Fic: Mirror Mirror (Heroes)

[cerebel]

He skims his fingers across the cold counter, and he shifts on the bar stool. It’s uncomfortable, and his back is starting to ache. He must have been here for a while, he supposes. Otherwise, his legs would be aching, not his back - that is, because he’s been walking, walking for a long time. Hasn’t he?

“Hey there.”

He glances up, to the eyes of a woman, darkened with a little too much makeup. He forces a smile, and drinks the last of his drink.

When did he order a drink? -earlier, of course, he just did. He remembers that, he does.

“You from around here?”

The man shakes his head. “No,” he decides, and it has the ring of truth. No, this place is empty, in the middle of nowhere. He doesn’t come from here. He comes from a place with a lot of people…

Unwittingly, the man’s hand drifts to a spot in the middle of his chest, to a coil of dull pain that he might just be imagining.

“So, where are you from?”

“New York City,” he tells her. “How about you?”

She smiles. “I always wanted to go to New York.”

“Believe me,” he says, “it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

She laughs. “I’ve never been out of West Virginia.”

So, he’s in West Virginia. And he’s been walking, for a long, long time. Over endless roads, endless fields. A determined pedestrian can get mostly anywhere, and there’s no one that can stop him, no one that can come close.

The glass slides, as though on its own, into his hand. The woman doesn’t appear to notice.

“I’m Anna,” she says.

“I’m,” and he stops. Two identities war inside his chest; two names threaten to tear from his tongue, and he doesn’t know which is closest to the truth.

I always wanted to change my life, he remembers. Wake up one morning with a new name, new identity. Start fresh.

“I’m Sylar,” he tells her.

“Nice to meet you.”

Sylar doesn’t take the offered hand. “I have to go,” he says. “I’m sorry.” He walks out without paying the bill.

-                       -                       -                       -

The air is warm, mild. It was November, before, biting cold and fierce winds, and a sky overcast with a hint of snow that never came. Barely visible between the buildings, anyhow…

Sylar left his coat behind, on the street in New York. It was bloody, torn, almost useless anyhow. And, if he’d been honest with himself, he’d hoped that the cold would take him. Creep in through fingertips, his ears, the tip of his nose. In to his ankles, his wrists. First he would shiver, then he would stop. The blood dripping from the edge of his shirt would freeze. Then he would sit down, and he would go to sleep, and he wouldn’t ever get up again.

But that would have been too easy.

The summer night is a little too warm, but it’s crystal clear, all the way to the stars. Sylar supposes it’s because he’s in the mountains, closer to the sky. He wants to spread his arms and leap and fall to the clouds, but he can’t. The ground holds him fast.

Damn that woman. He would have been happy without remembering his own name - she didn’t have to remind him, wake him up. He could have spent the rest of his life sleepwalking.

Sylar opens his palms and his footsteps falter.

What am I?

He steps onwards, and he feels each impact of the ground against his feet, traveling in vibrations up his bones, shaking his entire body. Walking is hard, especially days, weeks, months on end.

And he’s been walking, hasn’t he? For so long.

-                       -                       -                       -

Funny, he thinks idly, funny if this is the first thing that ever happened to me, and I don’t realize it. If I’m just waking up, here under this tree, alone in the world. And everything else was just a dream.

He finds himself knocking on a door, the windows casting a yellow glow on the green-black grass. The door is wooden, old, the paint chipped, the glass warped.

“Can I help you?” asks the woman from within, not opening her door all the way.

The man puts his hands up, palm outwards. “It’s okay, I’m not armed or anything,” he says. “I’m -” and he sees the cross above the mantel, just through the door - “I’m on walkabout. It’s a religious thing.”

The woman shifts. “What do you want?”

“I just want to know if it’s all right to sleep out in your barn.” Please say yes, he thinks. Rain is coming, and I don’t want to be out tonight. “Really,” he says, at the woman’s suspicious glance, “I’m just walking, and I’d like shelter if it storms tonight.”

As if in response, he feels a roll of thunder from the sky above.

“Are you from the Reservation?” the woman asks.

He shakes his head. “No, and I can pay you back, I mean, I can help you out if you need it. If something needs fixing. I’m good at fixing watches.”

The woman disappears for a moment, and he despairs, his heart sinking in his chest.

He is good at fixing things, isn’t he? He seems to remember something like that, gears twisting under his fingers, a steady ticking, reassuring and regular in the back of his mind. He knows how things work; that’s his gift.

But apparently he isn’t good at this.

Just as he’s about to turn away, the woman reappears, sliding a heavy, folded blanket through the door.

“If you try anything, I’m calling the police,” the woman warns.

He nods, deeply. “Thank you,” he says.

