Fic: Looking At the World From the Bottom of a Well (Heroes)
He used to dream that, someday, his life would change.
Not the slow, day-by-day change that consumes every life, every soul, everyone Sylar sees on the street - they stare at their feet, hunch their shoulders, rush along their tiny, petty lives in their tiny, petty world.
No, Sylar wanted to be above that. He wanted the change to happen in a rush, all at once. He wanted to wake up one day and be different. Sometimes he imagined a stranger would come to the door, tell him his parents weren’t really his parents. That he was special. More often, he didn’t need anyone else - he just reformed himself, changed overnight. Walked out of his house, and never looked back.
Sylar waited his whole life for the change to come. Maybe that was his first mistake. Eventually, after he waited and waited and waited, he thought it never would.
Never once did he imagine that the change might happen, might happen for real - not once, but twice.
- - - -
Sylar tilts his head; his eyes scan along the wall. Dirty pipes, brick streaked with soot and dust and spider webs. “I know you’re there,” he says, to the emptiness. A slight shift - a heartbeat accelerates, a breath taken in, and Sylar can smell the weakness in the air.
When Peter slides visible, he keeps his hands at his sides, palms curled, shoulders tense. He doesn’t make an aggressive move.
And so, neither does Sylar.
There are a dozen ways Sylar could kill Peter, this instant, but then - then -
It’s the first time Sylar has seen Peter, since that night. It’s interesting, abstractly - the others have a hard set to their eyes, a fierce, newborn determination to do the right thing. Kill the bad guy, save the innocent. Peter has nothing. He looks crushed, beaten.
Peter shifts, uncomfortably, and Sylar waits.
“I need your help,” says Peter, finally.
Bile rises in the back of Sylar’s throat.
“It’s my power,” explains Peter, awkward. “I - it’s out of control. I nearly,” and he stops.
“And I’ll help you.” Drawled. Why would Sylar -
“Well,” says Peter, “I wasn’t really planning on letting you say no.”
- - - -
That night changed them all.
It’s a trite way to put it, Sylar knows. The night didn’t change them; it passed, like it always passes. Night just means it’s dark outside. They were the ones - their own actions, their own decisions - that changed themselves. By the time the light of the nuclear explosion dimmed in the sky above New York City, nothing was the same.
- - - -
Peter is in Sylar’s apartment, when he gets back home, that night.
“This is it?” asks Sylar. “You’re going to follow me?”
Peter shrugs, doesn’t meet Sylar’s eyes.
“When are you going to call in your friends to kill me?”
“I’m not going to.”
Sylar eyes Peter, in doubt.
“I won’t.” Peter is so earnest, so honest. “I told you, I need your help.”
“I’m a murderer,” snaps Sylar. “You don’t want my help.”
“I do,” insists Peter. “I do.”
- - - -
Regret was an emotion Sylar was familiar with.
As Gabriel Gray, he’d regretted his entire life. Regretted his family, regretted his choices, his childhood, his disgustingly ordinary existence. He was going to pass through the world silently, invisibly, without ever leaving a ripple. He was going to disappear in history, and his existence wasn’t going to mean anything.
After he killed for the first time, Sylar thought he was through with regret. He had no idea.
- - - -
The woman is perhaps thirty; she looks younger. She feels younger, in Sylar’s grip. She struggles with an unusual strength, an agility, a fine-tuned control of her own body that Sylar suspects shows a hint of superhuman power. He doesn’t know what it is - yet - but he’ll find out.
Except -
“What are you doing here?” Sylar snarls, turning towards an empty corner.
“How come you can always find where I am?” asks Peter, dropping the invisibility. The woman whimpers, semi-conscious, on the floor.
Sylar shoots him a glare, and points a finger at the woman’s forehead. She begins to fight anew.
“And,” says Peter, raising his voice, “if your first power is intuition, which lets you control the powers you assume, how come I don’t just absorb your power and your control with it?”
Sylar looks up to Peter. “Be quiet.”
“I’m sorry, are you having trouble concentrating?” asks Peter, such that Sylar can’t tell if it’s real or mocked. “Maybe I should stand back a little.”
Sylar hesitates. Taking the powers - it’s his secret, it’s his, it’s one of the last things he has for himself, and himself alone. He can’t show Peter.
And the woman - her fear makes him sick. Pathetic. It’s pathetic, that’s it. He looks down on her. And her power probably isn’t even worth taking.
