For Whom The Bell Tolls
Title: For Whom The Bell Tolls
Characters: Gabriel or Sylar
Words: 2,300
Rating: R
Warnings: Discussion of murder. Some gore.
Setting: Runs from pre-season to late S4
Summary: Experts in clinical pathology agree that sociopaths cannot change or improve, but with abilities, anything is possible. This is Sylar's journey.
Notes: No ships mentioned or alluded to. For sylarthritis for Secret Santa. Written to the prompt: 'Anything Sylar, Sylaire (romantic or platonic), Peter and Emma. Luke and Claire. Extra: for ships it doesn't have to be necessarily shippy. I'll take gifs but fanfiction would be awesome. And idk i like blue things?' Many thanks to means2bhuman for the timely beta read.
Sources: The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout. Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men by Lundy Bancroft. Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman. Multiplicity by Rita Carver. A Recipe for Violence by Matthew P. Dumont, summarizing the violentization theory of Lonnie Athens. Meditation 17, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions by John Donne.
He was broken inside. Gabriel knew that. It came to him as he bent over a limited run 1994 Breitling chronomat, carefully prizing off the custom etched caseback. He hesitated, the gaze he'd been directing through the magnifying lens turning unfocussed. What was wrong with the watch was clear and so simple that he'd known it before he even touched it. It hadn't been properly maintained, the o-ring had failed so contaminants had entered the casing and gummed up the works. What was wrong with himself was … he didn't know.
The caseback came off with a little lever action. The crusted residue of dried sweat that was under the lip and around the interior rim of the casing confirmed his earlier diagnosis. He examined what he could see of the gear train of the watch. From mainspring to escapement, everything looked serviceable. A good cleaning was all it needed, followed by a light oiling and a new o-ring. But what did he need? He had the feeling he was looking right at it, but not seeing it. With the very tip of a probe, he nudged the balance wheel this way and that, watching the other parts move and flex in response. Reactions? He strained his mind to find the answer. It was like a man color blind struggling to see the difference between subtle hues. He just … couldn't. Connections maybe? Cause and effect? Gummed up? Things that are stuck for $500, Alex?
With an exasperated sigh, he put down his tools and leaned away from the light. He pulled off his glasses, careful of the expensive, elaborate lenses he had clamped to them, and rubbed at his eyes. He glanced over at the notepad where he'd neatly jotted down Mr. Suresh's information, with the book the man had left tucked under the note. The man's claims had been incredible, but they were just what Gabriel wanted to hear. For as long as he could remember, he'd dreamed someone would show up and tell him he didn't belong to this life, that another, grander and more exciting, waited for him if he would just seize it. He only had this last timepiece to finish before he could leave and find out if what the peculiar Indian had promised was true. Gabriel returned his glasses to his face and bent to continue his task.
XXX
Gabriel stalked out of Suresh's apartment, seething inside. He felt humiliated, disrespected, and most of all, unwanted - rejected - left behind - sold off - cast aside. The words paraded through his head like a recitation from a thesaurus as his heart thundered in his chest and his feet slapped at the pavement. He was not ordinary and he knew it! He couldn't understand why Chandra couldn't see it. He was special. He was different. He sneered at the stupid kine moving along the sidewalk with him, at the various mass-produced automobiles puttering along the street. None of them mattered as much as he did. None of them had his potential. He could feel it there in his brain, itching to break free. He knew it was there as clearly as he knew there was something wrong with him, but the two had nothing to do with one another. There was nothing wrong with his … ability, whatever it was. He just couldn't show it and for Chandra to dismiss him because of that was absurd.
He clasped the bit of paper he'd palmed while in Chandra's apartment. Within a few days, perhaps even a few hours or at the very least within a few weeks, he'd have done his own research on these 'abilities'. If it was something in the brain as Chandra had described, then Gabriel was certain he'd be able to see it the same way he could currently tell the difference between himself and the other pedestrians. Maybe if he could see it … he didn't know what came next. But first he had to see it.
XXX
It was glorious. He still couldn't believe Brian hadn't wanted this. Maybe there was something wrong with him, too, just like with Gabriel. Except in Brian Davis' case, perhaps it was a personality defect like poor self-image or … something. It was impossible to tell now, since his cooling brain matter had long since ceased to yield its secrets. He didn't care about that part of the mind anyway. Gabriel knew he should have cleaned things up, but he was too inebriated with discovery. He washed himself (that was necessary), pulled the body out of sight of the windows (also necessary), and then went home for the evening. He spent the time playing with himself, with his new power, making love to it and experiencing the ecstasy of possessing it. No other ability would ever thrill him quite as much as this one. It was his first and that made it special in a way no other one ever would be. He pulled it into his bones and made it part of himself.
XXX
He'd taunted Chandra for months, calling him every few weeks to report a new murder, lightly mention an interesting feature of an ability he'd acquired, or express his false gratitude for Chandra showing him the way. He might have never been moved to that first murder if he hadn't been spurned. Not because he respected human life, but because killing was disorderly and inconvenient for a watchmaker. It had taken Suresh's rejection to make him realize he didn't have to remain Gabriel Gray. He could be accepted as someone else, someone important, someone terrifying and threatening and powerful.
