Guilty Conscience

[game_byrd]

Title: Guilty Conscience
Characters: Matt Parkman
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Word count: 550
Setting: Between An Invisible Thread (end of season 3) and Orientation (start of season 4)
Summary: Matt doesn’t know his own mind.
Notes: Written for terror_scifi fear fest, prompt: “Autophobia, General”.

Comments

[black_sluggard]

Buh. This might just be the best ever. Because it's really perfect, most of all because it fixes the thing I disliked the most about the final season. Because the idea of Sylar's soul jumping to Matt's body was just...dumb. But this? This I believe. All that guilt swirling around until it took on a life and name of its own to replace the one that Matt knew he'd destroyed. And when Peter and "Nathan" found him in the hospital? That wasn't any sort of magical "unpossession", just Matt undoing what he'd done.

This is totally my head canon now.

[game_byrd]

Cool!

You ought to join our rewatch! I got this idea after someone in the rewatch said, "I don't think even Matt really understands what he did to you, Sylar dear." She also said, "Sylar's being pretty damned creepy as well. I'd say the scenes with him in Matt's head are Sylar at both the scariest and snarkiest (and therefore funniest) he's been since series one."

And I got to thinking, 'What if Matt didn't understand what he did?' and 'What if that isn't Sylar?' and then it spun off into this idea.

I think I'll use this as my head-canon, too, because the splitting of Sylar's soul and so on doesn't really work.

So glad you liked it!

[black_sluggard]

And also Janice. Not that I think Sylar would never go there, but given that she cheated on Matt once before, having Sylar cuckold him is clearly a manifestation of his insecurities.

You know what it really needs? Some kind of confrontation between Matt and Sylar where it gets brought up, so that Sylar can be all. "Uh...that didn't happen."

Though, seriously, there's no idea scarier than that of a telepath of Matt's potential power going completely batshit insane.

[game_byrd]

LOL! You know, considering what Matt did to Sylar, even if Sylar *did* go all, "Uh ... that didn't happen," I'd have to wonder if it happened and Sylar is denying it to make Matt feel crazy, or if he's denying it because it didn't happen?

And yes, Matt's power is huge. It's bad enough that he's a bit dumb and easily led, but if he were out of touch with reality to boot? Yikes!

[dancingdragon3]

Great fic! You've made Matt thoughtful and complicated.

Reality was so more complicated than black and white. Every guilty soul had reasons, motivations, and rationalizations for their actions. Some of them were easy for Matt to dismiss, but others weren’t. Sylar’s reasons lurked in his mind. What would Matt have done, had he been given the keys to ultimate power, just like Sylar?

I adore Matt learning about the greyness in life and actively putting himself in Sylar's shoes.

I also like the idea that Matt is driving himself out of his mind. And as you say above, the idea of a telepath out of control of his mind (when his mind can control others) is very scary.

In fact, I'd like to see that...hmmm...

::entices plot bunny over with a carrot::

Thanks for the inspiration! Since you're letting BS borrow this, may I as well?

[game_byrd]

Borrow away! You know, it's canon that telepaths can make their targets see other people, like Maury making Nathan and Daphne see Linderman. If you assume that Matt can target *himself* with his power, then being able to see a visible manifestation of Sylar isn't a stretch.

Glad you liked it!