-                       -                       -                       -

You’re like me. I can’t wait to see how that works.

He wakes up with a cry on his lips, his fingernails digging into his palm. He hasn’t cut them, for too long. And now he has the blood on his palms to prove it.

He folds the blanket with his mind, the lines straightening themselves, the edges lining up picture perfect. It might have been his best night of sleep in a very long time; he can’t quite remember, though.

At the creak of a door, he turns.

“Sleep well?”

He runs a hand through his hair, and finds that he doesn’t have to try as hard as usual to force a smile. “Yes. Thank you.”

The woman shrugs. “What’s your name? I never asked you, last night.”

He pauses, but it was his choice, wasn’t it? He chose it, and how can he abandon that? “Sylar,” he tells her.

The woman snorts. “How long have you been walking?”

“Since November,” says Sylar.

“Well,” she says, “my name is Janet, and you’d better come in and have some breakfast.”

-                       -                       -                       -

“Maybe you’re a fugue amnesiac,” Janet’s oldest daughter offers.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, no one really knows what happens during the fugue, do they? Maybe in a while you’ll just wake up, and you’ll go back to being who you were.”

Sylar carefully wipes a hint of dust off the cog in his hand. He slides it back into place in the back of the mostly re-assembled clock, and it fits, fits better than it did before.

“I don’t think I really want to be who I was before,” says Sylar, as the clock starts ticking.

“So, walkabout,” says the daughter. “Isn’t that when you, like, walk until you meet yourself or something?”

“I guess.” Sylar slides the back on the clock, and sets it upright, as Janet steps into the room, wiping her hands with a towel.

“Now, that’s amazing,” says Janet. “I thought that clock was a goner for sure.”

“It just needed a little attention,” says Sylar.

-                       -                       -                       -

“The park’s closed in an hour,” warns the ranger. “We shut all the gates.”

Sylar smiles at him. “I’ll be back by then,” he promises.

“All right.”

It’s a long way down to the floor of the valley, and when Sylar is there, he’s in no hurry to go back up again. There’s nothing really amazing about it - one of the nature preserves dotted along the Appalachian Mountains, full of trees and deer and shadows of mountains.

He follows the roar of a waterfall until he sees it. Ten feet, maybe, nothing spectacular, but he could watch the water churn for hours.

Eventually, the light fades. Sylar thinks they’ve probably closed the park by now. He’s here for the night.

He’s been worse places.

Sylar walks until he hears voices, then he walks until he sees the campfire.

“Hey,” he greets, and he sees their faces for the first time. Two men, two women, all older than him.

“Are you from the park?” asks one of the men. “Because we have a permit.”

“No.” Sylar shakes his head. “I’m just,” and he supposes that one explanation is as good as another, “I’m walking. Can I…?” He doesn’t know how to phrase it. Share the fire?

“Sure, have a seat,” says the second man, but he keeps his hand hovering near the butt of his rifle.

“Is it like a quest thing?” asks one of the women. “Religious?”

“Not really,” says Sylar.

“Spiritual, then?” she persists.

“I’m looking for something.”

“What are you looking for, then?”

Sylar looks down, to his hands. What is he looking for? Why did he start walking, that day? Out of the hospital, down the street, keep going, keep going. Until the city faded to the country, and the country faded back to the city, and his legs ached and his eyes closed and he was so hungry it made him want to die.

And what makes him even think he can find it, out here between the trees and the leaves and the earth?

-                       -                       -                       -

Turns out you’re the villain, Peter. I’m the hero.

Sylar closes his eyes, and the darkness surrounds him, encloses him. He feels an insect creep across the back of his arm, and he doesn’t even flinch. It has a right to pass on its way, the same as Sylar does.

He curls up, and he sleeps.

-                       -                       -                       -

When he climbs to the top of a mountain, the whole world stretches below him. Once, that might have made him feel grand, feel important, feel special. Now, it makes him feel small, awed. The world looks close enough to touch, and he wants it, wants it so badly he can taste it.

The air behind him shifts, and then there’s a new heartbeat, a new set of lungs drawing breath.

“Come to kill me, Peter?” Sylar asks, without turning.

“Got any reason I shouldn’t?”

Full of bluster. He always was.

Sylar turns, and he shrugs. “I guess not.”

Peter looks fiercer than he did before. Older, a little more weathered. Sylar doesn’t like the change in him. Peter Petrelli should be young forever. Peter Petrelli should be innocent forever.

He doesn’t make a move, though. He watches Sylar just as warily as Sylar watches him.

“So, you finally absorbed Molly Walker’s power,” says Sylar, conversationally. “I wondered how long it would take.”

Peter looks puzzled. “Sylar,” then he stops. “Do you regret what you’ve done?”

