ellectrical | April 2007, Powerless

As she had expected, the alley was empty when she walks out to it. Dented trash cans and graffiti over the brick and concrete walls, with the bright yellow flicker of cabs visible from the street beyond. She looks down one way, and then the other, and up the side of the building, toward the roof (not something most people would do, but for Elle it's close to instinct) before she turns back into the building, taking the stairs rather than the elevator.

The sling is on the floor of the hall outside the loft, right where she had left it. Elle nearly pulls it over the wrong arm at first, which doesn't improve her mood any as she heads back to the Mendez loft.

By the time she reaches it, the woman the three had been gathered around has sat up. And Elle finally recognizes her – the homicidio posters, the newspaper clippings from Venezuela to Texas –

Well, isn't that just perfect.

She steps through the shattered door, empty handed once again.

"Sylar's gone." Elle slams the door frame – hard – with her left hand, drawing out her breathing as though she had been running this whole time. "My Dad's going to kill me."

And that would be it. She would take them back to the Facility, walk into her father's office with, as usual (maybe as always – even when a job went right) nothing to offer, greeted with the same questions (how could she do this to him, again?), before she was set aside. (locked away)

"I doubt that very much."

It's such a strange thing to say. She's thought she's misheard Suresh at first, isn't at all expecting the looks that he, the woman, and the Walker girl are giving her. Elle doesn't know how to read them, only having ever seen them in brief flashes, nothing that had ever been explained to her.

"If you hadn't arrived, Sylar would have slaughtered us all."

(He explains, because he has to. Few people have to be around Elle for very long to know whatever they're saying to her, she's not going to understand.)

"We owe you our lives."

The list of people who could say this to Elle isn't short. Most of them wouldn't know it, or what was done to accomplish it. Those who did were, for the most part, maybe not the most worthy – her partners, her targets who couldn't be killed (but like her, were likely to do that on their own if not controlled) – it might rival the list of those she'd killed: because it was her job, because it worked for her job, because she screwed up or wasn't so good at working with her partners. It never made much difference to her, those she'd kept alive and those she hadn't.

After all, no one had ever said anything like this to her before.

"Really?"

Suresh raises his eyebrows, and – very slightly – shrugs. Elle glances away, up toward the long panes of glass looking out onto the Manhattan skyline.

"Cool," she murmurs.

Her smile may not be particularly sweet, but it certainly isn't blank.

[ooc: Dialogue lifted from Heroes 2x11, "Powerless."]