A Scene From 2050
Title: A Scene From 2050
Fandom: Heroes
Rating|Genre: g | family/friendship (with a very light touch of slash, a hint of angst, a little fluff)
Characters|Pairing: Angela Petrelli, Peter Petrelli, Sylar, Noah Bennet, Simon Petrelli, Lyle Bennet, with Sandy Berg, Nathan Petrelli Jr., and other original characters, mentions others | Petlar *lol* again!
Summary: It is the summer of 2050 in a sort of AU future where they’re all one big happy (?) family.
Word count: 2 914
Spoilers|Warnings: No | References to character death (past and future)
Notes: Written for oneshot challenge #35, “I Am Sylar” at heroes_contest… I realize that the word “challenge” means “push your boundaries” and in my case that would obviously be to write Sylar’s point of view instead of a narrator voice, right? But honestly, we all know that some of you (no one named and no one forgotten) are better than this than I’ll ever be. :)
Notes2: Now that we’re speaking of Sylar, let me tell you this - the first time I watched the end of season four (and I only watched it once) I had my mind occupied elsewhere and I didn’t pay attention to a lot of the things that were going on. During most of “The Wall” I was actually chatting with somebody... So. Last night, I re-watched the last two episodes. (I think I’ll re-watch the whole S4 soon.) When they got through the wall and he realized it had only been hours and not years, and asked if that meant that it wasn’t real, I was like “aww!” Of course it was real, Peter and him. I had to re-watch that to feel that I could believe what I had written here, so now I’m ready to post this. :)
And now I’m even sadder, again, that there is never going to be a season five. Anything could happen, of course. I don’t necessarily believe that most people would find it hard to believe the message Claire was trying to send… but that’s the theory for this fic.
Notes2: Now also edited for typos!! I do re-read my stories several times before I post them but some things slip through my fingers... As for other spelling and grammar mistakes, because there will probably always be some... well, maybe I should ask for a beta reader...
It is a sunny summer’s day, mid July perhaps, and this is what we see:
The park behind the nursing home is full of old people, and trees even older. It is visiting time and the old are surrounded by family; young people, children.
One particular family is in the centre of our interest, or is it two families that are connected somehow? The nurses aren’t quite sure, not that they really care. They laugh and call them ‘The Bennetrelli clan’ and then they go on to think of other things.
There’s something about the name ‘Petrelli’ that ring a bell for some elderly people, ‘Nathan Petrelli’; maybe there’s a connection? But all of that was a long time ago and the world has moved on.
A young man the others call ‘Cousin Peter’ is there today. He’s not always there (not that the others come very often - some days, there are no Bennetrellis at all but they are many today) but when he is, he is very sweet to the old lady in the wheelchair. Sometimes, another man is with him; Gabriel, is it? (They’re a couple, and such a dashing one.) Yes, there he is; dark and handsome, with deep, piercing eyes. Now he is leaning against a tree, talking to a blonde thirty-something woman called Sandy B. Berg. It appears to be a serious conversation; she is asking questions and he delivers answers, but we can’t hear them from where we are.
Cousin Peter was watching them a moment ago, but now he has turned his attention to the old lady in the wheelchair that is standing in the shadow under a tree. The day is hot, even in the shade, and most people are dressed accordingly, but this woman, Angela Petrelli, has a shawl over her shoulders.
Mrs. Petrelli is the matriarch, old as an oak. She’s well over a hundred years. It’s not that strange these days, with good health and good care… But in Mrs. Petrelli’s case, her days are probably numbered. You can almost see it by looking at her, can’t you? She’s not the way she used to be. Not as… sharp. Her hair is white (she stopped dyeing it black some twenty-five years ago) and she puts her head in her hands sometimes, as if her thoughts are too heavy for her head. She sleeps a lot and sometimes she’s disoriented when she wakes up.
“We have fruit”, the young nurses are chirping as if this is extraordinary news. “Angela, do you want some?” They can get a little too familiar sometimes with the very old. “Angie, do you want a banana?”
The old woman’s head jerk up as if someone has pulled her hair. For a moment there’s a pained look in her eyes that scare the young girls. She does not talk a lot these days. What she replies then is typical:
“Fruit? As long as there are no strawberries… Simon is… allergic to strawberries. Or Heidi says so. She should know…”
The nurses move away. There are other people who don’t have any visitors and they leave Mrs. Petrelli to her near and dear ones.
