fic: Nothing Is Taking Me Down, Part 9/10 (Heroes)
Title: Nothing Is Taking Me Down, Part 9/10
Author: acinogan
Characters: Sylar, Elle, Peter, Angela, Matt, Mohinder, Daphne, Noah Bennet, a couple of others
Word Count: 1934 this bit
Rating: PG this part
Summary: Elle makes a guest appearance on Sylar's latest road trip to collect on a debt. Going more and more AU by the moment.
Spoilers/Warnings: Gen. Volume 4 spoilers
Disclaimer: I don't own Heroes characters etc.
A/N: nudged by the prompt from superkappa regarding Damien Rice songs. i actually gleaned this from "I Remember," though.
A/N2: almost all posted! and my ebola seems to be all better now :) and i shudder to think how long this part would be if it weren't basically all dialogue.
Prologue | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
"You know, I hope you weren't getting too excited about having a protege. We picked up Luke Campbell a couple of hours ago right where you left him." Noah Bennet's sanctimonious tone never failed to rankle Sylar.
"I hope you don't think you're here to take me in. That's not happening." Bennet was possibly insane considering the amount of times he'd tried to best Sylar one-on-one. He'd only come close while Sylar was powerless, either from drugs or during the eclipse.
"No, I don't think that. You serve my needs better on the outside, actually. I just want to have a talk."
"Kinda busy." The man did not know when to quit.
"No, I think you'll want to hear this." Sylar paused, considering, then acquiesced slightly.
"Five words or less."
"I helped make you."
"You've got one word left. If you want to waste it, though, that's fine with me." He shrugged and put the keys in the ignition.
"Samson."
"Yes, my father. Good for you, you know a secret."
"And now that Luke Campbell is in our custody, he won't be able to tell you where Samson is, assuming he ever knew in the first place." Sylar started the car.
"He knew. How do you know he didn't already tell me?"
"His skull is still intact."
"Noah. I've changed, haven't you heard? I'm getting more like Peter Petrelli every day."
"That might not be the best goal. You know he's our number one most wanted?"
"So I heard." As laughable as that was. "If your men want to hurry up, I practically gift-wrapped him for you in there."
"You don't honestly think that any Petrelli will in any way be harmed."
"Not my concern. I'm not one of them."
"You were for about a week. Must have been nice for you, Angela taking you
under her wing like that."
"Some parts were nicer than others," Sylar said, remembering disgustedly the time he'd spent suited up with Bennet in the 'one of us, one of them' configuration. "Are we done here? Nice catching up with you, but I have somewhere to be."
"Like I was saying, I helped make you."
"Elle told me all about it, the whole dirty business about baiting me with Trevor Zeitlan. All right, gotta go."
"I'm talking about something a little more recent."
"Oh, God. Why does everyone feel the need to talk to me incessantly? If I let you get whatever it is off your chest, will you leave me alone?"
"Sure, Gabriel. This actually won't take very long." Sylar stayed quiet, waiting for Bennet to continue. "After the first eclipse, a certain faction within the Company had a plan to get specials with abilities accepted by the mainstream, trying to avoid precisely this." He indicated Building 26. "Nathan Petrelli, Congressman, seemed like the perfect platform to launch from, and Peter was just so good that the public would certainly buy the two of them as harmless all-American men who just happened to have these abilities, like having a ninety percent free throw average." At Sylar's blank look at basketball statistics, Bennet explained, "Special. But not impossibly so." Bennet must have sensed Sylar was getting bored, because then he took the narrative in a more interesting direction.
"But then you exploded onto the scene, and you had to be contained and downplayed into a run of the mill serial killer before we could even think about making the big reveal. Nathan's election was a given, Angela saw to that. But your...methods...started rumors about superhuman abilities, and we couldn't have that. Hiro Nakamura put you out of commission for a while, then the Shanti virus. But you always managed to reinvigorate yourself. Then Nathan got shot, and we had other things to think about.
"About that time, Angela found out Arthur was still alive. Then you helped yourself to Claire's power and broke into Level 5, but Elle actually served the Company well for once and stopped you in your tracks long enough for us to subdue you. Angela decided your skills could be used to our advantage, so she wanted to keep you around and keep an eye on you."
"I remember this part, thanks."
"You were pathetic. Angela tailor-made a family for you and you bought it hook, line, and sinker, with hardly a thought about whether it was true or not. You wanted a family so badly, I think you would have accepted it if I had told you I was your father."
"I doubt that." Sylar felt a pang of embarrassment at how easily he'd let Angela lead him around.
"She took a special delight in claiming you as her son after she had a dream of Arthur taking Peter's powers. She needed another favorite son, another special boy invested in protecting her from Arthur. Nathan always was a Daddy's boy; she didn't trust him to side with her against Arthur. And you know, turns out she was right.
