Be Near Me (11)
Title: Be Near Me (11)
Pairing: Peter/Sylar
Rating: NC-17 (slash, slight non-con, language)
Length: about 4000 words
Spoilers: All episodes 1-11: Fallout; AU begins from that point
Summary: Sylar gets his wish at last, only to find that it's not as perfect as he'd imagined; Hiro explains his actions; and Peter tries to adjust to his new reality.
Be Near Me (11): The God Delusion
You and me will never be fine.
--The Beta Band, "Al Sharp"
Out of the frying pan, into the inferno. From being Mr. Bennet's prisoner, to being rescued by the same future version of Hiro who had come to Peter so many times in the last week, to being brought here to stand before a benevolently smiling Sylar; it boggled Peter's mind, and he stood there blinking and hyperventilating for a good thirty seconds. It was impossible--but if there was one thing Peter had learned, it was that nothing was impossible anymore.
When Peter was finally able to speak, he said in a tight, furious voice, "Explain."
"Leave us," Sylar said, and Hiro took a step back and gave them both a deep, formal bow. When he straightened up, he met Peter's eyes briefly, but his face was completely and carefully expressionless. Hiro turned on his heel and walked away, back down the hallway through which he and Peter had just come.
This left Peter alone in the huge, oddly warm concrete room with Sylar. A quick glance didn't show Peter any other way out besides the way he'd come; didn't even show him anything he could use as a weapon. Fight or flight; Sylar had already thought of it all.
"Finally," he said, his smile taking over his face, lighting up his amber-colored eyes. "I've been waiting for this for such a long time." His thoughts were completely veiled, impossible to read behind a barrier of low, humming static. After a moment, Peter shook his head and gave up trying.
"So... are you gonna kill me?" Peter asked resignedly.
Sylar shook his head slowly. "No," he said, almost as if this had just occurred to him for the first time, and surprised him. "I don't think so. Unless it becomes necessary." Peter scoffed. Sylar raised his eyebrows. "Don't look so offended. You'd kill me if it became necessary, lover."
"I'm not talking about semantics. I need answers. Where. When."
Sylar took a few casual steps, deep in thought, his arms linked behind his back, his dark coat swallowing the light that his glossy, overgrown hair reflected. He only resembled the way he appeared in Peter's dreams as much as the bespectacled, tousled, playful Hiro resembled the black-clad, sword-wielding Hiro that had come to Peter on the subway, only a few weeks in the past, but what felt like a lifetime ago. Both men were older, harder, more determined, the edges of youthful uncertainty polished away. Sylar radiated a strong field of "other"-ness; Peter imagined that if he had been in this Sylar's presence before Peter had the power of regeneration, it probably would have killed him instantly. As it was, being near him made Peter feel dizzy as his brain scrambled to keep up, to absorb the power and reflect it back.
"You are now three years, two hundred eighty-nine days, ten minutes and twelve seconds forward from where you left," Sylar said. "I could give you milliseconds, too... but you don't really need to know that."
"Three years," Peter repeated numbly. "I jumped three years... into the future."
"Almost four," Sylar corrected with a little smile.
"You brought me here?"
"Hiro brought you here. And you brought yourself here. I wouldn't have been able to do what you just did. You're still the only one who can do that." Sylar licked his lips a little, practically vibrating with oddly shy excitement.
"And you're not going to kill me for it."
"No," was the delighted reply.
"Why not? Isn't that what you do?"
"Why not?" Sylar repeated, shaking his head. "Because I love you and we're meant to be together. Don't you see?"
Peter waved his arms. "Look--OK, that's really fucking twisted and weird and I am not OK with that, and I do not..." Peter found his voice failing, and he twisted his mouth, trying to say what he knew wasn't true. "You can't do this," he was finally able to say. "You can't just yank people through time and space and beg them to love you. You just can't do that."