“What’s wrong?” asks Peter.
After Sylar is gone, Peter smirks to himself, stepping over the woman - alive and well - on his way out.
- - - -
For a while, Sylar blamed himself. He had underestimated Nakamura and Petrelli; he had ruined his own life. Nearly gotten himself killed.
He blamed himself, in the darkness of New York’s sewers. He blamed himself, dodging out of the emergency room, hunched in pain, his gait crabbed and awkward, dizzy from blood loss and sour with defeat. He blamed himself, hiding, running, always scared, still oozing blood from his stomach, and his back.
The first time they caught up with him was three weeks after the explosion over New York City.
- - - -
“Get away from me.”
Peter shakes his head. “I need you.”
Sylar pushes Peter back - pushes, telekinetically, throwing Peter as hard as he can off of the apartment’s balcony.
He doesn’t watch Peter pick himself up from the ground below.
- - - -
It was ridiculous, like a comic book or an action sequence from a bad movie. They cornered him, too well. Worked together too well. Their names, he didn’t remember, but he knew their faces, and he knew their wrath.
Every one of the survivors, from that night in the square, wanted Sylar dead.
Sylar was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid. He couldn’t beat them all, not if they came after at him all at once.
His throat still turns bitter, even now - then, faced with the combined wrath of that many ‘heroes’, Sylar ran.
- - - -
“Don’t kill them!”
Sylar pauses, the cop car belly-up, half wrapped around a tree. Both police jumped free before the car hit; one looks relatively unharmed, the other is on the ground, a leg twisted at the wrong angle.
Sylar lifts his eyes to Peter. “Kill or be killed, Peter.”
Peter shakes his head. “It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“It’s the way the world works.”
“No, it’s not!” Peter insists, catching Sylar’s arm. “We have the advantage over them. We don’t have to kill them, because they can’t hurt us. It’s not kill or be killed. How many of them would it take before you’re really in danger?” And he continues - “If it’s really kill or be killed, why haven’t you hurt me, before now?”
Sylar hisses, in annoyance.
- - - -
It turned into a game of cat and mouse, from the US to Mexico to Canada, and then across the Atlantic Ocean, to England, France, Germany. Berlin provides almost three weeks of shelter; Rome barely gives him four days.
Sylar started to wonder, eventually, why they weren’t finding him faster. Why they kept fighting and never won. It took him almost three weeks to figure it out -
Though Sylar sometimes saw Nathan, heard his name mentioned, felt the influence of his family’s money - Peter Petrelli never made an appearance.
- - - -
“Thank you,” says Peter, softly, touching Sylar’s arm, and Sylar wonders if Peter can hear his heart beating faster.
- - - -
Peter’s absence was a puzzle.
No one seemed more eager to kill Sylar than Peter did, in the square. Peter was a hero, the only one who could stand up to Sylar and beat him. Peter was kind, Peter was true. Peter had good reason to go after Sylar, but he didn’t.
- - - -
“In other news, Peter Petrelli, brother of United States Congressman Nathan Petrelli, has gone missing, prompting a national manhunt. In a press conference, Nathan Petrelli expressed his desire for, above all, the safe return of his brother to their New York
home.”
Sylar glances aside, to Peter’s invisible form. “He doesn’t know you’re here.”
“None of them do.”
- - - -
When he asked Claire Bennet about Peter (her hair matted with blood, her skin flawless, but he didn’t want to kill her, and he didn’t understand why) she spat in his face.
“You don’t know anything about Peter!” she yelled.
Sylar let her go; the idea of her blood, her brains - her death - turned his stomach.
- - - -
It’s a week before Sylar snaps.
“No one needs me!” he shouts. “No one! Just get away from me!”
Peter stands his ground, barely trembling. “I do,” he says, softly.
“I’m the villain, Peter,” returns Sylar. “You’re the hero. You satisfied?”
“No.”
“Stop following me!”
“No!” - and the instant Peter gasps, Sylar knows there’s something wrong.
Peter’s hands are glowing, too intense, too bright - this was the first sign, before Peter went completely out of control. Before New York City -
Peter closes his fists, takes a step backwards, tries to breathe, but he can’t fix it.
“Help me,” Peter pleads, “help me, please,” so terrified, so near panic.
- - - -
This time the change wasn’t sudden. It was slow, so slow Sylar didn’t even notice until it was too late.