What the nurses don’t know is that Heidi has been dead and buried for five years and she can’t say anything to anyone anymore, and the allergic boy is very well capable of taking care of himself, for he is over fifty now and he has children of his own. Now we can see them all there in the park: his three daughters in their twenties are sitting here and there in the grass, and Simon has a son-in-law who looks like he’s lost in deep thoughts (he might be thinking that he needs a cigarette but this is a non-smoking area) and a grandson, only four years old.
“Cousin Pete!” shouts the little one and clings to the young black-haired man’s leg.
“Hey there, little Nathan!” says Cousin Peter, and throws the boy high up in the air, swings him, and it makes him laugh out loud.
Old Mrs. Petrelli reacts to that.
“He’s not Nathan”, she says sharply, and her eyes look unseeing. “I never had a blond son. Who is this imposter?”
“Hush”, Cousin Peter says gently. “You know who he is. This is little Nate, a different Nathan. You know that; I know you do.”
The blonde boy, little Nate, is scared of his great-great-grandmother. Some of his uncles and aunts (there are five of them, in their teens or early twenties) say that the old lady is a witch.
Mrs. Petrelli looks at Cousin Peter and searches for something - what? - in his face. She must have found it, for she calms down, and takes his hand. She clasps it between her old hands, brings it to her cheek and sighs. Yes, she knows, now, who little Nate is. She might forget again soon, but for now, she is not upset.
Who is this ‘Cousin Peter’ and the man by his side? I think you know them. They come and go. They stay away for long periods of time, especially the other one. Some people in this park, the older ones, must know who they really are, but it is as if people have forgotten. Sometimes, people almost seem to believe there are several Peters, from some branch of the family far away, a family with many boys…
Simon acts like an uncle to him, overly jovial perhaps, but genuinely fond of both of the men, it seems. He is among the ones who don’t want to think about facts such as people’s actual ages. (Someone is missing from this picture; who is? Oh, Monty… Simon’s younger brother. He passed away last year, far too young; died of cancer and left a wife and five adolescent kids behind.)
Then there are the Bennets, the other half of ‘the clan’. Many people are missing among them, too, and new faces have appeared. But this is only natural, considering how much time that has passed since the last time we saw them.
Lyle Bennet, with a wife and two children, and grandchildren of Nate’s age or a little older, is the one who rarely speaks to the man known as Gabriel. He shudders, as if there’s something there, a history. He mostly just ignores him the few times they all meet at family gatherings such as this one.
If the other man is offended and hurt, he doesn’t show it.
If strangers ask about the family and how the nice gay couple is related to the rest of them, some people think that Mr. Bennet will know. But Noah Bennet, the blind old man on the white bench, says that he never knew exactly who they were, the two of them. He says the answer must have been somewhere in his files, but those files have not existed for decades. ‘Peter is some relative of the old lady’, he says. It never occurs to anyone that he might be lying.
No, we must remember that all the innocent bystanders in this picture, the staff at the nursing home and the young in-laws of the Bennetrellis, cannot know. They accept what they are told and take everything for granted. If they were to come across some old family photos, videos on the internet or a TV documentary, they might see a striking resemblance between Cousin Peter and another Peter, the brother of Nathan, the congressman, the senator… Well, what does it mean? Nothing to them; people are quick to accept ‘natural’ explanations, and all of that was such a long time ago.
They are more interested in other stories.
Like: ‘How long have the two of you been together?’ or: ‘How did the two of you meet?’ and things like that.
They make up stories. They are careful. The truth is that the story is long and complicated and it involves many of the people who are present in the scene we are studying, and even more who are dead or absent. There was hostility and animosity and violence and lots of things they would never tell a living soul. Then there was a new beginning…
So many things have happened in the world and people know more than they have ever known before. In theory, there are no limits to what human beings can do; not even the sky is a limit. But even so, most people are the same as they’ve always been. They don’t want to see the extraordinary. Some people see it, yes, some people have always been willing to search for explanations. But if you thought that what Claire Bennet did made a deep impression on the world, then think again. The two young men would scare the crap out of most people if they revealed their actual ages. ‘Regeneration’, ‘ability replication’, what kind of mumbo-jumbo is that?
The people in the park today could tell them a thing or two, if they cared to listen.
Why would they listen? There are too many people here.
