Title: Follow The Yellow Brick Road
Author: SecretAgentSmutGirl
Summary: Matt loses heart, Claire needs courage, and Sylar craves brains.

Disclaimer: I don't even own the computer this was typed on yet.

ooo

Windows break, people are shot and life goes on because somehow that has become normal.

"Who's that?" Matt asks about Maya when he returns, shaken and stirred and all those mixed up cliches.

Mohinder shrugs and he's at a loss. There is no way to explain, no logical reason for her continued inhabitance so no answer is offered.

Maya is braiding Molly's hair, humming a song that every child knows instinctively and they look both look like china dolls. Little girls who have seen too much, but taking solace in each other.

It's all a little surreal.

When Matt retreats to wash the blood of his hands, wash the images from his eyes, the shame from his body Mohinder follows, slipping under the scalding spray of the shower to wrap his arms around his lover like a lifeline. Mohinder needs his strength. Matt trembles and it's as though the earth trembles.

He presses his cheek against Matt's back and counts the beats of his heart.

ooo

Claire considers her cell phone in a way usually reserved for train wrecks or hot quarterbacks. It's tiny. It's pink. It is silent and no matter how hard she looks at it, how hard she grasps it the phone remains silent and it's tearing her apart.

She doesn't understand, it really is a rare occurrence because she's smart under the blond hair, and she's tired. This lethargy is more emotionally than physically but it's been a rough couple of months. Two high schools, two cheer squads, two fathers and multiple attempts to save the world.

Then one bullet and BAM!

Somehow her life has gone topsy-turvy, been swept up in a twister of so completely insane that it shows no sign of righting itself. Not while her blood is a liquid Lazarus Stone. She imagines she should be grateful, what she has in her veins has, by proxy, saved her father, the man who raised her but to what end?

She's bright so she's gathered that this may have all been part of his plan, the Company Man, her father. It has all been misdirection. Ignore the man behind the curtain, the horned rimmed son of a bitch, and pay attention to the game because if you falter for one second you're caught up in his machinations. Snared or dead, but for how long?

What will be the catalyst for change, a bullet in his brain and even that hadn't made the him blink. Leaving his family had been met with careful nonchalance and she has no doubt that it is all part of some plan.

He's the center, the paper spider, pulling all the strings, even hers. She's his very own Patchwork Girl who wishes to be that elusive normal, apple pie normal and all that raa-raa-raa, but she know that she's on borrowed time living in this sunny suburbia and now they're trying to take another father away from her.

Genetics has deemed her untouchable, an invulnerable rag doll who can bounce back from anything but how much can they take away from her? How far can she be pushed? She promised not to do anything rash, but teenagers lie all the time.

Her other father, another liar of the political variety, was hanging in the balance and it wasn't a hard choice to make.

Downstairs a dog barks, and in her hand the phone rings.

ooo

High heels click on the uneven cement and with his ear pressed against the pavement it's like a thousand symphonies on top volume. In front of him a cigarette drops to the ground, right before his eyes, and the ash explodes like his own private Hiroshima in the darkness.

The heels are a blinding silver and plastic, tacky like he imagines the wearer is but he doesn't bother to raise his eyes to confirm. Tacky trash. Tacky like her blood would be, pooling around her if she was worth his notice but she's not. She a nobody, she's nothing.

A common street walker with common brains and he's only interested in the extraordinary.

The heels and their owner are worth no more notice than the cockroaches he can hear scuttling all around the city and it makes him laugh. It's bitter and hoarse but it's laughter, and it sets the heels clicking away from him at double pace.

A lighter rasps and she mutters "Fucking junkie" when she accidentally treads on his discarded syringe on her way out of the alley. If he wanted to he could track the sound of her steps for miles, but why bother?

Sylar can't stop laughing and his laughter tastes like blood.

ooo

All hospital waiting rooms look the same, which is neither comforting nor comfortable.

Peter doesn't know how long he's been sitting there, it has been seconds and eons, but he no where else to be. A quick check to his phone tells him that it has been an hour since he last moved, since he called Claire. It's been two hours since he last tried to get in contact with his bitch of a mother. It's been twenty-four hours of chaos in a year of downright insanity.

Stillness, this endless waiting, is such a foreign sensation since the first time he threw himself off the roof of a building and his whole life went pear shaped.

He's met so many people, lost so many people- been swept up in a whirlwind of complications.

They've become a menagerie of misfits, a collection of the lost and the broken. A sideshow of super powered freaks, with an overly educated ring-master guided by a benevolent Company . They have all the big acts, Barnum only wishes he'd met the psycho-electric girl because genuine magic blows all the jersey devils in the world out of the water.

A simple sleight of hand and magic is turned into science. Freaks are transformed into those with special abilities. Average people become heroes.

The people he loves become targets.

When the world suddenly goes silent, goes eerie and still Peter Petrelli looks up into the troubled eyes of an aged Hiro Nakamura. He's holding his samurai sword like a fairy wand, but his expression is grim. "Peter Petrelli, we can not allow your brother to die."

There is no question of doing what he asks, because they've walked this road before. They saved the cheerleader and saved the world. Now they will save Nathan to do the same.

He will wake up tomorrow and realize that it's all been a bad dream.

End.