One instant, he was the villain, his chest burning, his breath coming fast and short, his heartbeat slow and long, his life slipping through his fingertips all the faster as he clenched his hands shut.
Somewhere, in between days, Sylar stopped hating them, and he started wishing that maybe they didn’t hate him so very much.
- - - -
Sylar expects to feel triumphant. Instead, his throat is dry, and he can’t - he can’t -
Three strides, and Peter’s hands are in his. Sylar feels the radiation echo in his own body, hot and sticky and dangerous. The worst kind of radiation. Peter has to -
“Stop it.” Sylar echoes the statement with a thought, and Peter’s hands dim. Sylar tries to explain, he does, but it just doesn’t transfer - the feel of a light bulb clicking off, a flame snuffed out, a hand submerged in ice water.
Peter bites back a cry, and the glow spreads. He doesn’t understand.
And so Sylar tries something else. He brightens his glow, dims back on the bad radiation - let it out, Peter, let it out.
“Do as I say,” he snarls, into Peter’s ear, his hands pressing Peter’s wrists into cold concrete.
Peter swallows and he fixes himself - Sylar can feel it - and suddenly it’s feedback between them, a white-tingly-static heat, from one hand to another, one mind to another, until the energy
releases
and the buildings around them go dark.
Sylar breathes, lets himself breathe, and then it’s not Sylar holding Peter to the wall anymore, it’s Sylar and Peter, pressed up against one another, Peter holding on just as hard.
Peter’s eyes close, in relief or exhaustion or expectation, and his lips part, just a little. Peter’s body thrums, like a harp string plucked just under Sylar’s fingertips. The kiss, when it comes, is shallow but slow, and suddenly Sylar isn’t sure - but Peter’s hand cups Sylar’s neck, Peter’s head tilts, and suddenly Sylar’s tongue licks deep into Peter’s mouth.
Peter’s moan is dizzying - the force of it, the heat of his tongue, the pure, untainted faith Sylar can feel sizzling from Peter to him.
Sylar breaks free, finally, more afraid than he’s ever been. He aches, yearns, captured in Peter’s eyes.
You are a godsend, he wants to say.
“Thank you,” whispers Peter, and Sylar is lost.
Not the slow, day-by-day change that consumes every life, every soul, everyone Sylar sees on the street - they stare at their feet, hunch their shoulders, rush along their tiny, petty lives in their tiny, petty world.
No, Sylar wanted to be above that. He wanted the change to happen in a rush, all at once. He wanted to wake up one day and be different. Sometimes he imagined a stranger would come to the door, tell him his parents weren’t really his parents. That he was special. More often, he didn’t need anyone else - he just reformed himself, changed overnight. Walked out of his house, and never looked back.
Sylar waited his whole life for the change to come. Maybe that was his first mistake. Eventually, after he waited and waited and waited, he thought it never would.
Never once did he imagine that the change might happen, might happen for real - not once, but twice.
- - - -
Sylar tilts his head; his eyes scan along the wall. Dirty pipes, brick streaked with soot and dust and spider webs. “I know you’re there,” he says, to the emptiness. A slight shift - a heartbeat accelerates, a breath taken in, and Sylar can smell the weakness in the air.
When Peter slides visible, he keeps his hands at his sides, palms curled, shoulders tense. He doesn’t make an aggressive move.
And so, neither does Sylar.
There are a dozen ways Sylar could kill Peter, this instant, but then - then -
It’s the first time Sylar has seen Peter, since that night. It’s interesting, abstractly - the others have a hard set to their eyes, a fierce, newborn determination to do the right thing. Kill the bad guy, save the innocent. Peter has nothing. He looks crushed, beaten.
Peter shifts, uncomfortably, and Sylar waits.
“I need your help,” says Peter, finally.
Bile rises in the back of Sylar’s throat.
“It’s my power,” explains Peter, awkward. “I - it’s out of control. I nearly,” and he stops.
“And I’ll help you.” Drawled. Why would Sylar -
“Well,” says Peter, “I wasn’t really planning on letting you say no.”
- - - -
That night changed them all.
It’s a trite way to put it, Sylar knows. The night didn’t change them; it passed, like it always passes. Night just means it’s dark outside. They were the ones - their own actions, their own decisions - that changed themselves. By the time the light of the nuclear explosion dimmed in the sky above New York City, nothing was the same.