Now, for instance, let’s watch how Sandy Berg puts a baby, very carefully, in the blind man’s arms. She’s anxious, anyone can see it, but it looks like the man knows how to hold a baby. This one is tiny, and although he can’t see her there’s a wide smile of joy on his face. This baby is the daughter of his daughter’s daugther.
Noah Bennet used to be one of Mrs. Petrelli’s regular visitors. During the last four or so years, he has also been a resident at the nursing home. He doesn’t live with Mrs. Petrelli but they seem to enjoy each other’s company. Very often, he’s the only one who understands what she’s talking about.
They have strange conversations; the nurses have noticed sometimes. As if they’re both a bit nuts because of their old age, not that Mr. Bennet is as old as she is.
“Where’s my Claire-Bear?” the blind man can complain.
“She’s alright”, says Mrs. Petrelli reassuringly. “She is always changing, always the same.”
“Is Gretchen with her now?”
“No, Noah. Gretchen left her years ago to raise Sandy alone, have you forgotten? That was when Claire left all of us.”
“I want to forget, but I can’t... Why did they have a baby? Sandy is too old to have such a young mother.”
“I know, Noah… But it was Gretchen’s decision, too.”
Claire, she never visits. She is only known by her absence from family photos.
Peter said to Noah once that it hurts Claire too much to be around them, but that she will always watch over her family from a safe distance, just like he will. Noah replied that he understood, but there was pain in his voice nonetheless. Why can’t Claire come? The other two come, and if coming to the old people’s side is painful for them, they don’t show it.
The baby falls asleep in Noah’s arms, too young to know that he is her great-grandfather. Nobody knows if this baby is ‘special’, and if so, in what way? There are two abilities he more than anything doesn’t want her to have: Angela’s, and Claire’s. If he could have a say in the matter, he would want her to have something simple, like flying or breathing under water. Noah thinks that he won’t be alive when she is old enough to find out, and maybe that’s a good thing? He wonders if he has made the right choices in his life. The same old questions. There is no Company anymore. But there will always be people out there who know, who can offer help and guidance.
The older children, little Nate and Lyle’s grandkids, are running around on the lawn under the shadow of the trees. One of Nate’s uncles are chasing them, the other kids are cheering and laughing.
The little children’s voices are high-pitched as they shout things like: “You can’t catch me!”
“Yes I can!” replies the older boy. “I am Sylar!”
“No”, cries one of the kids, “I am Sylar! I’m gonna eat your brain!”
Some of the adults look their way, a little uncomfortably, but ignore them.
“What the..?” The man by Peter’s side stands up in a sudden, brusque movement. “What did they just say?! Did you hear that?!”
Peter reaches out a hand and tugs at his companion’s sleeve.
“They don’t mean anything by it. They don’t know what they’re saying, it’s just a game.”
“But someone put them up to it!”
The other man shakes Peter’s hands off him and he turns his head to look at Mrs. Petrelli. She meets his gaze calmly.
“You”, she says and points a bony finger at him. “Come here.”
Deep sorrow flies over the man’s face but his expression hardens and for a moment he looks as if he wants to spit at her. But he goes closer to her wheelchair because her voice is as compelling as it ever was.
He looks at her and says:
“What do you want, Ma?”
“Be a good boy”, she says and grabs his wrist; she’s surprisingly quick and strong. “Do not talk to me with that tone of voice. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. But ‘Sylar’ is just a story to them, a legend.” She lowers her voice, whispers: “Nobody remembers what really happened anymore. Nobody knows that you are Sylar. But I do. I still remember.”
Cousin Peter has walked up to them, he stands behind the old woman’s wheelchair and puts his hands on her shoulders. He bends down to speak in her ear; only the three of them can hear:
“Mom, don’t. Stop it. He is not Sylar anymore and you know it.”
“Then why”, says the old woman, “is he so upset by the children’s game?”
“Mom”, Peter repeats, and the sadness makes his voice thick. He squeezes her thin shoulders. Then he moves to squat in front of her instead and takes her hands, ‘Cousin Peter’, the relative from no one knows where. Nobody would believe it if they knew.
The old woman and the young man look at each other. Moments pass and nobody seems to notice.
“I’m sorry”, she says eventually. “I am very old, Peter. Old and tired… I don’t even dream as much as I used to do; my ability is fading; it is failing me. I dream about the past more often than about the future.”
“Well, maybe that’s a good thing”, he replies. “But mom, you of all people should know what it’s like to leave the past behind. It’s dead and buried.”
