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Toph and Penance are back at their campsite. Sokka has to admit he isn't quite sure where this Metropolis is any more, or if they're even driving in the right direction -- but nobody really minds. There's plenty of food and water around, they've still got heaps of spare fuel, and all four teens are having the time of their lives racketing around the countryside.

Currently Claire is teaching Sokka a few more of the finer points of driving. Or at least, that's their excuse. There's a lot of laughing and the occasional squeal -- WHICH IS TOTALLY NOT FROM SOKKA, NUH UH -- as they rattle along the road and occasionally come to a screeching halt.

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"Over there, by the pig trough. It kind of looks like ..."

... what it kind of looks like becomes clearer as they climb the ditch hand in hand and wriggle through the wire fence.

"... a body."

Claire's hand tightens on his, quickly, then she does something stupidly brave.

She lets go and steps forward to get a better look.

He's right, it is a body.

A body of a girl about their age, with the top of her head sliced cleanly through, exposing an empty skull.

"Oh no..."

That's not shock. That's recognition.

"Claire? Are you ..."

Sokka' voice trails off into silence, and he doesn't manage to complete the movement of stepping forward to put his arms around her waist.

Claire's hands fumbles backwards for his, and when they find them they cling tightly.

"Sylar," she whispers.

Sokka doesn't respond for several seconds, his face a very pale shade of brown.

After that long, long moment, though, he swallows and his fingers curl slowly around hers.

"Who's ..." he asks faintly, not taking his eyes off the figure on the ground, "... who's Sylar?"

"He's..."

Claire steps towards him, pulling his arms around her.

"...the man I told you about. Who looks like the guys at the farm."

"Oh."

He holds her almost absently, not moving except when prompted.

"He ... does that?"

Claire nods silently. There's no point in explaining that this means the girl lying there had powers, and that wherever he is, this means Sylar's got them too. Instead she turns around, circling his arms around her, and pulls his face down to face her.

"Don't look," she says.

They can't do anything now.

He swallows a couple of times, and shakes his head -- but first he lets himself hold her for a moment, breathe in the scent of her hair, feel the warmth of her arms around him.

"No. No, we have to ... we can't ... leave her there."

Claire closes her eyes for a second.

At home, they'd call the police, or someone (her first instinct would be to call her Dad),and they'd deal with it.

But he's right, they can't leave her here.

On the other hand...

"What if he comes back?"

She's terrified, and it's obvious in the way her voice catches.

It helps Sokka focus, in a way.

She needs him. Claire needs him.

He can think about Claire and not think about who-- about what he's about to crouch down and pick up, hold Claire's frightened voice in his mind and focus on that instead of the cold weight in his arms.

"...we can't leave her here," he repeats softly, sliding his arms free of Claire to pick up -- to pick up --

Claire needs him.

"He won't -- he won't get you."

Sokka won't let him.

Claire doesn't quite let him go. She keeps a hand on his arm and follows him to the body, blinking at the head more than the girl herself.

It might as well be Jackie.

She left Jackie. She's not going to leave this one. Sokka picking it up- it helps her stay focused. The blood's dry, anyway, the body cold and stiff. Sylar's probably long gone.

But she glances over her shoulder anyway.

"We can bury her here...?"

It's less of a suggestion, more of a plea. Let's just get it over and go somewhere safe please?

Sokka shakes his head roughly, his glance for a moment almost angry with her even while he's thankful for her hand on his arm.

"No."

Not like this. Not in a field somewhere hidden away from everything, not where nobody will remember who she was, not where nobody will even know she existed.

His face is very pale. Katara is stiff, cold -- empty --

-- literally --

-- he thinks he might laugh, and then thinks he'd never stop, so doesn't.

"Not here."

Claire blinks when he looks at her like that, irrational anger flashing within her for a moment - he's being silly over a stranger. But she thinks she understands.

She's been wearing a beanie hat against the cold, even though they're out of the snow now. Quickly she whips it off, mud and all, and eases it on the dead girl's head, gagging only a little when her fingers feel the flat emptyness beneath the felt.

She also closes the eyes, but her tears aren't mourning; they're all from self pity.

