Acts of Kindness 8: A New Day Dawns
It took a while to get the couch maneuvered into the apartment. The delivery people wouldn't bring it up the stairs and they'd picked one long enough that it didn't fit in the elevator. Peter upgraded for telekinesis at Sylar's suggestion. It was kind of useful to have him around, Peter reflected. He was a deep well of different abilities Peter could dip into. As tempting as it was to just levitate the thing all the way up, they had to make it at least look like they were using their muscles. Claire gave directions and watched. There was a degree of jostling and cursing involved even though they had powers. Eventually, they got it where they wanted it.
Peter didn't have time after that to do more than grab his bag and leave for work, yelling a vague good-bye to both of them before hustling out the door. It banged shut behind him. It wasn't until he was on the street below that he realized he'd left Sylar and Claire alone with each other. He hesitated and looked up, picking out his window and worrying. It wasn't that he didn't trust them, but they had the potential to provoke one another. There were a lot of emotions between the pair and most of them weren't good.
He'd just have to see.
He went to work. He'd known he had a double shift, which meant sixteen straight hours in the ambulance, through the evening and early morning, not getting off work until eight AM the next day. Poor sleep the night before, followed by a busy morning, meant he was absolutely dead on his feet when he was done. He came home hoping the place was still intact, hoping Sylar hadn't gotten into any trouble, because if he had, Peter was going to have a hard time responding.
He unlocked the door to his apartment and walked in to see Sylar struggling awake and up from the couch, one hand thrown out in front of himself defensively. Adrenalin flooded Peter's system and he dodged to the side, yelling, "Hey!" He felt the dragging tendrils of telekinesis wash over him and dissipate, never firming up to a grip. Sylar's sleepy eyes darted from him to the door, then around the room like he was uncertain of where he was. Having apparently gotten his bearings, he finished sitting up and let his hand fall, sagging. Peter reached over and shut the door. "You okay, man?" He was relieved to find him still here, even if had woken badly.
Sylar nodded, running a hand through his rumpled hair and then across his face. He was dressed in a sleeveless t-shirt and pajama pants - things he'd picked up during their detour the previous day through a Wal-Mart. He turned and put his feet on the floor, trying to pull himself together.
"You look like you had nearly as long a night as I did," Peter observed, dropping his bag off on a chair. He walked over to Sylar and put a hand on his shoulder. The other man looked up at him blankly. Peter took healing from him, curious as to whether Sylar would object. He glanced down at Peter's hand, feeling the exchange, then away, uncaring. Peter took a deep breath, feeling the ability wash away a little of the exhaustion, but not all of it.
"You still need sleep," Sylar said, guessing at Peter's purpose. "Just not as much of it."
"Yeah, but it gets rid of this cut on my arm." Peter reached back and pulled a bandage off the back of his upper arm. "We were taking a patient out in a stair chair and I caught my arm on a nail or something on the doorframe." He walked over to take a seat next to the table. "So, how did last night go, with Claire?"
Sylar snorted and flopped back down on the couch. Now he raised both hands to his face and scrubbed. "Fine, I guess. We ate dinner together at that little pizza place down the street."
"Really?" Peter was pleasantly surprised to hear that Sylar had had a normal interaction with her - both that Sylar had managed it and she had allowed it. Honestly, he wouldn't have automatically blamed Sylar if things had gone badly. "Did she tell you what she told the reporters?"
"Yeah, more or less. She lied to me about a few things, but I didn't think they were important so I didn't push it. Once we got my phone working, she called her dad and he came to pick her up. They'll lay low for a while."
"You saw Noah too?" Another pleasant surprise - Noah had looked daggers at Sylar the one time he'd laid eyes on him at the carnival. Peter had been sure that had Noah not been so busy worrying about Claire and Samuel, something would have happened between him and Sylar. If he'd played nice with Sylar the night before, it meant Claire had vouched for him, if only a little. A slow smile crept across Peter's face. It was a start, a good start, towards normal interactions with people.
"Yeah. Noah says they're - Homeland Security, that is - holding Samuel as a suspected terrorist right now. They're going to try to put together a case against him for the two hundred and forty-three deaths in that town he destroyed."
