're a threat to them. As long as you're in here there's no one out there with the power to stop them.”

“You need to calm down Liz.”

“You need to get pissed off. They're stuffing you in this box so people forget you. Out of sight, out of mind. This isn't for the best. There is no cure. You can't cure evolution. These gifts are a part of our genetic code unless they can strip that, which the field isn’t even close to doing on a live subject; we're going to stay exactly as we are.”

“Things aren't as cut and dry as you make them seem.”

“Yes they are. They took me because of my research. They took you because you are the most powerful person in the world whether you want to admit it or not and if you do they’ll be no stopping you. According to Adam he's here because he wanted to make public what he could do. These are not the actions of an organization you should trust.”

“Would you listen to yourself Liz. You make it sound like you can't trust anyone. In case you haven't notice, not everyone is out to get you. These people can help. I lost control and almost killed three million people. If they can help than I'm going to let them.”

“That's the thing, people like this don't help.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they've had me before!” there was a loud crack like she had punched the wall. “When I was sixteen, sixteen Peter! I hadn't done anything. I didn't even know I was different. I just thought I was good at seeing the details but because a friend had helped me once some government fucks decided that I was their personal plaything. Do you know what they did? Huh?”

She didn’t need him to reply.

“Exactly what these people did. Cut me up to see how I worked. Tortured me to see how much I could endure. Same as what they did to Elle. Yeah, sweet little Elle wasn't born this way, something twisted her. You let me touch her without these suppressants and I'll prove it was daddy Bob. I was lucky to get out last time. A woman with a conscience let me go; down here that mistake won't be made again.”

“The Company isn't those people.”

“They might as well be.”

[vaifeal]

A/N: OK so I'm just a little peeved about the Patriots losing the Super Bowl. Not that the Giants didn't deserve to win but the Pats really didn't play as well as they had all season. What a fuckin' upset. Reviews to improve my mood? Please?

Part X

Peter adjusted the pillow under his head and tried to ignore the cool floor beneath his back. He could just hear Liz struggle to even her breathing on the other side of the wall. Whatever happened had been loud and violent but with her still out of it all he could do was be near.

He really wished the damn wall wasn't there. If he could just walk out the door and into her room, he would.

But desire wouldn't change that it wasn't allowed.

The words of Bob, Adam, and Liz circled through his head, connecting dots and coming to conclusions. He would never be allowed out of this place. There was no cure. It was time for him to wake up and realize that he had been manipulated into turning himself over.

In all that had happened over the last year. Getting his powers. Rescuing the cheerleader. Almost blowing up New York. He had managed to retain the simplistic innocent view of words as truth. It was time to out grow that mindset.

Nathan had protected him for a longtime keeping Peter from needing to.

Until now.

“Peter,” her voice was broken and laced with pain. He leaned closer to the grate.

“Liz-”

“Have you ever been in love before?” the question puzzled him but he went along with it.

“Once.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

It had been months since Isaac’s loft and he hadn't talked to anyone but Nathan about it, “Her name was Simone. She was the daughter of a patient. I loved her the moment I saw her.”

“Did she feel the same?”

“Not then. Later it seemed like she did.”

“You didn't think so?”

“I think she thought she could... It's complicated,” when had this turned into a therapy session?

“Tell me,” the strain was there but he still hesitated, “please.”

“Her ex was still a large part of her life. He wanted her back. I wasn't around.”

“Where were you?”

“Learning how to control my abilities.”

“What happened?”

“... she died. Isaac knew I was the one that was supposed to explode. I went to his loft. We fought. She was shot.”

“Oh, Peter,” he didn't want her pity.

“What about you? Have you ever?”

“Nope. I'm going on 24 and I've never been in love. I guess I have that in common with Elle.”

“Never?”

“Never. When I was in high school there was a boy that I could've but Max left before it went that far. After everything that happened in high school I didn't let people close enough to get attached. They always broke it off with me because I didn't talk to them.”

“You talk to me.”

“Yeah, I do,” Peter could hear the smile in her voice. She was smiling. She was ok.

“Why did you want to talk about this?”

“Just thinking about what ifs.”

He had stopped taking his pills that morning and he could already feel the difference. On them he hadn't been sick but he'd felt wrong. The more time passed the more he realized that how integral his abilities were.

As soon as the decision to leave had been made, he'd known that Liz would be coming with them. He couldn't leave her behind.

“They're going to kill me. That's why they didn't care how much damage they did. This is their last ditch attempt to get me to cave. They want my abilities and they want my research or they want me dead.”

“They're not going to kill you.”

“Yes-”

“They won't get the chance. We’re leaving,” he could hear her sobs. Loud racking relieved sobs.

Peter wished he could do more than wait.