“Dead and buried…” she echoes.
Peter closes his eyes, bits down on his lower lip, shakes his head. What can he be thinking? He opens his eyes again and sighs.
“Let’s not talk about such things, dear”, she says and pulls her hands out of his.
Peter stands up and puts an arm around his lover’s shoulders. He is calm now. They look at each other and nobody can know what they are thinking, but the anger is gone.
“Why don’t you two go and play with the children”, Mrs. Petrelli suggests. “You know you want to.”
“I would rather stay here with you right now”, Peter says, and she doesn’t argue, but the other man starts jogging towards the kids.
When he’s closer, he runs faster.
“Watch out”, he growls, “Sylar is coming!”
All at once, the blind man, his son, and the old lady tense as if a disaster is near. They look - all but Noah - warily at the playing children and the man, but they say nothing. Soon they relax and look away.
It was decided a long time ago, before Mrs. Petrelli moved in to the home, that they were never to speak of certain things again. That they were going to let them turn into scary urban legends (for after all, certain things refuse to be forgotten and just take on a different shape) and that Peter, because he had chosen to take on that particular ability for his lover’s sake, was to distance himself somewhat from the family, just like Claire (without discussion) had already done years before (but Peter never cut the ties like she did; even Sandy only hears from her through him).
The children are laughing. One of them gets caught; a little girl. She gets thrown up in the air and her cries of happiness are loud and clear. She knows that this man, whom she knows as Uncle Gabriel, would never hurt her. For a moment they pretended that he was Sylar, but that was just a game and she has no idea, and it will stay that way, what this legendary bogey man truly was like.
Everything is the way it should be, as good as it can ever get, this day the summer of 2050. Perhaps we should leave them here, ‘the Bennetrellis’, let the picture fade?
No, wait - something more is happening.
A nurse is coming with a table on wheels, and on it are plates and spoons and a big cake. People from other parts of the park see her, and more people are coming from inside, too.
All the Bennets and all the Petrellis are coming closer to their old matriarch and the nurse lights the little candles on the cake; there’s not nearly enough of them, but as many as the cake can hold.
“Happy Birthday to you!” they all sing. “Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday, dear Angela…”
She is smiling. The sun is shining, the picture fades to black.
Fandom: Heroes
Rating|Genre: g | family/friendship (with a very light touch of slash, a hint of angst, a little fluff)
Characters|Pairing: Angela Petrelli, Peter Petrelli, Sylar, Noah Bennet, Simon Petrelli, Lyle Bennet, with Sandy Berg, Nathan Petrelli Jr., and other original characters, mentions others | Petlar *lol* again!
Summary: It is the summer of 2050 in a sort of AU future where they’re all one big happy (?) family.
Word count: 2 914
Spoilers|Warnings: No | References to character death (past and future)
Notes: Written for oneshot challenge #35, “I Am Sylar” at heroes_contest… I realize that the word “challenge” means “push your boundaries” and in my case that would obviously be to write Sylar’s point of view instead of a narrator voice, right? But honestly, we all know that some of you (no one named and no one forgotten) are better than this than I’ll ever be. :)
Notes2: Now that we’re speaking of Sylar, let me tell you this - the first time I watched the end of season four (and I only watched it once) I had my mind occupied elsewhere and I didn’t pay attention to a lot of the things that were going on. During most of “The Wall” I was actually chatting with somebody... So. Last night, I re-watched the last two episodes. (I think I’ll re-watch the whole S4 soon.) When they got through the wall and he realized it had only been hours and not years, and asked if that meant that it wasn’t real, I was like “aww!” Of course it was real, Peter and him. I had to re-watch that to feel that I could believe what I had written here, so now I’m ready to post this. :)
And now I’m even sadder, again, that there is never going to be a season five. Anything could happen, of course. I don’t necessarily believe that most people would find it hard to believe the message Claire was trying to send… but that’s the theory for this fic.
Notes2: Now also edited for typos!! I do re-read my stories several times before I post them but some things slip through my fingers... As for other spelling and grammar mistakes, because there will probably always be some... well, maybe I should ask for a beta reader...
It is a sunny summer’s day, mid July perhaps, and this is what we see:
The park behind the nursing home is full of old people, and trees even older. It is visiting time and the old are surrounded by family; young people, children.
One particular family is in the centre of our interest, or is it two families that are connected somehow? The nurses aren’t quite sure, not that they really care. They laugh and call them ‘The Bennetrelli clan’ and then they go on to think of other things.