"God, that's a lot of people."
Sylar snorted. "More in one act than I've killed total. More than triple, actually." He shook his head. "Kind of puts me in perspective."
Peter jumped up and paced suddenly. "Perspective? You want some fucking perspective? I came this far," he held his fingers an inch or two apart, "from releasing a virus that would have killed 93% or so of the world's population. Billions!" He took an agitated step towards Sylar, sweeping his arm out to the side dramatically. "Billions!" Peter couldn't find any words to express his emotions about that, so he went back to pacing. His most common nightmare, before getting stuck in Sylar's head, was that he'd wake up in a world where nearly everyone was dead and it was all his fault.
"Huh," Sylar said because, really, he didn't know what to say to that either. A few score people were nothing in comparison. He got up and walked into the kitchen. "You want coffee?"
Peter scooped up Sylar's blanket and tossed it to the opposite end of the couch. He sat down. "I dunno. I want it, you know, but maybe I need to catch a couple hours sleep. Did anything else interesting happen?"
"I flew to Delaware and Florida, showed off my abilities to a couple senators, pretended to be Nathan, and have an appointment tonight in Virginia with some folks with the NSA - Gregg Dawson. I'm circumventing Homeland Security for the moment. Darryl is a dick and I don't want to deal with him."
Peter blinked at the entrance to the kitchen, the direction Sylar's voice came from. "Oh…kay. You did have a busy night." Peter scratched at his chin. "Anything you need help with?"
"No. Everything's going okay for now." Sylar tinkered around. "Did you eat anything? There's some leftover pizza in here."
"No, I didn't. Pizza sounds good."
"Hot or cold?"
"Cold's fine."
Sylar carted the box out to him and went back in the kitchen, saying, "I've been telling them I swapped with Nathan shortly after Danko 'discovered' Sylar last year, so Danko's report of Nathan having an ability will read as me. That should clean Nathan's record. I said I blackmailed him to stay out of things and let me take his place, but I didn't have anything to do with the plane crash. That also means it was me levitating in front of the president's aides at the Stanton Hotel. I told them you didn't know it was me. I'll be telling the full story tonight to Dawson. I need to sit down and talk through it with someone - you?" He stuck his head out of the kitchen for a moment and Peter nodded at him, "Yeah, you'd be good, so I get all the details straight. It might help to write out a timeline too."
This sounded like something that would take more active brain cells than Peter had at the moment. "Can I get some sleep first?" Peter started on his second piece of pizza. He was pretty sure two pieces was all he wanted to eat.
"Yeah, of course."
"How are you going to explain knowing everything Nathan did?"
"I don't know. I was thinking maybe I'd go find Matt and get his ability. Telepathy would be really useful. Then I could just claim I had it all along."
Peter choked. Sylar walked out with a cup of coffee, looking perfectly calm, like he wasn't discussing murder. Peter stared at him. Sylar shoved the blanket to the middle of the couch and sat on the other end. Peter was still staring at him. Sylar said, "What?"
"You're… Matt?" He couldn't put the words 'going to kill' in between. While he could understand a desire for revenge, Sylar hadn't shown any vindictiveness before, and… why would he be telling Peter like it was the most normal thing in the world? He shook his head. "I'm not thinking straight. You're going to go take Matt's ability?"
"Yeah." He looked at Peter's expression and suddenly laughed. "I'm not going to kill him, Pete! Remember? I have your ability too now."
"Oh!" Suddenly it made sense.
"All I need to do is touch him. It's not like you ever ask permission. Shouldn't be that hard, even if he won't cooperate. Ability nullification is nice, but telepathy will have more application for what I'm going to do. It would probably take me two or three hours to fly to California, same to return. I'd be back in time to go meet your mother this afternoon and get my ID."
Peter finished his pizza and set the box aside. "Okay. How about I call him first and try to talk him into it, instead of you showing up out of the blue and mugging him for it?" He chortled at the image that brought to mind - Matt taking out the garbage or something, Sylar flying out from behind a bush and grabbing him briefly, then flying away before Matt could really respond. Poor guy.
Sylar shrugged. "If you want to. I'll have plenty of time in-flight to think about my cover story." He seemed excited about things, and happy.
