Characters: Mostly Peter, some Hesam, Angela, Mohinder later on.

Setup: New season, new gaps to be filled! Until the show fills them for me, at least, rendering me AU in the process.

When Peter tells Noah he "got his old job back", that made it sound so easy. How did Peter get his old job back, and how did he get Mohinder's ability? And why isn't he talking to his mother and the guy he thinks is Nathan? My take on these questions. As canon as I can. Set between "An Invisible Thread" and "Orientation".

Reviews and comments welcome!

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Control

"Hi, Mr. Jackson. Yeah, you're probably surprised to see me, aren't you? I'm really sorry, but I've been away for a while – no, sorry, I couldn't have called..."

Too vague.

"Hey. Yeah, I'm back – I've been ill for a few weeks, really nasty business..."

No. Lying about something like that, in his line of work, was just dumb.

"Please, Mr. Jackson. It'll never happen again. I really need my job back – I know I should have called, that can't be helped now – give me just one more chance, okay? Being a paramedic is really everything I want to do—"

Nope. Jackson wouldn't respond to grovelling.

"Mr Jackson, I'm sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner, but I was drugged and abducted, survived a plane crash, tried to kill one of the guys who'd tried to carry me off, got shot and spent a few days on the run before I got back just in time to save the President of the United States..."

That did have a certain ring to it, but... no.

"You gettin' out, or what?"

Peter looked up abruptly. He had been so absorbed by what he was going to tell Supervisor Jackson that he hadn't noticed that the taxi was already parking outside Mercy Heights Hospital.

He paid the driver and slowly walked up to the entrance. He could have tried to explain the situation to Jackson over the phone, but he'd decided that it would be best to appear in person. He knew his chances of getting back into his old job were slim. He's just disappeared for weeks, without being able to supply any explanation. When he'd got home, he'd found that his answering machine had been full as early as the second day of his disappearance, as was his mailbox. It had taken him several rather depressing hours to get through it all, and one of the first things he'd opened was an envelope containing a note of instant dismissal.

Peter knew that Nathan could have fixed all of this with a few signatures and a phone call or two, but before he resorted to that, he'd try everything else first. Nathan had got him into this mess, but he would feel a lot better if he was actually capable of getting out of it on his own.

He kept his eyes on the ground as he trudged along the corridors towards Jackson's office, hoping he wouldn't meet anyone he knew. He'd even considered changing his appearance, just for a few minutes, but then had decided against it.

Peter felt slightly queasy by the time he knocked on the supervisor's office door. Jackson had every reason to be mad at him. Hell, the man was mad enough if you showed up three minutes late for work. He set his jaw as he heard Jackson shout "Come in!", and entered.

"Mr Jackson…," Peter began in a tone that he hoped was sufficiently apologetic without sounding too penitent, and was completely taken aback when the other man's face brightened at the sight of him.

"Ah, Peter, good to see you again!" he said in a tone Peter couldn't even remember from him. Not directed at him, at least. Something was odd here.

"Last few weeks've been totally crazy," Jackson went on, unearthing a whiteboard marker from the chaos that was his desk in remarkably short time. "I've got at least two people calling in sick every day. You're okay again? Blood test results look good?"

Peter opened his mouth to say that he had absolutely no idea what Jackson was talking about, but then decided to wait this out as long as he could. He had a feeling he know a lot less than he should here. Blood test results…? Or maybe… it was that Jackson knew a lot less than he should have.

"Yeah… fine," he said vaguely, which wasn't even a lie. He supposed.

"Good, good," Jackson said absently, walking over to the wall where the duty roster hung. "Can't have you walking around still contagious with mononucleosis. Let's see… you ready to start again on Wednesday?"

Luckily, the supervisor had his back to Peter and thus couldn't see his incredulous expression. Mononucleosis? Where the hell did that come from?

"Uh – Wednesday's fine," Peter finally remembered to reply, and immediately saw Jackson scrawling Petrelli into a free slot in the early shift – next to Malek, Peter noted.