Sokka doesn't speak while he carries K-- the body to the car, but he doesn't shrug Claire's hand away, either.

"You should ... you should drive. You're smoother."

The back seat is empty. He sets his jaw and eases his s-- the body into the car, sliding in beside her, hands tight on the blue leather.

"Will you be okay? To drive?"

She's not she will be, but she nods, closing her eyes hard and wiping them with the back of her wrist.

"Yeah," she says, scrambling into the drivers seat. She takes another second until she's sure she can see, then hits the gas.

The car almost leaps out of the ditch when she revs.

"Fasten your seatbelt."

Because Little Miss Miracle-Gro isn't exactly going to drive at funereal pace.

He hardly seems to notice.

If you repeat words often enough, they lose all meaning, turning into nothing more than patterns of sound. Sokka knows this.

It isn't working, not yet, but it will. And then he can comfort Claire, keep her safe, keep Sylar away. Soon. When his mind clears a little. When he can think.

It doesn't take long to get back to the campsite, back to where they left Toph and Penance.

Claire lets the car spin when she reaches the campsite. All shecould think at first was Jackie and Sylar and Peter and everyone she's failed to help, even this nameless girl inthe back with Sokka.

But about halfway there, she realised they were going to find Toph and the red girl, and she suddenly became scared for them: for Toph, mostly. Even if she can kick ass, she still has powers Sylar would want. And she stepped on the gas again.

So when she skids to a halt at the campsite, giving herself whiplash with the speed she stops, she wastes no time jumping out ot the car.

"Toph!"

She doesn't know the other girl's name.

Toph felt the car approach from a mile away. When it arrives, she's already on her feet, and on hearing the distress in Claire's face, she's running towards it.

She can even feel Penance's raised heartbeat from where she's watching. This can't be good.

"What happened?"

If Sokka's not there, she'll...

...she'll do something.

Sokka's there. Sokka's not getting out of the car, because he can't seem to move -- and then he is moving, abruptly, throwing the seat cover down over what's on the back seat before climbing out. Toph shouldn't see her.

(It does not, at this particular moment, occur to him that Toph does not actually see anything.)

And walking quickly towards the bushes to throw up the entire contents of his stomach. Don't mind him, he'll be back in a moment or so.

He left them.

Is a horrible selfish thought and Claire immediately tries to convince herself she hadn't had it.

"We found a body," she says almost immediately, forgetting as she's been prone to, that Toph is younger than Lyle.

"Are you OK? Where's..."

Penance?

Without moving her head, Toph points in the direction of a flash of red.

"We're fine. You spooked her with your arrival, though. Need a hand with the body."

Toph has never delat with a dead body before, but neither, she assumes, has Claire. On the other hand, Toph grew up in a war, and has often assumed she'd end up having to deal with bodies.

Besides, she knows what Sokka's doing, and it must be pretty bad to make the greatest warrior of the Water Tribe do that. While he's off in the bushes, she'll just ave to be the leader.

Claire hesitates, because Toph shouldn't have to deal with it, but in the end she relents, because she can't do it on her own and she has to do something.

"OK, thanks. Can you..."

But she's already in the car, pulling out the body herself. It's so light.

Toph doesn't need telling what to do, anyway. By the time Claire's navigated the car, there's a rock shelve at just the right height for the car seat, and then it's just a gentle easing back onto a small stone slab a few feet away.

Toph reaches out then to help Claire lay it out properly, and she finds the hat - drawing away quickly when Claire inhales sharply - and the long long braid coming down from underneath it.

Stomach churning, Toph touches the dead face gently, then investigates the leather clothes.

-------------------

A moment or two later, she's crouching beside Sokka and the moist puddle of vomit-and-dirt.

"You didn't tell her, did you?"

It's a statement of fact.

Back over by Claire, the flash of red has become the strange creature/girl. Penance is characterized by her curiosity more than anything else, and the body is no different. She approaches slowly but her wariness is due to Claire, and when she reaches out, it's to rub the blunt side of a finger very gently against the arm of the corpse.

She's very, very careful not to disturb it.