Title: Hinterlands
Author: scy
Feedback: scynneh@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Not mine
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Adam/Sylar, Peter
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: up through both seasons
Summary: Peter looks to solve a problem
Author's Notes: For s8219 who wanted the three of them together somehow, cosmic, who wants more Adam Monroe, and the_grynne, who will know why. Something of a sequel to Pursuit.
August 2008

"I would have expected you to find someplace warmer," Peter said as he came to a stop beside a clutch of boulders and stared at the man sitting there.

Adam didn't glance up as he rolled his pant legs up to his knees, folded them precisely, and then stepped off the rock into the water. "As will all the others, don't you think?" He walked out into the ebb and surge of waves, and Peter moved from one rock to another pushing his hands further into his coat.

"Isn't the water cold? Or does that not matter?" Peter asked.

"I'm immortal, not insensitive," Adam said. "Yes, it is nearly freezing."

"Then why get your feet wet?"

"The absence of sensation is an experience I'd rather not repeat yet again."

Peter had heard that Hiro found a way to confine Adam, but the rumors of his escape were too substantial to ignore. Hiro hadn't wanted to talk about what happened, and his expression when Peter confronted him was blank and his words spit out like they came from a machine.

"You've been buried before?"

"Many times," Adam said. "It doesn't improve with repetition."

"I imagine it was easier to dig your way out when you weren't buried in a metal casket," Peter said, and wanted to take the words back when the grin Adam turned on him was sharp enough to slice at his appearance of indifference.

"Yes, when an undertaker buries a corpse, they aren't trying to keep them in the ground, that's generally assumed to be part of the burial."

"A dangerous assumption."

Above them, the sky rumbled, as if agreeing with Adam, and Peter looked up just in time for the clouds to surrender their burden, and for the water to hit him in the face.

Adam didn't flinch or stop wading out further, but Peter tugged his coat closer around him. It was a useless gesture as the rain soon plastered his clothes to his skin and they did nothing to keep him dry.

"I guess you're not going to catch cold, are you?"

"Not since I learned how to shake it off."

"Can you really do that?" Peter felt himself sneeze. He hadn't learn that trick yet, even though he could heal from things that would have killed him six or seven months ago.

"Refuse to let yourself be affected," Adam said, and even though he was just as wet, he didn't seem to care. His blonde hair was slicked against his head, and he raked his fingers through it, messing it up even more. As he stood up, he slapped the water once, and then shook himself off vigorously, grinning.

"You might as well come in, Peter, you're no dryer on land."

Peter looked upwards again, and frowned. "I wish I knew how to stay dry."

"Keep out of the rain, that should be obvious."

"Not when there's nothing around to stand under."

"You have an array of abilities, surely one of them allows you to shelter yourself," Adam said.

"I don't know how to use them, I'm not like Sylar," Peter said.

"The young man who stirred up such a fuss this past year," Adam nodded.

"Yeah, how did you hear about him?"

Adam frowned slightly as if trying to remember. "He was a guest at one of the Company's facilities. Bob was rather piqued that Noah Bennet was unable to break him," Adam said. "He sounds like someone with an exceptional will."

"I don't know him that well," Peter said, and hurried on. "And I don't think it would be a good idea to introduce the two of you."

"I have no doubt it would be an interesting experience," Adam said dryly.

"If you survived it," Peter said. He didn't think that Sylar would care about any of the things Adam could tell him, just that the man had lived for over three centuries and couldn't die.

"I survive everything."

"What about having your head taken off? You told me that there was no way to survive that."

"I was, at the time, telling a small fib," Adam said.

"What?"

"Do you think that the Company, having an immmortal on their hands, wouldn't try every possible method of ending my life? They knew what would happen when I got loose, and some of them, if only in their most private moments, knew that I would eventually, find a way to escape."

"And I helped you." Peter knew now what he had done, and had spent nights imagining what someone would do if they had been kept prisoner by people they had thought were their friends. Being enraged didn't seem like a strong enough comparison.

"You wanted to save the world, Peter, that's hardly a crime."

Peter shook his head warningly. "It is if you want to kill millions of people to do it."

"Sometimes that's the way it must be. A mass extinction opens the way for a new and better variation on the species. There's been evidence of this throughout history. The world cannot survive if things remain the same. Sooner or later, something must happen to change things, and there is no such thing as a peaceful revolution."

"I get that," Peter said.

"There are others who aren't as easily convinced that pacifism is the right path."

Peter looked sharply at Adam, who smiled, splashing idly in the water.

"Do you think you were the first one to come looking for me?"

"No," Peter said and hugged himself more tightly, as the wind turned sharper and curled into them with biting gusts.

"What did they have to say?"

"Threats, promises, offers of alliances," Adam said. "All phrased the same way as all the others I've heard many times before."

"You sent them away?"

"Some."

"Where are they?" Peter asked.

"Someone proposed an alternate strategy in dealing with unwanted visitors," Adam said. "Rather expedient and ingenious."

"There's someobdy here with you?" Although he hadn't seen anyone else on the beach, Peter still gave it a sweep with his eyes.

The wind picked up, and Peter frowned. "Did a storm move in or something?"