"I didn't 'yank' anybody anywhere. I painstakingly engineered a rescue, and sent the only person capable of carrying it out. It took me years, but I did it. I saved your life." Sylar raised his clenched fists to his lips, then let them drop. "We have to be together. It's the only way. We have work to do, you and I. Now that you're here, the world is ours. But we've still got some things to take care of before this ultimate goal can be accomplished..."
Sylar glanced again at his pocketwatch, and Peter took a closer look; the surface wasn't tarnished or engraved after all, but swirling, a cloudy swarm of impossibly fine specks, continuously forming new configurations and patterns. As Peter looked closer, he saw that the specks were submicroscopic gears, springs, and levers, tiny interlocking wheels only a few nanometers across, and he could see every cog, every rotation.
Sylar's ultimate timepiece, powered by biometrics as subtle as emotions.
Peter saw it and understood instantly how it worked. When he looked back at the banks of machinery along the walls, he understood them, too; every tiny circuit and screw in its proper place, even the parts that were slowly breaking down or becoming loose due to the vibrations of his footsteps on the floor. CPUs and microprocessors; surveillance equipment, monitoring every single form of electronic communication on the planet; Geiger counters and seismographs and barometers. There were no video monitors, because they weren't necessary; Sylar could read the equipment by vibration, by heat signature, by feel.
And now, Peter could, too.
Dizzying, seductive, delicious, this power. Standing in this parking garage, Peter saw the workings of the entire planet, the layers of communication above the sky, the whispering of radiation vibrating through the solar system.
It was like being God.
"Bennet's still out there," Sylar whispered. "I know he is. It's not in the press; no one even mentions him by an alias or a codename on the net. But I know he's out there; I can see his patterns. He gave me plenty of time to learn his thumbprint."
Peter snapped out of his trippy fascination with the pocketwatch, and when he looked back, it just looked slightly dented and dirty. Sylar gave his head a tiny shake at Peter, and slipped the watch into his hip pocket. Then he moved closer to Peter, the hip cocked toward him as if daring Peter to reach into his pocket and take the watch. Peter stared the floor.
"What about Claire," he said in a dull voice.
"I don't know. She is nowhere; off the grid. She is deeply hidden, or she is dead. Or she's on ice. They're doing that to some of us. It's what they would have done with you. You know, set you aside for study. Very slow vivisection. I got special treatment. Sometimes being hated and feared comes in handy." He was suddenly grim and vicious-looking; but the moment was brief, and he quickly became still and thoughtful again.
"What about Nathan? My mom? Are they alive?"
"Nathan is in Washington, working as one of them. I don't know anything about your mother. If she's usually in New York, she's probably dead. Nathan assumes that you are dead. Because you disappeared."
"Is that why he's working with--them? The government? Bennet's group?"
"They're the same, now," Sylar said. "And no. He's working with them because he's a politician. He is government. That's his first priority. Not to you and your... memory. His true nature is in secret, though. He took a bullet rather than break his cover. He doesn't want to happen to him what happened to you, probably."
"Simone. Isaac. Parkman." Peter's heart was going a mile a minute.
Sylar held up his hand. "Enough. We'll get to it later. Now, I'm tired of standing; I'm tired of waiting. We have dreamt about it for long enough." Peter felt those strong, soft-tipped fingers grasping his jaw, lifting his chin, and as his eyes locked with Sylar's, Peter knew he was lost. The tall man wore a faint smile of infinitely calm joy. "Let's make it real. Besides, where else are you going to go?"
"Yeah," Peter whispered in reply, his heart fracturing in his chest, then reforming itself, harder and stronger than before. I am Peter Petrelli, and I will only be used as it suits me. "Let's make it real. Gabriel."
***
"...I can see in the dark..."
"Because I can."
"Who did you steal that from...?"
A hundred kisses before a reply. He did that often; a very soft, but effective form of control. "Lisa Katz, Green Bay, Wisconsin. Three years, fourteen days, five hours, six minutes ago. The funny thing is, she never saw me coming..."
