how do you stop an exploding man?

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The lost iPods turn up in the lost and found. Peter pokes one.

"You know," he says, to no one in particular, "it's strange. Of everything in the world -- everything in my past life -- all I remember is Bejeweled."

He picks up an iPod touch and clicks around until he finds the games. Then he plays Bejeweled.

When he loses, the bar explodes.

St. Jude's is in an uproar. Not only is it the first day of school after the summer, it's the first day of coed St. Jude's, period.

In all the commotion -- girls peering at schedules, boys staring at girls, purses jostling where purses have never jostled before -- it's not hard to avoid the usual spot at lunch. He can see Nate and Chuck over by the steps; he ducks behind a crowd of girls and heads back toward the other side of the courtyard.

Fours days've gone by since he stopped taking the meds. On the second day he scraped his finger and watched, disappointed, as it bled sluggishly down the side of his hand; on the third day he tried to make his foot invisible, and only succeeded in straining his eyes (and, somehow, pulling a muscle in his toe).

Today is day five.

You can tell Peter's morale's improving. This time, he's sitting up.

And staring at the wall instead of the ceiling.

In a way this would be easier if he had any way to keep track of time.

There's no clock. There's no clock, and he doesn't have a watch, and the windows look out onto the always-lit concrete hallways, not the outdoors. He's not even sure the lights-out and lights-on come regularly. He thinks it's been a few days, but part of him -- probably the part of him that used to lie awake for hours on Christmas Eve, convinced that enough time had passed for several nights over -- is sure it's been weeks.

In another way, it's kind of comforting. He has no idea what's going on, so nothing that goes on can possibly be his fault.

Except miscounting the cracks in the ceiling. He got up to 534 one time, but he keeps losing track around the late 400s.

One of the good things about being a nurse is: you know where the hospitals are.

One of the good things about being able to fly is: you can get to them really quickly after you explode in mid-air and fry your brother almost to death.

"Help! Please -- help --"

The emergency staff hustle Nathan away from him without a second glance, and Peter moves back, reaching for a blanket heaped nearby. He's not trained for anything like this; he'll just get in the way.

"Keep him alive, okay?" he calls, in lieu of being useful. "Do whatever it takes, you understand me?"

Peter becomes dimly aware that his shirt is more of a loose alliance of char than a garment at about the same time the police officer watching him does, and he pulls the blanket defensively around his shoulders. For a moment they stare at each other; then a voice calls, "Officer!" and Peter takes the opportunity to slip into invisibility.

In the basement hallway, as he struggles to figure out how he should find Claire and Noah Bennet, he relaxes his grip on invisibility. There's nobody to see him here.

"Look out!"

It's a good thing Peter hasn't met Niki yet, because if he had, the door handle would be pulp. Luckily, his strength is all his own, and the only damage is to his whitening knuckles.

It's not a Nissan Versa.

It's not a Nissan Rogue, either.

Peter drives like a crazy person.

[OOM: Back home, Peter talks with his mother, his niece, and his brother. Spoilers for 1.19, ".07%."]

It's been an hour or so since Peter first returned to the bar; now he's found his way outside, and onto the Milliways roof. It's a quiet night -- quiet and peaceful.

He sneezes, loudly.

There's a quiet thud, but Peter's too busy staring broodily into the distance to pay it any mind.

Tomorrow's a big day -- anniversary of the explosion that took out half of New York City. There'll be speeches, vigils, moments of silence across the nation. Niki will insist that it's just another day; if not in those exact words, in her refusal to say anything else.

So this time he's actually (a little) glad to see Milliways.

He still heads out back first thing.

The Looking Glass is empty. No dancers, no patrons. But no Marco or Will, either; just dead silence and a piece of paper, black ink lines on crumpled white, skimming the carpet like tumbleweed. Peter steps between spotlights frosted blue and magenta, listening. Looking out into the seats. There are shadows burned into the cheap material.

The music is loud and discordant. Beat's scaled way up, melody way down, and the singer's voice is warped into a harsh metallic screech. He blinks and the voice is deep, James Earl Jones deep, slow and thick as honey.

Oh child of Venus you're just made for love

He checks the watch on his wrist. 5:55. The hands don't budge.

"I think I'm late," he says to nobody, and a shadow puddles around his feet. "There's somewhere I'm supposed to be."

The shadow lengthens, spreads out in front of him, and Peter knows there's someone behind him but he can't turn around.

"Something I was supposed to do."

(Somewhere, a clock is ticking.)

"What time is it?"

Silence.

Overheard, a spotlight switches from magenta to white with a quiet tick, and then they're all turning white, glowing brighter, and the light of them is cold and clean as ice over and inside his skin, and it pours out of his eyes and out of his hands and

(The cheese is not set in stone, says Whelpley Rosenberg)

everything washes out into the air.

*

Peter wakes up inhaling so sharply he chokes on it.

It takes a while to get back to sleep.

He wakes up inhaling so sharply he chokes on it, and sits up in bed, coughing. Rolls sideways to peer at the clock.

Ugh.

"Niki?" The TV's on; she's awake, and -- he glances at the clock again -- she'll be getting ready.

Peter's not a bad bouncer. Telekinesis he has to be careful with, people notice telekinesis, but superstrength -- that can come in handy when a rowdy patron thinks 5'9" means pushover. It's just that sometimes he envies Will, who doesn't even have to use his 6'4", 300 pounds to get people moving.

(Hell, sometimes he envies Niki. She's hardly built like a bouncer, but people know to get out of her way.)

He's rubbing his jaw when he steps into the back room. The bruise melted away almost before it formed, but it still feels a little stiff. "Hey. They're gone."

Peter's at a corner table, slowly demolishing a sub. And keeping both eyes peeled for -- anything.

There's a rock by the lake. Peter's perched on it, sneakers braced against the rough stone.

He's skipping stones, and he's doing a lot better than he did the last time he tried.

The door to Peter's room is open, and the light is on, but Peter is nowhere to be seen.

There's a funny scratching noise coming from somewhere to the left of the door, though.

Peter touches the tip of the glass lightly -- carefully -- and says, without turning his head, "What do you do with something that killed you?"

Peter spends a long time in the shower when he wakes up, letting the hot water stream down his face. He keeps scrubbing long after the blood's flaked and run off his skin, which is kind of cliche, but there's a reason things become cliche. And when he steps out of the shower he combs his hair back away from his forehead. He's not sure why -- there's no scar to show off, and there's no wound to avoid irritating -- but it makes him nervous, his hair hanging there again.

His old room's just the way he left it. Well, mostly; he left it a mess, and now it's sparkling clean, with all the junk tucked away in drawers and closets. Mom's left clothes on his bed, too -- a polo shirt and nice pants; he rolls his eyes, but pulls them on.

Then he flops back onto the bed, and stares up at the ceiling.

He should probably think about what happened with Sylar. Or at least think of something to say to Mom. Instead he folds his arms beneath his head and wonders how Claire ended up here.