There’s something about the name ‘Petrelli’ that ring a bell for some elderly people, ‘Nathan Petrelli’; maybe there’s a connection? But all of that was a long time ago and the world has moved on.
A young man the others call ‘Cousin Peter’ is there today. He’s not always there (not that the others come very often - some days, there are no Bennetrellis at all but they are many today) but when he is, he is very sweet to the old lady in the wheelchair. Sometimes, another man is with him; Gabriel, is it? (They’re a couple, and such a dashing one.) Yes, there he is; dark and handsome, with deep, piercing eyes. Now he is leaning against a tree, talking to a blonde thirty-something woman called Sandy B. Berg. It appears to be a serious conversation; she is asking questions and he delivers answers, but we can’t hear them from where we are.
Cousin Peter was watching them a moment ago, but now he has turned his attention to the old lady in the wheelchair that is standing in the shadow under a tree. The day is hot, even in the shade, and most people are dressed accordingly, but this woman, Angela Petrelli, has a shawl over her shoulders.
Mrs. Petrelli is the matriarch, old as an oak. She’s well over a hundred years. It’s not that strange these days, with good health and good care… But in Mrs. Petrelli’s case, her days are probably numbered. You can almost see it by looking at her, can’t you? She’s not the way she used to be. Not as… sharp. Her hair is white (she stopped dyeing it black some twenty-five years ago) and she puts her head in her hands sometimes, as if her thoughts are too heavy for her head. She sleeps a lot and sometimes she’s disoriented when she wakes up.
“We have fruit”, the young nurses are chirping as if this is extraordinary news. “Angela, do you want some?” They can get a little too familiar sometimes with the very old. “Angie, do you want a banana?”
The old woman’s head jerk up as if someone has pulled her hair. For a moment there’s a pained look in her eyes that scare the young girls. She does not talk a lot these days. What she replies then is typical:
“Fruit? As long as there are no strawberries… Simon is… allergic to strawberries. Or Heidi says so. She should know…”
The nurses move away. There are other people who don’t have any visitors and they leave Mrs. Petrelli to her near and dear ones.
What the nurses don’t know is that Heidi has been dead and buried for five years and she can’t say anything to anyone anymore, and the allergic boy is very well capable of taking care of himself, for he is over fifty now and he has children of his own. Now we can see them all there in the park: his three daughters in their twenties are sitting here and there in the grass, and Simon has a son-in-law who looks like he’s lost in deep thoughts (he might be thinking that he needs a cigarette but this is a non-smoking area) and a grandson, only four years old.
“Cousin Pete!” shouts the little one and clings to the young black-haired man’s leg.
“Hey there, little Nathan!” says Cousin Peter, and throws the boy high up in the air, swings him, and it makes him laugh out loud.
Old Mrs. Petrelli reacts to that.
“He’s not Nathan”, she says sharply, and her eyes look unseeing. “I never had a blond son. Who is this imposter?”
“Hush”, Cousin Peter says gently. “You know who he is. This is little Nate, a different Nathan. You know that; I know you do.”
The blonde boy, little Nate, is scared of his great-great-grandmother. Some of his uncles and aunts (there are five of them, in their teens or early twenties) say that the old lady is a witch.
Mrs. Petrelli looks at Cousin Peter and searches for something - what? - in his face. She must have found it, for she calms down, and takes his hand. She clasps it between her old hands, brings it to her cheek and sighs. Yes, she knows, now, who little Nate is. She might forget again soon, but for now, she is not upset.
Who is this ‘Cousin Peter’ and the man by his side? I think you know them. They come and go. They stay away for long periods of time, especially the other one. Some people in this park, the older ones, must know who they really are, but it is as if people have forgotten. Sometimes, people almost seem to believe there are several Peters, from some branch of the family far away, a family with many boys…
Simon acts like an uncle to him, overly jovial perhaps, but genuinely fond of both of the men, it seems. He is among the ones who don’t want to think about facts such as people’s actual ages. (Someone is missing from this picture; who is? Oh, Monty… Simon’s younger brother. He passed away last year, far too young; died of cancer and left a wife and five adolescent kids behind.)
Then there are the Bennets, the other half of ‘the clan’. Many people are missing among them, too, and new faces have appeared. But this is only natural, considering how much time that has passed since the last time we saw them.