- - - -
Peter is in Sylar’s apartment, when he gets back home, that night.
“This is it?” asks Sylar. “You’re going to follow me?”
Peter shrugs, doesn’t meet Sylar’s eyes.
“When are you going to call in your friends to kill me?”
“I’m not going to.”
Sylar eyes Peter, in doubt.
“I won’t.” Peter is so earnest, so honest. “I told you, I need your help.”
“I’m a murderer,” snaps Sylar. “You don’t want my help.”
“I do,” insists Peter. “I do.”
- - - -
Regret was an emotion Sylar was familiar with.
As Gabriel Gray, he’d regretted his entire life. Regretted his family, regretted his choices, his childhood, his disgustingly ordinary existence. He was going to pass through the world silently, invisibly, without ever leaving a ripple. He was going to disappear in history, and his existence wasn’t going to mean anything.
After he killed for the first time, Sylar thought he was through with regret. He had no idea.
- - - -
The woman is perhaps thirty; she looks younger. She feels younger, in Sylar’s grip. She struggles with an unusual strength, an agility, a fine-tuned control of her own body that Sylar suspects shows a hint of superhuman power. He doesn’t know what it is - yet - but he’ll find out.
Except -
“What are you doing here?” Sylar snarls, turning towards an empty corner.
“How come you can always find where I am?” asks Peter, dropping the invisibility. The woman whimpers, semi-conscious, on the floor.
Sylar shoots him a glare, and points a finger at the woman’s forehead. She begins to fight anew.
“And,” says Peter, raising his voice, “if your first power is intuition, which lets you control the powers you assume, how come I don’t just absorb your power and your control with it?”
Sylar looks up to Peter. “Be quiet.”
“I’m sorry, are you having trouble concentrating?” asks Peter, such that Sylar can’t tell if it’s real or mocked. “Maybe I should stand back a little.”
Sylar hesitates. Taking the powers - it’s his secret, it’s his, it’s one of the last things he has for himself, and himself alone. He can’t show Peter.
And the woman - her fear makes him sick. Pathetic. It’s pathetic, that’s it. He looks down on her. And her power probably isn’t even worth taking.
“What’s wrong?” asks Peter.
After Sylar is gone, Peter smirks to himself, stepping over the woman - alive and well - on his way out.
- - - -
For a while, Sylar blamed himself. He had underestimated Nakamura and Petrelli; he had ruined his own life. Nearly gotten himself killed.
He blamed himself, in the darkness of New York’s sewers. He blamed himself, dodging out of the emergency room, hunched in pain, his gait crabbed and awkward, dizzy from blood loss and sour with defeat. He blamed himself, hiding, running, always scared, still oozing blood from his stomach, and his back.
The first time they caught up with him was three weeks after the explosion over New York City.
- - - -
“Get away from me.”
Peter shakes his head. “I need you.”
Sylar pushes Peter back - pushes, telekinetically, throwing Peter as hard as he can off of the apartment’s balcony.
He doesn’t watch Peter pick himself up from the ground below.
- - - -
It was ridiculous, like a comic book or an action sequence from a bad movie. They cornered him, too well. Worked together too well. Their names, he didn’t remember, but he knew their faces, and he knew their wrath.
Every one of the survivors, from that night in the square, wanted Sylar dead.
Sylar was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid. He couldn’t beat them all, not if they came after at him all at once.
His throat still turns bitter, even now - then, faced with the combined wrath of that many ‘heroes’, Sylar ran.
- - - -
“Don’t kill them!”
Sylar pauses, the cop car belly-up, half wrapped around a tree. Both police jumped free before the car hit; one looks relatively unharmed, the other is on the ground, a leg twisted at the wrong angle.
Sylar lifts his eyes to Peter. “Kill or be killed, Peter.”
Peter shakes his head. “It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“It’s the way the world works.”
“No, it’s not!” Peter insists, catching Sylar’s arm. “We have the advantage over them. We don’t have to kill them, because they can’t hurt us. It’s not kill or be killed. How many of them would it take before you’re really in danger?” And he continues - “If it’s really kill or be killed, why haven’t you hurt me, before now?”
Sylar hisses, in annoyance.
- - - -
It turned into a game of cat and mouse, from the US to Mexico to Canada, and then across the Atlantic Ocean, to England, France, Germany. Berlin provides almost three weeks of shelter; Rome barely gives him four days.