Peter rolled his eyes and took the rest of the pizza back to the kitchen. "Okay, hero. I'm going to catch some z's. Leave your phone number around here somewhere in case I need to call you." He paused at the door to his bedroom, looking back at the other man. Forty-eight hours ago he'd hated him. Now he trusted him implicitly. Yeah, reality in Peter's world was pretty damn flexible, alright.
Six weeks later, things were starting to settle down. Sylar's attempt to protect Claire and keep her out of it had eventually unraveled, partly because it was her phone they'd been tracking, but mostly because Claire had blurted out the truth when interviewed. The government had interviewed all sorts of people, Peter included, and there had been something of a crackdown. A lot of specials who lived criminal lifestyles found themselves having to answer for their behavior. Those who hadn't, though, were generally free to live their lives, though they were being monitored.
The carnival had disbanded, but most of the members had been hired into a live performance troupe by the Linderman Group. They were putting on shows in Vegas now and were in high demand. Peter had heard they were being paid obscene amounts of money. He'd also heard that the drama and infighting among them was terrible. He stayed clear. He'd still managed to conceal that he had an ability at all. So had his mother, and Emma. He was dating her now.
Sylar's early cooperation had weighed heavily in his favor in how he was treated by the authorities, but he was still a multiple murderer on a scale no one really wanted to contemplate. They couldn't lock him up and toss away the key, because he was too damn useful (identifying abilities, demonstrating them, lie detection, mind reading, an infinite supply of gold…). It wouldn't do for the public to know the government was working with a serial killer of his magnitude - it was easier to say he wasn't a serial killer than to quit working with him. He didn't have to bury his past, because the government did it for him.
That wasn't to say he didn't have five different agencies who owned a piece of him. His life was almost as proscribed as it would have been as an inmate, but much more varied. It was kind of ironic that he was never, ever alone now - his guards weren't really there to keep him in (they had no illusions about their ability to stop him, should he desire escape), but mostly to make sure no one else got to him without authorization. Of course they'd report if he made a run for it, but he seemed content. He got to have visitors.
After Claire's second exposition came out, Peter's friendship with Sylar became a known quantity. Once or twice every week he'd make the hour drive down to where Sylar lived now and they'd talk, play Scrabble or basketball or watch movies (yes, Sylar had a TV, along with a variety of other amenities to keep him happy - as jail cells went, he had the Club Med treatment).
On this afternoon, Peter and Sylar were sitting on the bench next to the basketball court after a particularly grueling match. Sylar's 'bodyguard' was on the other side of the court, paying no attention to them. Sylar spoke, "You know, something I never understood… Claire still doesn't like me."
Peter shrugged. "So?"
Sylar rubbed absently at the spot on his forearm that had once featured a tattoo of her face. "Lydia's power was supposed to lead me to…" he shrugged, "someone who loved me." His brows drew together.
Peter reached over with his elbow and poked the other man. "I think it did."
"Ow." Sylar poked him back, harder. "What do you mean? I've tried to get her come visit, but she won't. I think she told everyone about her ability the second time just to make sure she threw a wrench in my plans."
"Yeah, probably so." Peter reached over this time with his hand and shoved Sylar.
"Would you stop that?" Sylar shoved him back harder, looking annoyed.
Peter grinned. "You want me to, huh? Make me." He punched Sylar's shoulder and they began fighting in a friendly fashion. The security guard watched them. They'd done this before and while it had been alarming at first, he blew it off now. After a few minutes of scuffling, one ceded victory to the other and they went back to sitting next to each other.
"Love comes in a lot of different flavors," Peter said.
"She doesn't love me," Sylar said.
"Yeah, but I do."
Sylar stared at him, blinking rapidly, putting the pieces together in his mind.
Peter shrugged. "It's platonic, but come on - why else do you think I'm driving down here every weekend to see you? You're worth it. You deserve it. I love you, man." He reached out and punched Sylar lightly on the shoulder.
Sylar looked down at the ground and said, "Huh." Peter could see a huge, silly grin starting to spread across the other man's face.
"And you say I'm slow," Peter said, smirking.
"Hey!" Sylar said, head snapping up, and once again, they were fighting.