Sylar closes his eyes. “Evolution leaves no room for regret.”

“You killed your own mother,” snaps Peter. “You painted in her blood.”

You’re not my boy. Give me back my boy. Give me back my Gabriel…

Peter frowns. “What did she say to you?”

Sylar jerks, physically jerks. “Nothing,” he denies, too fast, and he rallies. “What, aren’t you man enough, Peter? Don’t have the strength to kill me, is that it? Did nearly blowing up New York City take a lot out of you?”

He meets an iron wall; Peter’s mouth barely twists. “You can’t taunt me,” Peter says. “You know that.”

Why would I tell you that, she said, tears in her eyes, when I know you could be so much more?

Sylar’s heart clenches. He can’t think about this, not now.

“Just kill me,” and in between Sylar’s need, and twisting his voice enough that it doesn’t sound like a plea, the words come out stiff, forced.

“Look at me,” orders Peter, and Sylar wonders what it would be to run, to tear away through those trees, right now. He wonders what it would be to try and avoid Peter Petrelli, the man who can find him anywhere, who can teleport and hunt him and has powers he’ll never have -

“Look at me,” Peter repeats, in the tone of one who’s done repeating orders. Sylar does, though he doesn’t want to, and he can feel Peter sifting through the surface of his thoughts.

Unwittingly, he flashes through it all, through the endless walking, the namelessness of living just here, on the boundary between the earth and the sky.

“You haven’t killed anyone since you left New York,” states Peter. “Why?”

Sylar doesn’t answer. He wanted to be special, that’s all. He wanted it so desperately, and that man, he was throwing it away…but then it grew, to a need, to an addiction he didn’t want to control, because absorbing powers was a rush, and he got better every time, and he had such a fine control, a control Peter could never match…

“I don’t have to match it, though,” says Peter, “do I?”

“I can beat you,” hisses Sylar. “I could fight you and I could win.”

“Then why don’t you try?”

Sylar’s mind stays blank, this time. He doesn’t give Peter any more ammunition to use against him.

“Sylar,” and Peter’s tone is exasperated, “what are you looking for, out here?”

“I don’t know,” says Sylar, and that’s it; he’s inside out, exposed and beaten, in front of Peter Petrelli.

And the worst punishment of all - Peter’s eyes soften, and he reaches out a hand. “Come here.”

Their hands slide together. Peter’s palm is dry, and his fingers are strong; Sylar feels a curious pull, like a hook from the center of his stomach, taking him only one way.

Towards Peter Petrelli.

The next thing he knows, they’re on a carpet, in cool air, between four walls. A hotel room, Sylar guesses, with a quick glance. It could be anywhere in America - in fact, it might not even be in America. Hiro could step anywhere in the blink of an eye. Presumably, Peter can do the same, if he’s developed the same control of his power.

“What do you want, Peter?” he asks, sliding some of the steel of Sylar into his voice.

“Right now?” Peter half-smiles. “I want you to go take a shower. You smell terrible. How long has it been since you’ve bathed?”

Sylar stops, confusion darkening his features.

“The bathroom’s over there,” says Peter, entirely unnecessarily. “And I promise I won’t try to kill you while you’re getting cleaned up. Looks like you’ve gotten so thin some of my stuff might fit you okay - we should probably throw out what you have right now.”

“Listen, Petrelli,” begins Sylar.

“Shut up, okay?” says Peter. “Just shut up.”

-                       -                       -                       -

Peter settles next to Sylar, on the edge of the hotel bed. “I want you to relax,” says Peter. “I’m going to go into your mind.”

Sylar laughs, bitter and low. “Thinking of making a few adjustments?”

Peter shakes his head. “No,” he denies, “I just want to understand.”

Sylar takes a breath, and he looks to Peter. “You’re not going to like what you see.”

“I think I’ll decide that for myself,” says Peter. “Relax?”

Sylar nods, once.

Peter shifts closer, his hand steady on Sylar’s arm. “Look at me,” he says, softly, and everything is too much, the muted lighting, the easy comfort. Peter’s strength is in empathy, Sylar knows, and his own strength - his own strength is gone, barely embers of what it once was, carried through his chest by sword-point, bled out into a sewer, trailed away behind him for hundreds of miles.

He can feel it the instant Peter slips behind his eyes. A foreign presence, but it doesn’t hurt. Sylar always imagined telepathy to be clumsy - someone’s mind, blundering into all kinds of places it doesn’t belong, but Peter is too deft, too gentle. It’s like he’s been here the whole time…

Sylar sighs; he relaxes, fractionally, and Peter digs deeper.

