No sound, no ache
No more lies
And nothing to fake
Shimmer and quake
No sound, no ache
I only did what I had to do
I believed in me and you

You know when I wanted to be cop I didn't know anything about the world of crime. I was stupid, I thought that everyone had a choice and that it was pretty damn clear cut in between being a criminal and being a person. I wanted to put the bad guys in jail. I wanted to protect the rest of the world from them because they were evil.

Wouldn't it be easier that way? If there really was evil and not just all this damn gray everywhere would we be as sure where to draw the line between us and them?

I took the diamonds because I was never going to get to be a cop again. I knew it, the force knew it, The FBI was going to make sure of it in case anyone got stupid and actually let me in uniform again. I have a wife I'm just starting to reconcile with and a baby on the way. All I knew was that I needed some way to take care of my family and I wasn't going to be able to on security guard duty. Then the cops on the scene pushed me away and treated me like dirt. After that it was the easiest thing in the world to steal them.

The way Janice looked at me...well she was seeing me as that evil I used to think existed. I stole for her, that made me the bad guy. I just did what I thought I had to and now she doesn't believe in me anymore.

How have you changed in the past year?

God, when I first try to answer how I've changed over the last year my first thought is everything about me has changed. But I get to looking at it and the only damn thing that's changed is I can read minds. Everything else in my life is the same.

Sure it sounds like it isn't, being held by the guys who I think had something to do with the mind reading instead of being out there being a cop. The guys who I know have something to do with Sylar even if no one would believe me. But you look at it closer and it's just the same thing that's always in my life.

I wanted to help. I wanted to save people but instead I got my feet knocked out from under me and I ended up not helping at all. So other than being able to read other people's minds I'm still the same damn person I always was and always will be.

I'm just some guy who wants to help others but can't even help himself.

"Let me see them!"

Matt put the cuffs behind his back with a laugh, "No, I'm not going to let you see them, they're for work not play Janice." His first day as a cop, he had the uniform, the gun and everything else and what did she want to see? The handcuffs.

"You have a key, let me see them." This was back before any tension when they still acted like newlyweds and she leaned against him with a suggestive tilt of her head. Suddenly showing her the handcuffs seemed like a good idea after all.

It didn't take long till he was in the handcuffs (he still isn't sure how that happened) and spending a long and interesting evening with his wife.

Interesting at least until she looked around and that little line formed between her eyebrows. "Um,Matt, where's the key?"

"Janice, that's not funny." He pulled at the cuffs but of course was caught tight.

"I'm serious Matt, where's the key?"

Oh, God, how humiliating was it going to be to have to call a locksmith to get the rookie cop out of his own handcuffs?

"Seriously, Janice, not funny."

You want to know what pain is?

Pain is trying over and over again and falling short. Pain is knowing that you are failing your wife and you're unborn child. Pain is having to hear without filters exactly what people think of you and not being able to react to it. Pain is your wife finding out that not only did you get fired from your job but you've stooped to stealing from criminals on top of it.

It's knowing that an opportunity has opened up to give me the chance to find out what's happening and make a difference, but knowing my record I'll blow it.

I'll take a gunshot wound or being stabbed any day to the knowlege that pretty much no matter what I do I don't make a difference.

((Contains spoilers for last nights episode))

( Caught between a rock and a hard place )

I dreamed I was drowning on dry land.

I'm pretty straightforward, I freely admit that I don't have a lot of imagination in some ways and if someone ever came up to me and said 'hey I can read minds' I'd probably have the psych consult in before you could blink. It makes it harder for me to be able to do this.

I dreamed I was hearing thoughts. Which hell I could have been for all I know I sure as hell woke up with a bad enough headache.

But the thoughts they were too many and too loud and it was like I was getting lost in them. Like the parts of me that were me were drowning in this sea of other people's identities. I don't even know how to explain it, maybe I am crazy after all and making all this up.

When you hear someone else's thoughts it doesn't sound like you...not that it sounds like their voice but you know what you sound like in your own head and this isn't it. Only if the thought is really strong it can make you feel almost like it's yours. So if you're in a bar full of people and they are all talking in their heads you don't know which is you, which is them and which is out loud.

I was in a crowd of people and they were all wanting me to help them. Everyone was crying out to be saved and I was becoming the noise instead of myself.

Hell, it sounds stupid. And it was just a dream, forget it.

If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees. Kahlil Gibran

I hear thoughts.

It's not like you'd think it would be, thoughts don't sound like a person's voice in your head anymore than your own thoughts have a sound when you think them. Which of course is probably why it took me a long time to realize that I was hearing thoughts that weren't my own.

Thoughts do reflect the people that I hear them from. A child's voice is full of innocence and emotion, janice's thoughts were so tired and worn it hurt to hear them.

There has to be a reason I can do this. I wanted to be a detective, to help people when they couldn't help themselves, but instead I was given something just a little bit more.

There's a theory that your will can bend reality. I wonder if I had been able to pass the written exams to be a detective if this would have come to me?

People's thoughts, they whisper at me. It's like they shout their secrets to the wind and they are carried to me so I can use them to do what is right.

Of course it's also helped to maybe completely destroy my marriage, and I walk around with a migraine almost every hour of the day. But I'm doing what's right, I'm saving people that has to count....doesn't it?

You know I remember a few years ago shopping for Christmas was my favorite thing to do. I'd start buying things in summer, just little things that caught my eye while I was out. My partner used to give me so much shit about it because I couldn't pass up things and the squad car would be full of little bags for Janice.

Sometimes there'd be so many and I'd bought them so long before Christmas I'd lose them, or forget that I stuck something in with the spare tire because I didn't want it under foot to get stepped on. One time the maintenance guys found one with the road flares when they were doing an overhaul. I don't think I've actually lived that one down yet.

I guess it was always that way with how I felt about Janice. I thought about her every day, every hour, hell sometimes she just never got far enough out my mind to really say I'd stopped thinking about her. But sometimes I'd forget to tell her.

And I can give all the excuses in the world about her getting ahead in her job, and how I was failing at everything but the simple truth is I fucked up. I never told her how even though I hated myself and I couldn't see why she wanted to be near me that I still thought about her all the damn time. I loved her so much and I'm the one who expected her to leave, so her sleeping with someone else shouldn't have been a surprise.

What did I expect from her? I'm the mind reader after all.

Now it is late in the night and your dreading the day
And your killing yourself in the usual ways

Why don't you just leave?

The glass was cool under Matt's fingertips. Even though he knew he wasn't really hearing Janice's thoughts anymore the words kept ringing in his head.

She was right, she was right about everything. She'd gotten promoted when he was trying so hard to make it to detective grade and he'd not only resented her for it he'd almost hated her. The promotion had just seemed to fall into her lap and here he was struggling and studying and agonizing to get nowhere.

The night he'd found out about her promotion he'd left the house and ended up here in the bar. Beer after beer from the thick glasses that helped keep your shaking hand steady enough to get the alcohol in your mouth had been his way of dealing with it. Matt had closed out the bar and spent the rest of the night sitting on a park bench, dreading that moment that the sun would come up and he'd have to go home.

It had been the first night but it wasn't the last. He wasn't an alcoholic, there wasn't daily binges until his kidneys screamed for mercy. But every once in a while he went and quietly tried to kill his thoughts with cheap draft beer.

Tonight at least he had the murmur of other thoughts to keep him company.

Matt turned and slowly focused through the room to listen in until a pair of cool dark eyes met his and the other thoughts went dead. Confusion filled Matt until the darkness rushed up to meet him. His last thought was he hadn't had enough to drink to pass out…