Sylar started to wonder, eventually, why they weren’t finding him faster. Why they kept fighting and never won. It took him almost three weeks to figure it out -
Though Sylar sometimes saw Nathan, heard his name mentioned, felt the influence of his family’s money - Peter Petrelli never made an appearance.
- - - -
“Thank you,” says Peter, softly, touching Sylar’s arm, and Sylar wonders if Peter can hear his heart beating faster.
- - - -
Peter’s absence was a puzzle.
No one seemed more eager to kill Sylar than Peter did, in the square. Peter was a hero, the only one who could stand up to Sylar and beat him. Peter was kind, Peter was true. Peter had good reason to go after Sylar, but he didn’t.
- - - -
“In other news, Peter Petrelli, brother of United States Congressman Nathan Petrelli, has gone missing, prompting a national manhunt. In a press conference, Nathan Petrelli expressed his desire for, above all, the safe return of his brother to their New York
home.”
Sylar glances aside, to Peter’s invisible form. “He doesn’t know you’re here.”
“None of them do.”
- - - -
When he asked Claire Bennet about Peter (her hair matted with blood, her skin flawless, but he didn’t want to kill her, and he didn’t understand why) she spat in his face.
“You don’t know anything about Peter!” she yelled.
Sylar let her go; the idea of her blood, her brains - her death - turned his stomach.
- - - -
It’s a week before Sylar snaps.
“No one needs me!” he shouts. “No one! Just get away from me!”
Peter stands his ground, barely trembling. “I do,” he says, softly.
“I’m the villain, Peter,” returns Sylar. “You’re the hero. You satisfied?”
“No.”
“Stop following me!”
“No!” - and the instant Peter gasps, Sylar knows there’s something wrong.
Peter’s hands are glowing, too intense, too bright - this was the first sign, before Peter went completely out of control. Before New York City -
Peter closes his fists, takes a step backwards, tries to breathe, but he can’t fix it.
“Help me,” Peter pleads, “help me, please,” so terrified, so near panic.
- - - -
This time the change wasn’t sudden. It was slow, so slow Sylar didn’t even notice until it was too late.
One instant, he was the villain, his chest burning, his breath coming fast and short, his heartbeat slow and long, his life slipping through his fingertips all the faster as he clenched his hands shut.
Somewhere, in between days, Sylar stopped hating them, and he started wishing that maybe they didn’t hate him so very much.
- - - -
Sylar expects to feel triumphant. Instead, his throat is dry, and he can’t - he can’t -
Three strides, and Peter’s hands are in his. Sylar feels the radiation echo in his own body, hot and sticky and dangerous. The worst kind of radiation. Peter has to -
“Stop it.” Sylar echoes the statement with a thought, and Peter’s hands dim. Sylar tries to explain, he does, but it just doesn’t transfer - the feel of a light bulb clicking off, a flame snuffed out, a hand submerged in ice water.
Peter bites back a cry, and the glow spreads. He doesn’t understand.
And so Sylar tries something else. He brightens his glow, dims back on the bad radiation - let it out, Peter, let it out.
“Do as I say,” he snarls, into Peter’s ear, his hands pressing Peter’s wrists into cold concrete.
Peter swallows and he fixes himself - Sylar can feel it - and suddenly it’s feedback between them, a white-tingly-static heat, from one hand to another, one mind to another, until the energy
releases
and the buildings around them go dark.
Sylar breathes, lets himself breathe, and then it’s not Sylar holding Peter to the wall anymore, it’s Sylar and Peter, pressed up against one another, Peter holding on just as hard.
Peter’s eyes close, in relief or exhaustion or expectation, and his lips part, just a little. Peter’s body thrums, like a harp string plucked just under Sylar’s fingertips. The kiss, when it comes, is shallow but slow, and suddenly Sylar isn’t sure - but Peter’s hand cups Sylar’s neck, Peter’s head tilts, and suddenly Sylar’s tongue licks deep into Peter’s mouth.
Peter’s moan is dizzying - the force of it, the heat of his tongue, the pure, untainted faith Sylar can feel sizzling from Peter to him.
Sylar breaks free, finally, more afraid than he’s ever been. He aches, yearns, captured in Peter’s eyes.
You are a godsend, he wants to say.
“Thank you,” whispers Peter, and Sylar is lost.