But the game was getting boring. The risk was growing that Chandra would eventually involve the authorities and Sylar had already had several close brushes with the FBI. He'd nearly exhausted the list of names he had - not all the addresses were correct and some targets were inconvenient to kill so he'd passed them over. He returned to New York to tie up loose ends and make a casual check to see if Nathan Petrelli was any more killable now than he had been months earlier. The man had a disturbing number of bodyguards, so he moved on. Having Chandra's taxi service direct the Indian into a dark alley was ludicrously simple. Without a moment of hesitation, Sylar took care of the rest.
XXX
He remembered sitting at the kitchen counter as a teenager, watching a TV program about apes while he was supposed to be doing his algebra homework. His mother was out, so his minor infraction of watching TV before his schoolwork was done went unpunished. On the screen, chimpanzees prowled the forest floor, peering into the canopy above as they stalked some much smaller species of monkey. When they found one and isolated it from the rest of the troupe, they swarmed up the trees to the howls and screeches of the other small monkeys in neighboring trees. After a dreadfully short skirmish, the hunters returned, leaping to the ground with their prize. Their victim was torn apart and the chimps feasted on the meat. That much, Gabriel understood - conquest, desire, and pleasure in victory. Those were emotions he could empathize with. The relationship between predator and prey was enshrined as part of the natural order. But what the smaller monkeys did in response was incomprehensible to him. After seeing their companion killed, they whimpered. They clung to one another. They alternated between hiding their faces and gazing down at the grisly scene far below. Why not just leave? Why grasp at one another pointlessly? He stared at the TV screen, fixated by how odd their behavior was and how normal the narrator seemed to regard it. The calm, detached voice described the little monkey's behavior as being fundamentally human. Gabriel wondered - if he didn't feel that way, then did it mean he wasn't … human? He speculated that he had evolved past such weak, useless sentiments. He told himself he was stronger for it, but he couldn't completely squelch the doubt.
XXX
It took a long time to clear the rank stench of fear from his nostrils after he left Samson Gray's ramshackle home. It wasn't his own fear (at least not entirely, and Sylar had come too far in knowing himself not to acknowledge that he felt some). It was his father's that rankled. It was so similar to that of Martin. It wasn't the similarity of mere brotherhood, either. Sylar didn't think so. He analyzed the situation as he always did - it was his usual process after a kill. In these two cases, he had passed it up, unsure of what benefit their murder would bring him. The satisfaction of it seemed insufficient. But there was another, more narcissistic, reason that primarily motivated him to spare them. If he were more highly evolved, then odds were that his closest relatives would share the evolutionary trait that had produced him. He had seen evolution at work in the Petrelli family - every single fucking one of them had an ability, including Nathan's bastard daughter. What did his family have? They had fear.
His eyes narrowed and head cocked out of habit when confronted by something curious. He was angry. He was jealous. He set those aside as he recognized something else: he was … afraid. He was afraid they were superior, afraid that there was nothing he could do that would raise him to their level. It was the same disgusting fear his family had - Virginia, of demons; Martin, of responsibility; Samson, of challenge; and now Sylar, of insignificance. He felt that bit of his brain that was so perfect at figuring out problems alerting him that this, here, was a problem and it wasn't the envy. It was something else that should have been there but wasn't. All he could sense was that wrongness within him, that piece that was missing that other people routinely had, that neurological aspect that even stupid fucking monkeys the size of Pomeranians possessed … but not him. He was one of those prowling chimpanzees lumbering along the forest floor, looking up for the next delicacy they might savor. Still, he couldn't beat the feeling, the knowledge, that he should be having some other emotion. With an angry shudder that shook his entire frame, he tried to rid himself of the feeling. He had more important things to do - he had 'significance' to secure. He would not be afraid.
XXX
Somewhere in that dark moment when he transitioned from being Sylar to becoming Nathan Petrelli, he fixed himself. He had to. It was part of the identity. He'd known what was wrong since he'd first used shape-shifting, feeling things he'd never felt before, never wanted to feel, but had to anyway as a cost of being someone else. The knowledge had eaten at him, moving him to be even more vicious than normal and yet breaking down afterward in self-loathing as his identity fractured. The only way he would be able to pull off the self-assured senator's persona was to correct this defect in himself, this bit of his brain that hadn't developed like most human brains did. It wasn't difficult. It was easier to do than moving his kill spot had been. On some level, he wasn't even aware he'd done it. He morphed into the new identity, coerced and forced into it, and this change was simply another part of it. At least his ego was still the same.
XXX
Alone, the only person left in the world as he knew it, he had time to think and reflect on the changes the years had wrought in him. Even though not all were good, he was at peace with them. Maybe that was why he didn't try to find a way out. It was a comfortable prison, even if devoid of the one thing that really mattered. He deserved the solitude, the profound ostracism. He knew that now. He could see the whole chain of events and he couldn't blame anyone for locking him up and throwing away the key. He returned to his hobbies, taking up tools he hadn't touched for half a decade. He gathered watches in this timeless place, marked off the days and weeks and months, and waited for eternity to pass. This was his fate. He accepted it.
Crouched over a factory standard Seiko that he never would have bothered to repair five years ago, he heard it - a harsh ringing sound broke the silence, metal against concrete announcing the arrival of the connection he'd long since given up hope he'd ever have. He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. His breath caught in his throat. The first and last lines of an old bit of prose he'd read in high school came back to him: 'No man is an island … It tolls for thee.'