Journeyman
Title: Journeyman
Characters: Sylar, Peter Petrelli
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Word count: ~750
Setting: Immediately following Brave New World
Summary: Sylar talks his way through an introspective journey of his identity while Peter listens.
Notes: A ‘journeyman’ is a stage in learning a trade. The first step is being an apprentice, then a journeyman, then a master. Beta by means2bhuman. Written for the heroes_contest prompt, "I Am Sylar".
“Most people are born to their fate, labeled with it at the start of their life. There’s a name given to them and they spend their days growing into it like a hand-me-down suit. The child sees the father, the mother, and hopes to grow up just like Daddy, or Mommy.” Sylar looked over at Peter. “Petrelli,” he enunciated clearly. “Nathan’s life was scripted before he was even conceived. You managed to wrest some control over your destiny, but you know how hard-won that was for you. An attorney,” Sylar scoffed, drawing on information Peter had provided in long conversations while trapped in one another’s minds. “Your father truly was blind to who you really were if he thought you’d have made a decent lawyer.”
Peter smiled wanly and nursed his steaming black and white latte without comment. They sat near the window of the Starbucks on 57th, a block off from Central Park. People still thronged the nighttime streets, disturbed by Emma’s siren call from earlier along with the trembling of the Earth. Both men had been overwhelmed by the crowds of the carnival, but neither wanted to be alone. The little store was a safe place to unwind, putting a pane of glass between them and most of humanity until they were better suited to deal with their newly liberated lives.
Sylar, his eyes devouring the sight of so many people, mused on, “I thought I would grow up to be a watchmaker, apprenticed into the trade. Gabriel Gray - that’s who I thought I was. Then I found out I’d been lied to. My parents - adoptive parents - were trying to make me conform to a destiny that wasn’t mine. I was wearing someone else’s skin.” He sighed, sipping his own cup of iced chai, tasting the liquid, both robust and complex on his tongue. “Something I’ve done a lot of. I’ve been trying to find my place, but I’m not going to be able to do that with someone else’s name, someone else’s face.” He looked over at Peter. “I don’t even know the name I was born with.”
“We could find out,” Peter offered. He was sure his mother had access to the information, if she didn’t know it herself.
Sylar shook his head slowly. “I used to want to know what my fate was. I wanted to know how I’d die and how far I’d make it before I did.” He smiled a little ruefully, a little embarrassed, dipping his head. “I thought if I was immortal, then I’d win the game, like wishing for infinite wishes when you summon the genie from the lamp.” He shrugged one shoulder ambivalently. “That’s why it didn’t matter if I died in the process. Nothing really mattered. It was just a game. I was playing … with a token, a figurine. It wasn’t really me, do you see that?” He turned intent eyes on Peter, hungry for recognition and validation.
Peter granted it with a small nod and an understanding expression, empathetic to his plight.
Reassured that he wasn’t crazy, Sylar turned away again to watch the knots of people moving up and down the sidewalk. “It was a game. I thought if I could only figure out the rules and get lucky on the dice, that it was something I could win.” His brows pulled together as he stared off into the distance. “I don’t want to win anymore, Peter.” He looked over and saw Peter give a small tip of his head. “I don’t want to play by someone else’s rules. I don’t want to jockey among game pieces to be the one with the most points at the end of the day. I just want to live my life. My life.” He clenched his fist where it lay on the table, looking over again, gratified to have Peter’s full attention. “There’s no way to know my fate because I haven’t decided it yet. I haven’t decided it and I’m the only one who gets to decide it. I have no label imposed by others, no name I was born to. I don’t want to know it even if there is one. It wouldn’t apply. I’ve become more than whatever grouping of syllables was bestowed to some infant thirty years ago. I’ve made my own name - for better or worse … and a lot of it worse, but I’m going to live with that - I’ve made my own name: I am Sylar.”