"She practically hand-delivered you to Arthur, trying to save Peter from him in the process. She even went so far as to send Elle away from the Company, pretty confident that the only other place Elle would end up would be with you at Pinehearst. Angela set you up with a family and the only girlfriend who was enough of a sociopath to put up with you, and you blew it out of the water. Arthur's first little mission for you, getting Claire back to Pinehearst so he could take her power? Probably the only thing you could have done that would have pissed off Angela enough to turn on you. Other than actually killing Peter.
"We both know what happened during the eclipse. After Elle shot Claire, Angela told me that I could do whatever I wanted to with Elle, but she still thought you could be useful to her, and she told me to leave you alive."
"Oops," Sylar quipped. "You didn't listen to those orders very well, did you? I thought you were the consummate Company man. And now you're here, working for the government. I guess we've both changed."
"I work for the people who can keep Claire safe. And you got better."
"No thanks to you."
"I can only imagine what happened after Hiro teleported the two of you out of my house, but I haven't seen Elle since then. I'm pretty sure the shot I took at her wasn't lethal. And she hasn't turned up anywhere in any of our specials round-up efforts. Did you two have a falling out?"
"That is not any of your business."
"You're right. It doesn't matter, anyway." Bennet paused, seeming to consider the wisdom of his next statement before he spoke. "Angela has one last little job for you."
"Not interested."
"If you do this, you get a free pass for the rest of your life. However interminably long that may end up being. Wouldn't you prefer to spend eternity knowing you're not being hunted down?"
"What could she possibly still need me to do for her?"
"After watching you for the past couple of days, I'm surprised you didn't do it without being prompted. All she wants is for you to get Peter out of Building 26 unharmed."
"Yeah, you can just hunt me. If Angela really had enough influence to get me a free pass, she could take care of that herself. I don't want anything to do with this, and I'm not going back in there. He'll be out in a minute anyway. Parkman and Suresh are both loose in there with him; they're busting Parkman's girlfriend out."
"If it would be so easy to get him out, wouldn't it be wiser to just go ahead and accept my offer?"
"Maybe on the surface it seems that way, but I have the feeling there's a big catch involved."
"There's always a catch. Don't you know that by now? Whether you do this or not, you're always somebody's instrument. You've been somebody else's puppet your whole life, Gabriel. And now that you have Claire's power, you'll be stuck with yourself forever, with this jumbled-up jigsaw puzzle of a man that Angela salvaged on a whim and manipulated to suit her own purposes and protect herself and her real sons. I don't know if you can be killed, but I promise you if you ever come near my family again, I will find a way to make damn sure however long you're left on earth is spent regretting every second of your miserable existence."
"I got everything I needed from Claire already. And you call me a puppet? You've been Angela's and the Company's blunt instrument for years. You know, I think humans depise in others what we recognize in ourselves."
"Don't include me in the same group as you."
"Different reasons for acting, maybe, but similar actions. These powers, these abilities, are real. They're important, and the people who have them warrant special treatment. You provide that, just as surely as I do."
"Go crawl back in your hole. Don't let me see you again." Bennet exited the car quickly, closing the door with more force than necessary. Somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, being around Bennet always made him feel inferior. Bennet, the weasel who changed loyalties frequently and would just as soon shoot him as use his powers to further his own agenda, or the agenda of anyone who could protect Claire. Claire didn't know how good she had it. He'd gone through three sets of parents, all of whom couldn't wait to get rid of him or try to change him into something they needed him to be. It was enough to give him a headache: all this talk of Angela, the repressed memories of his biological parents that Parkman had dug up, his miserable existence as Gabriel Gray, and to top it off, Elle wanted him to find Samson Gray, his father. All so he could fix himself, he remembered her telling him in a dream. If Bennet was right, if both Gabriel Gray and Sylar had always been so impressionable, would always be subject to the manipulations of others, why would he ever want to revisit the first person who had used him and then thrown him away? That wouldn't fix him. How could that fix him?
***
"It's done," Bennet said over the phone to Angela. "Sylar's done with your family, at least."
"Noah, I doubt very much he'll come after Claire again. What would be the point? It's much more likely she'll go after him."
"He left Parkman alive, so Peter should be fine to make it out of there. Actually, he left everybody alive."
"I must say I'm a little surprised to hear that."
"Him helping Peter get in, it's almost like altruism, but there has to be something else going on."
"Maybe he's evolving," Angela said sarcastically. "What was it he was always spouting off? He's an evolutionary imperative, or some such nonsense?"
"He was manifesting Elle's power before he killed her. Maybe he's become an empath like Peter. They were in there for a long time just to have gotten a few specials out. He could have taken any of their powers."
"Matt Parkman's, I'll wager. How would he be able to resist that?"
"He wouldn't. Should we take any action at this time?"
