Bricks in the Wall, Chapter 97: Underscored
Title: Underscored
Characters: Sylar, Peter Petrelli
Words: 1,100
Rating: PG
Warnings: None. A single POV flip.
Summary: Set in the Wall. The quote is from Thomas Hauser's book, page 164 in my version. The guys are hanging out in the rec room of the Pegasus building, reading and passing the time, when Peter causes a stir.
Peter underlined a portion of the Ali book very carefully, with neat, straight lines of blue ink. He was almost done when Sylar ripped the pen out of his hand, hissing, "You don't write in books!"
"What?" Peter looked up at him in bafflement. He started to reach for the pen, only to have Sylar yank his book away as well. "Hey!" Peter bolted to his feet, shoving Sylar in the process. Sylar was fumbling with the dog-eared, soft-cover book, trying to close it safely. It had been beat up like that when Peter got it from the library, so that part at least wasn't Peter's fault. Sylar stumbled back, keeping his feet only because Peter didn't push it further. "I want to read that part again! It's important. That's why I marked it. You don't get to take my stuff!"
"You don't write in books!" Sylar snarled back at him, clearly willing to fight over this.
"It's my book," Peter said levelly, calming somewhat. He backed up a step, giving Sylar more space.
"It's a book. And it's not 'yours', Petrelli! It's a library book." Sylar half-cradled it now, protecting it from Peter the despoiler of texts. "It belongs to everyone."
Peter drew in a deep breath and rolled his eyes on the exhale. "Okay. I got it. Don't write in the books. No highlighting, no page markers, no tabs." He frowned heavily, scowling, but he went on, "I've met people like that," he said, tight-lipped. "I can do that." He put a hand out for the return of what he saw as his, no matter what Sylar said about it.
Sylar regarded him suspiciously. "That easy?" he shrugged, not believing Peter. He still clutched the book to himself, no matter what Peter said about it.
Peter let his hands fall to his sides. "That easy. Yes. I will not be your motivation, or your trigger. If you won't give me the book, then fine. I'll find something else to read, or nothing at all. Whatever it takes." Sylar looked confused. Peter gave a small shake of his head. "Read what I underlined. I'm going to go upstairs and get something to drink." He stalked off with a huff, leaving Sylar alone in the rec room.
XXX
A few moments later, Sylar pocketed the pen (why the hell was Peter carrying a pen, anyway?) and sat on the couch. He flipped carefully through the pages, easily finding the part Peter had desecrated. He hadn't realized how much Peter had managed to underline before Sylar had looked up and seen what was going on. It was most of a paragraph. He scanned through the previous near-two-hundred pages, finding not a single mark. Peter had noted only this bit - just this one, only this part, had said something to him enough to pull out his pen so he would be able to come back to this again and again. Sylar read it once and then a second time:
'What's my name!' It wasn't a question. It was a demand. Ali was determined to make Terrell say it, and the fight was absolutely horrible. If Ali was an evil person, that's the kind of person he would have been all the time. It was a side of him - and let's be honest, it's a side that lives in each one of us with [and here, Peter had underlined the next few words twice] different motivations, different triggers - but somebody really pushed the wrong button that night because it was a side of him so out of character that to this day I find it hard to believe it was him. It wasn't really him, which I guess I shouldn't say - I guess it shows my affection for him - because he did it. Hey, I can't tell you he didn't do it. I saw it. I was there, and it was evil.
Sylar blinked away the burning feeling in his eyes. He was breathing harder. His mind was buzzing with the words that eerily paralleled portions of his own life. He didn't remember telling Peter about how he'd screamed at Noah that his name was Sylar, or how he'd clung to his identity when Danko had ordered him to cast it aside. He'd never had to make a big fuss about who he was with Peter, because Peter had painlessly accepted the name and everything that went with it, even if he didn't like all of it. Sylar had not realized how extraordinary that was, all by itself. What was really strange was that Peter knew 'better' just as much as Noah or Danko. He'd mentioned the future where he'd met 'Gabriel' and he knew Sylar's history well enough to know Sylar wasn't his original name. Sylar looked at the picture of the handsome, dark-skinned man on the cover of the biography - Muhammad Ali: His Life And Times. Just like Sylar, the famous boxer had been born with a different name (which he'd called his 'slave name', Sylar picked up from the surrounding passage). Obviously, Ali's ownership of his own identity had not been accepted by everyone. He'd had to fight for it against all comers just like Sylar had, but that was a struggle he'd never had with Peter.
He read the underscored text a third time, committing it to memory. What was it Peter had said? 'I will not be your motivation, or your trigger.' Those were the words he'd double-underlined. That was the reason he'd walked away from a fight when Sylar had taken something Peter regarded as his. Sylar had been utterly certain it was about to go down, because you didn't steal from a Petrelli without retaliation. Yet Peter had promised to drop it. He'd said he wouldn't be the reason why Sylar did something bad. "You didn't make me evil, Peter," he muttered to himself. His fingers caressed the page. Even if Sylar thought it was futile for Peter to try to unstick the 'wrong button' that had been stuck, he didn't mind Peter trying. Maybe Peter thought all the killing could be ... out of character for him? 'I guess it shows my affection for him.' Sylar's lips tried to smile, but the sentiment was too much to hope for. He swallowed and shut the thick tome, staring at the floor as his thoughts raced.
When Peter came back down with a couple beers, generously setting one down next to Sylar unasked, the book was waiting for him on his seat.
But Sylar kept the pen.