"So – see you on Wednesday!" Jackson dismissed him, turning to his ringing phone with a preoccupied air but a rather hearty wave at him, as waves went.

Peter managed to keep his face noncommittal until he had closed the door behind him, by which time he just couldn't repress a disbelieving headshake. He was fairly sure he knew what had happened here. As soon as he was out of the hospital's front door, he took out his cell and dialled his mother's number.

"Yes?" Angela Petrelli's voice came over the phone, a few seconds later.

"Hi, Mom, it's me." Peter was too irritated to spend much time on the required niceties. "Say – have you sent Matt Parkman around on any secret missions lately?"

There was a rather long pause at the other end, so he went on, "I've just come from the hospital, prepared to beg them to give me another chance, and learn that I had supposedly developed mononucleosis?!"

There was another pause, before Angela replied, her tone aloof, "It was your brother's idea. He thought that he'd give you some help after getting you into trouble in the first place. If you'd have been more comfortable with begging, I'm sure that could still be arranged."

"I'm not keen on begging. But the next time you… arrange something for me, don't do it behind my back!"

"Did you get your job back or not?" Angela asked.

"Yeah. But I thought that was the old methods. The whole messing with people's minds, doing things behind people's backs and such?"

"Peter, we'll always have to do things behind people's backs. I believe you got a taste of what would happen if abilities became common knowledge. You and Claire objected to bagging and tagging and shooting. We're not doing anything of those."

Peter let out a long slow breath. "Yet."

Suddenly, all the progress he had thought they'd made, that evening at the Coyote Sands Café, with Nathan, Noah, his mother, and Claire, seemed to be slipping out of his grasp, and in his mind, he saw it being replaced by the old Company, or Pinehearst, whatever you liked to call it. The old methods, the old faces, the old feeling of things getting over his head. Things he had never wanted any part in.

His mother seemed to sense his growing anger, and went on, slightly more peaceably, "Peter, I can understand what you're thinking. I used to see things just like you. But I've seen a lot more since that. You know what I'm talking about. People can't be trusted."

"So what makes you the one who can be trusted? Trusted to take control over other people who don't even know they're being controlled? "

"Someone has to take control. Not me alone, but a group of people to ensure there's no abuse of power."

It sounded logical. It was just what they had agreed on at Coyote Sands. But there was a new twist to everything that Peter thoroughly disliked. He knew what he thought he had wanted, since that day: to be part of the controlling entity. To keep the rest of the Company heads in check, provide a balance, make sure things didn't run out of hand. Again.

But now, he realised that every fibre in him recoiled at the thought. In the light of what had just happened, there could only be two outcomes to this. He could either fight a constant war against his mother – which he might have put up with if it had been anyone else, but not with her – or he'd cave in at some point, accept the inevitable, and become one of them. Like his mother, like his father.

He'd wanted control over this new Company, but he now felt that this was something he could never control. His mother wouldn't let him. Probably not even because she wanted to, on any conscious level, but because she was Angela Petrelli. And because he was her son.

"Mom," he finally said, quietly, "I think it's best if you do this without me." Slowly, he pressed the button to kill the connection, and shut off his phone.

Hands thrust in his pockets, Peter started to walk home. He took the subway, not wanting to talk to anyone just then, not even to a cab driver.

When he arrived in his apartment, he felt alien. He suddenly seemed to see all those pictures and reminiscences hanging on the walls for the first time. They had been there for a long time. Some of them had even hung in his old room in Angela's house, before he'd moved out. It was strange to stare at the same posters that a much younger, much different Peter had once hung up on his walls in his junior year at High School, and who had put them up here again a few years later. They'd been hanging here while he graduated from nursing school, while he'd jumped off buildings, while he'd been imprisoned, stranded in Ireland, stuck in the weirdest futures and while he'd been on the run from the government.

It didn't feel right.

He got a chair from the kitchen, and started to take them off.