Lyle Bennet, with a wife and two children, and grandchildren of Nate’s age or a little older, is the one who rarely speaks to the man known as Gabriel. He shudders, as if there’s something there, a history. He mostly just ignores him the few times they all meet at family gatherings such as this one.
If the other man is offended and hurt, he doesn’t show it.
If strangers ask about the family and how the nice gay couple is related to the rest of them, some people think that Mr. Bennet will know. But Noah Bennet, the blind old man on the white bench, says that he never knew exactly who they were, the two of them. He says the answer must have been somewhere in his files, but those files have not existed for decades. ‘Peter is some relative of the old lady’, he says. It never occurs to anyone that he might be lying.
No, we must remember that all the innocent bystanders in this picture, the staff at the nursing home and the young in-laws of the Bennetrellis, cannot know. They accept what they are told and take everything for granted. If they were to come across some old family photos, videos on the internet or a TV documentary, they might see a striking resemblance between Cousin Peter and another Peter, the brother of Nathan, the congressman, the senator… Well, what does it mean? Nothing to them; people are quick to accept ‘natural’ explanations, and all of that was such a long time ago.
They are more interested in other stories.
Like: ‘How long have the two of you been together?’ or: ‘How did the two of you meet?’ and things like that.
They make up stories. They are careful. The truth is that the story is long and complicated and it involves many of the people who are present in the scene we are studying, and even more who are dead or absent. There was hostility and animosity and violence and lots of things they would never tell a living soul. Then there was a new beginning…
So many things have happened in the world and people know more than they have ever known before. In theory, there are no limits to what human beings can do; not even the sky is a limit. But even so, most people are the same as they’ve always been. They don’t want to see the extraordinary. Some people see it, yes, some people have always been willing to search for explanations. But if you thought that what Claire Bennet did made a deep impression on the world, then think again. The two young men would scare the crap out of most people if they revealed their actual ages. ‘Regeneration’, ‘ability replication’, what kind of mumbo-jumbo is that?
The people in the park today could tell them a thing or two, if they cared to listen.
Why would they listen? There are too many people here.
Now, for instance, let’s watch how Sandy Berg puts a baby, very carefully, in the blind man’s arms. She’s anxious, anyone can see it, but it looks like the man knows how to hold a baby. This one is tiny, and although he can’t see her there’s a wide smile of joy on his face. This baby is the daughter of his daughter’s daugther.
Noah Bennet used to be one of Mrs. Petrelli’s regular visitors. During the last four or so years, he has also been a resident at the nursing home. He doesn’t live with Mrs. Petrelli but they seem to enjoy each other’s company. Very often, he’s the only one who understands what she’s talking about.
They have strange conversations; the nurses have noticed sometimes. As if they’re both a bit nuts because of their old age, not that Mr. Bennet is as old as she is.
“Where’s my Claire-Bear?” the blind man can complain.
“She’s alright”, says Mrs. Petrelli reassuringly. “She is always changing, always the same.”
“Is Gretchen with her now?”
“No, Noah. Gretchen left her years ago to raise Sandy alone, have you forgotten? That was when Claire left all of us.”
“I want to forget, but I can’t... Why did they have a baby? Sandy is too old to have such a young mother.”
“I know, Noah… But it was Gretchen’s decision, too.”
Claire, she never visits. She is only known by her absence from family photos.
Peter said to Noah once that it hurts Claire too much to be around them, but that she will always watch over her family from a safe distance, just like he will. Noah replied that he understood, but there was pain in his voice nonetheless. Why can’t Claire come? The other two come, and if coming to the old people’s side is painful for them, they don’t show it.
The baby falls asleep in Noah’s arms, too young to know that he is her great-grandfather. Nobody knows if this baby is ‘special’, and if so, in what way? There are two abilities he more than anything doesn’t want her to have: Angela’s, and Claire’s. If he could have a say in the matter, he would want her to have something simple, like flying or breathing under water. Noah thinks that he won’t be alive when she is old enough to find out, and maybe that’s a good thing? He wonders if he has made the right choices in his life. The same old questions. There is no Company anymore. But there will always be people out there who know, who can offer help and guidance.
The older children, little Nate and Lyle’s grandkids, are running around on the lawn under the shadow of the trees. One of Nate’s uncles are chasing them, the other kids are cheering and laughing.
The little children’s voices are high-pitched as they shout things like: “You can’t catch me!”
“Yes I can!” replies the older boy. “I am Sylar!”