"I don't see why. Haven't we got enough on our plate already? Let's wait out this other little mess and if Sylar becomes an issue later, we deal with him then."
Author: acinogan
Characters: Sylar, Elle, Peter, Angela, Matt, Mohinder, Daphne, Noah Bennet, a couple of others
Word Count: 1934 this bit
Rating: PG this part
Summary: Elle makes a guest appearance on Sylar's latest road trip to collect on a debt. Going more and more AU by the moment.
Spoilers/Warnings: Gen. Volume 4 spoilers
Disclaimer: I don't own Heroes characters etc.
A/N: nudged by the prompt from superkappa regarding Damien Rice songs. i actually gleaned this from "I Remember," though.
A/N2: almost all posted! and my ebola seems to be all better now :) and i shudder to think how long this part would be if it weren't basically all dialogue.
Prologue | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
"You know, I hope you weren't getting too excited about having a protege. We picked up Luke Campbell a couple of hours ago right where you left him." Noah Bennet's sanctimonious tone never failed to rankle Sylar.
"I hope you don't think you're here to take me in. That's not happening." Bennet was possibly insane considering the amount of times he'd tried to best Sylar one-on-one. He'd only come close while Sylar was powerless, either from drugs or during the eclipse.
"No, I don't think that. You serve my needs better on the outside, actually. I just want to have a talk."
"Kinda busy." The man did not know when to quit.
"No, I think you'll want to hear this." Sylar paused, considering, then acquiesced slightly.
"Five words or less."
"I helped make you."
"You've got one word left. If you want to waste it, though, that's fine with me." He shrugged and put the keys in the ignition.
"Samson."
"Yes, my father. Good for you, you know a secret."
"And now that Luke Campbell is in our custody, he won't be able to tell you where Samson is, assuming he ever knew in the first place." Sylar started the car.
"He knew. How do you know he didn't already tell me?"
"His skull is still intact."
"Noah. I've changed, haven't you heard? I'm getting more like Peter Petrelli every day."
"That might not be the best goal. You know he's our number one most wanted?"
"So I heard." As laughable as that was. "If your men want to hurry up, I practically gift-wrapped him for you in there."
"You don't honestly think that any Petrelli will in any way be harmed."
"Not my concern. I'm not one of them."
"You were for about a week. Must have been nice for you, Angela taking you
under her wing like that."
"Some parts were nicer than others," Sylar said, remembering disgustedly the time he'd spent suited up with Bennet in the 'one of us, one of them' configuration. "Are we done here? Nice catching up with you, but I have somewhere to be."
"Like I was saying, I helped make you."
"Elle told me all about it, the whole dirty business about baiting me with Trevor Zeitlan. All right, gotta go."
"I'm talking about something a little more recent."
"Oh, God. Why does everyone feel the need to talk to me incessantly? If I let you get whatever it is off your chest, will you leave me alone?"
"Sure, Gabriel. This actually won't take very long." Sylar stayed quiet, waiting for Bennet to continue. "After the first eclipse, a certain faction within the Company had a plan to get specials with abilities accepted by the mainstream, trying to avoid precisely this." He indicated Building 26. "Nathan Petrelli, Congressman, seemed like the perfect platform to launch from, and Peter was just so good that the public would certainly buy the two of them as harmless all-American men who just happened to have these abilities, like having a ninety percent free throw average." At Sylar's blank look at basketball statistics, Bennet explained, "Special. But not impossibly so." Bennet must have sensed Sylar was getting bored, because then he took the narrative in a more interesting direction.
"But then you exploded onto the scene, and you had to be contained and downplayed into a run of the mill serial killer before we could even think about making the big reveal. Nathan's election was a given, Angela saw to that. But your...methods...started rumors about superhuman abilities, and we couldn't have that. Hiro Nakamura put you out of commission for a while, then the Shanti virus. But you always managed to reinvigorate yourself. Then Nathan got shot, and we had other things to think about.
"About that time, Angela found out Arthur was still alive. Then you helped yourself to Claire's power and broke into Level 5, but Elle actually served the Company well for once and stopped you in your tracks long enough for us to subdue you. Angela decided your skills could be used to our advantage, so she wanted to keep you around and keep an eye on you."
"I remember this part, thanks."
"You were pathetic. Angela tailor-made a family for you and you bought it hook, line, and sinker, with hardly a thought about whether it was true or not. You wanted a family so badly, I think you would have accepted it if I had told you I was your father."
"I doubt that." Sylar felt a pang of embarrassment at how easily he'd let Angela lead him around.
"She took a special delight in claiming you as her son after she had a dream of Arthur taking Peter's powers. She needed another favorite son, another special boy invested in protecting her from Arthur. Nathan always was a Daddy's boy; she didn't trust him to side with her against Arthur. And you know, turns out she was right.