Sylar feels the thrill of reading Chandra Suresh’s book for the first time. He remembers the disappointment at Suresh’s rejection, the repulsive anger at a telekinetic man who denies what he is. He smells the blood of a cheerleader, and his pulse accelerates, but it’s not a thrill, it’s not exciting, like it was before.

Peter pulls through him every murder he’s ever committed, from the panicked yell of a young bass guitarist, to the shriek of a terrified cheerleader, to the wet, fleshy smack of a telekinetic man slumping to the floor. Nausea swells in Sylar’s throat, and he feels more than hears Peter’s voice, soothing him, guiding him on.

Sylar feels Peter touch Sylar’s confusion, Sylar’s shock that he was to be the exploding man, and Peter hears Sylar’s first thought - to call Mohinder. And his second, to return to the only place he ever felt safe.

At the feel of scissors, sliding straight into his mother’s heart, Sylar chokes, and he realizes Peter’s forehead is touching his, a world of comfort that Sylar doesn’t deserve, shouldn’t have.

“You’ll never be happy with your head in the clouds!” shouts Sylar’s father. “You have to learn to love what you have!”

“You don’t tell my boy not to dream! He can dream all he want!” shrieks Sylar’s mother, in return -

And Hiro’s sword slides through Sylar’s chest.

At the same instant, Peter kisses Sylar.

Sylar’s adrenaline flares, and he’s sure that his fingertips glow, for just a second, but then the thought is lost. Peter’s lips are soft, belying the new toughness behind his eyes, and when his tongue slips past Sylar’s lips it’s just as gentle as the touch of Peter’s mind.

When Peter pulls away, Sylar can’t seem to breathe properly. Gabriel was like this, he remembers. Wide-eyed and surprised, surprised by everything.

“I know what you’re looking for,” says Peter, and he pulls Sylar’s shirt over his head. He pushes Sylar back onto the bed, stroking the thin, red line of Sylar’s scar again, again and again.

Sylar inhales, too sharply. It tingles, almost hurts - he can feel torn flesh, pulling apart again and then knitting together better. Hiro ripped him open, but Peter, Peter is piecing him back together again.

The scar fades to the pale color of Sylar’s skin, and it vanishes, the distant ache of the wound along with it.

“Peter,” breathes Sylar, and Peter cuts him off with another kiss, so sweet that Sylar’s pulse threads, uncontrollable, and he can hear Peter’s heartbeat quicken in return. They can both hear, Sylar realizes, because every power that Sylar has Peter has - a mirror image, the same and exactly opposite, at the same time.

In time, there’s nothing but bare skin, an aching, open feel of two bodies against one another, nothing to hide, everything to fear. Their clothes scatter on the floor - Sylar thinks telekinesis must be at least partly responsible, but he can’t recall whether it was his or Peter’s, or whether there’s even a difference, anymore.

And finally Sylar feels it, the thrum in Peter’s body that calls, cries out. Peter is broken, and Sylar can feel it. A power built on empathy, but, in the end, there’s no one who can understand the empath.

Sylar twists, so that Peter is beneath him, and he swears that he’ll make Peter glow, from the inside out. He catches every second of Peter’s wrenching, hungry cry, and he licks at Peter’s neck, his telekinesis reaching everywhere, pressing nerves inside Peter that Peter may never be able to reach. He understands how Peter works, now, and Peter he can’t hurt, Peter is his equal.

Save me, Sylar thinks, and Peter catches his mouth, kissing him with a kind of desperate fire, just as Sylar’s fingers move along the cleft of Peter’s ass, as they press to dark warmth. Peter opens underneath him, alight in an anguish of pleasure, his hair sweaty where Sylar strokes, his lips glistening where Sylar kisses, his body pulsing with a shattered need that Sylar can piece back together again.

When Sylar presses inside, when Peter yields to Sylar’s invasion, Peter’s hand slides to Sylar’s face, and Sylar feels another invasion, a pressure against his mind.

Too easy, then, to open up to it, and then it’s nothing but fire. Peter’s rapture becomes Sylar’s, and the rare heat of being enveloped by another person is replaced by the seizure of letting another person inside his own body. Sylar presses all the way inside, as deep as he could ever go, and he lets the wave wash over him.

Peter tosses his head back, lost in Sylar’s mind, drowning in Sylar’s want. He shrieks, as though in agony - Sylar swallows it, and the ecstasy ripples through them both, pulling them under.

Their minds untangle, and begin to drift apart. Sylar’s eyes drift sightlessly to the ceiling.

Peter turns, on his side, facing Sylar. His fingers trace the lines of Sylar’s chest. “I forgive you,” Peter whispers, lips just next to Sylar’s ear.

Sylar shudders, in a kind of suppressed grief, and Peter pulls him close.

He falls asleep, still breathing in the crook of Peter’s neck.