“No”, cries one of the kids, “I am Sylar! I’m gonna eat your brain!”
Some of the adults look their way, a little uncomfortably, but ignore them.
“What the..?” The man by Peter’s side stands up in a sudden, brusque movement. “What did they just say?! Did you hear that?!”
Peter reaches out a hand and tugs at his companion’s sleeve.
“They don’t mean anything by it. They don’t know what they’re saying, it’s just a game.”
“But someone put them up to it!”
The other man shakes Peter’s hands off him and he turns his head to look at Mrs. Petrelli. She meets his gaze calmly.
“You”, she says and points a bony finger at him. “Come here.”
Deep sorrow flies over the man’s face but his expression hardens and for a moment he looks as if he wants to spit at her. But he goes closer to her wheelchair because her voice is as compelling as it ever was.
He looks at her and says:
“What do you want, Ma?”
“Be a good boy”, she says and grabs his wrist; she’s surprisingly quick and strong. “Do not talk to me with that tone of voice. Yes, I know what you’re thinking. But ‘Sylar’ is just a story to them, a legend.” She lowers her voice, whispers: “Nobody remembers what really happened anymore. Nobody knows that you are Sylar. But I do. I still remember.”
Cousin Peter has walked up to them, he stands behind the old woman’s wheelchair and puts his hands on her shoulders. He bends down to speak in her ear; only the three of them can hear:
“Mom, don’t. Stop it. He is not Sylar anymore and you know it.”
“Then why”, says the old woman, “is he so upset by the children’s game?”
“Mom”, Peter repeats, and the sadness makes his voice thick. He squeezes her thin shoulders. Then he moves to squat in front of her instead and takes her hands, ‘Cousin Peter’, the relative from no one knows where. Nobody would believe it if they knew.
The old woman and the young man look at each other. Moments pass and nobody seems to notice.
“I’m sorry”, she says eventually. “I am very old, Peter. Old and tired… I don’t even dream as much as I used to do; my ability is fading; it is failing me. I dream about the past more often than about the future.”
“Well, maybe that’s a good thing”, he replies. “But mom, you of all people should know what it’s like to leave the past behind. It’s dead and buried.”
“Dead and buried…” she echoes.
Peter closes his eyes, bits down on his lower lip, shakes his head. What can he be thinking? He opens his eyes again and sighs.
“Let’s not talk about such things, dear”, she says and pulls her hands out of his.
Peter stands up and puts an arm around his lover’s shoulders. He is calm now. They look at each other and nobody can know what they are thinking, but the anger is gone.
“Why don’t you two go and play with the children”, Mrs. Petrelli suggests. “You know you want to.”
“I would rather stay here with you right now”, Peter says, and she doesn’t argue, but the other man starts jogging towards the kids.
When he’s closer, he runs faster.
“Watch out”, he growls, “Sylar is coming!”
All at once, the blind man, his son, and the old lady tense as if a disaster is near. They look - all but Noah - warily at the playing children and the man, but they say nothing. Soon they relax and look away.
It was decided a long time ago, before Mrs. Petrelli moved in to the home, that they were never to speak of certain things again. That they were going to let them turn into scary urban legends (for after all, certain things refuse to be forgotten and just take on a different shape) and that Peter, because he had chosen to take on that particular ability for his lover’s sake, was to distance himself somewhat from the family, just like Claire (without discussion) had already done years before (but Peter never cut the ties like she did; even Sandy only hears from her through him).
The children are laughing. One of them gets caught; a little girl. She gets thrown up in the air and her cries of happiness are loud and clear. She knows that this man, whom she knows as Uncle Gabriel, would never hurt her. For a moment they pretended that he was Sylar, but that was just a game and she has no idea, and it will stay that way, what this legendary bogey man truly was like.
Everything is the way it should be, as good as it can ever get, this day the summer of 2050. Perhaps we should leave them here, ‘the Bennetrellis’, let the picture fade?
No, wait - something more is happening.
A nurse is coming with a table on wheels, and on it are plates and spoons and a big cake. People from other parts of the park see her, and more people are coming from inside, too.
All the Bennets and all the Petrellis are coming closer to their old matriarch and the nurse lights the little candles on the cake; there’s not nearly enough of them, but as many as the cake can hold.
“Happy Birthday to you!” they all sing. “Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday, dear Angela…”
She is smiling. The sun is shining, the picture fades to black.