"She practically hand-delivered you to Arthur, trying to save Peter from him in the process. She even went so far as to send Elle away from the Company, pretty confident that the only other place Elle would end up would be with you at Pinehearst. Angela set you up with a family and the only girlfriend who was enough of a sociopath to put up with you, and you blew it out of the water. Arthur's first little mission for you, getting Claire back to Pinehearst so he could take her power? Probably the only thing you could have done that would have pissed off Angela enough to turn on you. Other than actually killing Peter.
"We both know what happened during the eclipse. After Elle shot Claire, Angela told me that I could do whatever I wanted to with Elle, but she still thought you could be useful to her, and she told me to leave you alive."
"Oops," Sylar quipped. "You didn't listen to those orders very well, did you? I thought you were the consummate Company man. And now you're here, working for the government. I guess we've both changed."
"I work for the people who can keep Claire safe. And you got better."
"No thanks to you."
"I can only imagine what happened after Hiro teleported the two of you out of my house, but I haven't seen Elle since then. I'm pretty sure the shot I took at her wasn't lethal. And she hasn't turned up anywhere in any of our specials round-up efforts. Did you two have a falling out?"
"That is not any of your business."
"You're right. It doesn't matter, anyway." Bennet paused, seeming to consider the wisdom of his next statement before he spoke. "Angela has one last little job for you."
"Not interested."
"If you do this, you get a free pass for the rest of your life. However interminably long that may end up being. Wouldn't you prefer to spend eternity knowing you're not being hunted down?"
"What could she possibly still need me to do for her?"
"After watching you for the past couple of days, I'm surprised you didn't do it without being prompted. All she wants is for you to get Peter out of Building 26 unharmed."
"Yeah, you can just hunt me. If Angela really had enough influence to get me a free pass, she could take care of that herself. I don't want anything to do with this, and I'm not going back in there. He'll be out in a minute anyway. Parkman and Suresh are both loose in there with him; they're busting Parkman's girlfriend out."
"If it would be so easy to get him out, wouldn't it be wiser to just go ahead and accept my offer?"
"Maybe on the surface it seems that way, but I have the feeling there's a big catch involved."
"There's always a catch. Don't you know that by now? Whether you do this or not, you're always somebody's instrument. You've been somebody else's puppet your whole life, Gabriel. And now that you have Claire's power, you'll be stuck with yourself forever, with this jumbled-up jigsaw puzzle of a man that Angela salvaged on a whim and manipulated to suit her own purposes and protect herself and her real sons. I don't know if you can be killed, but I promise you if you ever come near my family again, I will find a way to make damn sure however long you're left on earth is spent regretting every second of your miserable existence."
"I got everything I needed from Claire already. And you call me a puppet? You've been Angela's and the Company's blunt instrument for years. You know, I think humans depise in others what we recognize in ourselves."
"Don't include me in the same group as you."
"Different reasons for acting, maybe, but similar actions. These powers, these abilities, are real. They're important, and the people who have them warrant special treatment. You provide that, just as surely as I do."
"Go crawl back in your hole. Don't let me see you again." Bennet exited the car quickly, closing the door with more force than necessary. Somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, being around Bennet always made him feel inferior. Bennet, the weasel who changed loyalties frequently and would just as soon shoot him as use his powers to further his own agenda, or the agenda of anyone who could protect Claire. Claire didn't know how good she had it. He'd gone through three sets of parents, all of whom couldn't wait to get rid of him or try to change him into something they needed him to be. It was enough to give him a headache: all this talk of Angela, the repressed memories of his biological parents that Parkman had dug up, his miserable existence as Gabriel Gray, and to top it off, Elle wanted him to find Samson Gray, his father. All so he could fix himself, he remembered her telling him in a dream. If Bennet was right, if both Gabriel Gray and Sylar had always been so impressionable, would always be subject to the manipulations of others, why would he ever want to revisit the first person who had used him and then thrown him away? That wouldn't fix him. How could that fix him?
***
"It's done," Bennet said over the phone to Angela. "Sylar's done with your family, at least."
"Noah, I doubt very much he'll come after Claire again. What would be the point? It's much more likely she'll go after him."
"He left Parkman alive, so Peter should be fine to make it out of there. Actually, he left everybody alive."
"I must say I'm a little surprised to hear that."
"Him helping Peter get in, it's almost like altruism, but there has to be something else going on."
"Maybe he's evolving," Angela said sarcastically. "What was it he was always spouting off? He's an evolutionary imperative, or some such nonsense?"
"He was manifesting Elle's power before he killed her. Maybe he's become an empath like Peter. They were in there for a long time just to have gotten a few specials out. He could have taken any of their powers."
"Matt Parkman's, I'll wager. How would he be able to resist that?"
"He wouldn't. Should we take any action at this time?"
"I don't see why. Haven't we got enough on our plate already? Let's wait out this other little mess and if Sylar becomes an issue later, we deal with him then."