"Something certainly did," Adam said. "I've asked you repeatedly not to do that."

"Who are you talking to?"

"Someone who's listening very intently," Adam said. "If you don't raise the temperature to a more comfortable level, I am going to be expressing my thorough displeasure in a manner you won't find to your liking."

"Promises, promises," said a voice Peter had heard when he woke up in the night. Sweat clung to his body, and his heart pounded with the memory of deaths he had tried and failed to prevent. He turned, dreading the sight he knew would be there.

Sylar was standing on a rock not five feet from them, arms crossed casually, looking amused.

Adam gave the other man his attention, eyebrows raised as he braced his arms and heaved upwards, landing neatly on a slippery rock, clothes clinging to his soaked body. "If you would," he said, and the air warmed like the sun had come out.

"Better," Adam said and climbed toward Sylar.

"What are you doing" Peter asked, not sure he was really seeing this.

"Going to get dried off and make a bit of lunch."

"I could eat," Sylar said, grinning and showing his teeth to Peter.

Peter had never forgotten how dangerous Sylar was, even when the man was on the ground in Kirby Plaza, bleeding and supposedly beaten. He knew it was because he didn't have anywhere near the control that Sylar did, and had lines he wouldn't cross. As far as he had been able to tell, Sylar didn't care what he had to destroy to get what he wanted, and at present, Adam seemed to count in some undefinable way as being of interest to Sylar. Whatever else Adam did, when he didn't provide Sylar with information or whatever, there would be nothing to stop the other man from killing him, and taking that ability.

"I haven't had anything since yesterday," Peter said. He hadn't had the time, he'd been searching two continents for Adam.

"Long flight?" Sylar asked knowingly, and the two of them must have picked one of the most isolated spots to have this little interlude on purpose.

"That's enough," Adam said. "Did you get who you were after?"

"They were right where you said they'd be," Sylar said and flexed his fingers.

"Everything is working as it should?"

"Better, in the hands of someone who knows how to use it properly."

"Wonderful, then we're done here," Adam said and began moving up the beach, stepping from one rock to the next without slipping, Sylar just behind him.

"Are you coming?" Adam asked, not pausing or turning to look at Peter.

Without any idea of what they were planning, or had already done, Peter didn't know what to say. He didn't think he could persuade them to stop and listen, or that they would care about what was happening in the world, but he had to try, to at least make sure that they didn't do any more damage. So when Adam asked the question, Peter followed, Yet, he couldn't find the same easy footing as the other two, and he kept sliding backwards. He kept up by grabbing onto boulders and jumping less gracefully to avoid falling.

Sylar and Adam were waiting at the top of the embankment watching him.

"It's taking you too long to get up here," Sylar said.

"It's not easy going," Peter said. "It's slick."

"It's like any other problem. Work with it, or overcome it," Adam said, on Sylar's left.

"You could have just flown up here," Sylar said, and Peter groaned.

"I didn't think of that."

Adam smiled and crooked his fingers at them, probably preventing an argument. "Come, children, we have an elsewhere to be."

"Always moving on to something else," Peter said. "Don't you ever stop to appreciate what you've got?"

"I had thirty years in a small cell with gray walls and institutional food," Adam said, steps quick. "You had a little over three months of the same. I recall that you tired of it quickly as well."

Peter had a lot of memories from those ninety or so days inside the Company, and he hadn't wanted to admit what he had hoped was going to happen was impossible. It seemed like, repeatedly, Peter kept coming across people who said they could help him, and who did, but who didn't go all the way through on their promises.

"Yeah," Peter said, conceding that in this, at least, Adam was right.

"How long did it take for you to lose patience with your accomodations?" Adam asked Sylar.

"A couple days," Sylar said.

"Did they say they were going to fix you too?" Peter asked. He hadn't heard what the Company really wanted with Sylar, or that it had been Bennet who had tried to keep Sylar confined.

"No, they kidnapped me," Sylar said. "Tried to take me apart."

"What happened?"

"I objected."

Peter was getting an image of what Adam and Sylar were doing together, and it was kind of the same thing as what he, Nathan, and Parkman had been trying to accomplish. "So you both are going take the Company down, expose them?"

"Obliterate would be an understatement for what we're going to do," Sylar said.

Adam smiled at Sylar, with an amusement that shocked Peter. "Soon." He leaned in closer to Sylar than anybody Peter thought would dare, if they knew better, and Peter watched, holding his breath.

Sylar inclined his head, and when Adam came closer, put his mouth on the blond's throat. Peter thought he saw teeth, and there was a bruise welling on Adam's neck when Sylar pulled back, but Adam only laughed.

"Later." He kissed Sylar, hard, and then softened it just enough that blood wasn't being drawn, but it was still nothing that Peter would ever call safe.

"You have questions, or a request," Adam said. "Make them after the meal."

Or not at all, Peter heard, and nodded, mindful of the way that Sylar moved alongside Adam, alert and ready to take his chance if Peter made it necessary. He wasn't sure he could convince them of something, as they were united, in a place beyond the boundaries of what every other person would find acceptable, but Peter knew his own lines were shaky and he had to learn to walk between them sooner or later.

-end