"You remember that?"
"I remember everything. For that, I can thank Nakamura's sweet Charlene."
"That's horrible..." Peter turned over, pressed his face down onto a pillow, drifting away on the feather-light touch of fingers stroking the small of his back. If he kept his eyes closed, it almost wasn't so bad; he could pretend that they were just lovers in bed, enjoying pillow talk between fucks.
Sylar purred happily. "It's worth it. I am a psychokinetic, an alchemist, a pyrokinetic, a shape-shifter, a dreamwalker, a technopath--"
"You're a psychopath. How many people have you killed for their abilities?"
"Seventy-two. And eleven mundanes who were unfortunate enough to get in my way."
"God...! Where does it end?"
"Oh, don't be upset. I almost never do it, anymore. Only the ones that are really worth it."
Laugh or cry; it made no difference. "Between you and Bennet, it's a wonder there's anybody left."
"No, no, no," Sylar said, his hand disappearing from Peter's back for a moment. "No, it's happening all over. Powers awakening; new beings born every day. New possibilities, constantly." The fingertips returned, wet and slippery, and gently but forcefully slid into Peter's ass. Peter bit the pillow and moaned, and Sylar sighed with satisfaction. "I could never kill them all. The Program could never find them all fast enough. That's why we're dangerous. We might be the only ones who survive."
"Survive what?"
"Sssh."
Fingerfucking became cockfucking; Peter jerked himself to orgasm within seconds. Sylar gave an aggravated sigh, pausing still inside, locked to the hilt. "You'll share with me eventually. I've got the patience of a saint," he said to Peter, slicking his fingers in Peter's spilled semen, and shoving the fingers into Peter's mouth, "and the vengefulness of Ahab."
"Bring it on, watchmaker," Peter whispered, smiling to himself. "I'm indestructible."
"We'll see, lover... we'll see."
***
Drifting into sleep, dreaming of the surface of the world, news headlines, emoticons, dropped calls, jet streams, thunderstorms. Peter could see Bennet, too, like a snag in a smooth cloth, manipulating, promoting, dipping back below the surface. He wondered if, in time, he would find Claire, find Simone, find his mother.
Drifting back into the dreamlike waking life of darkness and softness and the endless explanation and the endless fuck.
"How did you... manipulate me? Was it here...oh... or in the past?"
"Both. The art of the dreamwalker obeys no temporal rules. I've had access to your subconscious mind for quite some time now, even before I absorbed the dreamwalker's ability. You and I shared something that no one else could share. We died in each other's arms, even if only momentarily. The mirror image of of your other technique; an exchange of life energy. A little death; a big death. Once I had restarted my heart, I fled, but I knew you had left some part of yourself in my mind." As he was speaking, he had put his hands onto Peter's shoulders, slowly and by tiny degrees pulling him closer, until their bodies had just made full contact, without pressure. A layer of body heat built up between them. "How ironic; in trying to kill me, you locked yourself to me forever. You were in my nightmares before I was in yours."
"So this is all... just an accident."
"No, Peter," was the quiet reply. "I don't think so. I think it's just meant to be."
This time, Peter held himself back as Sylar came, watching the taller man groan and spasm beneath him, climbing off, walking away, willing down his arousal. When he glanced back to the dark alcove behind the satellite-monitoring device, Sylar was staring after him, his pouting, confused, angry, hurt expression delicious.
"Yeah," Peter said, "it's meant to be, all right."
***
"I'm going outside, Gabriel."
Sylar, still lying in bed, glanced up from beneath his heavy dark eyebrows. "Be my guest, Peter," he said.
That wasn't the response Peter had expected. "You're not going to stop me?"
"I know you'll come back to me." Sylar sat up, holding out his hands and closing his eyes momentarily; clothes constructed themselves from the bedsheets, from dust on the floor, and slithered on to cover him. With a little more blinking and shaking his head, Peter was able to perform the same trick; telekinesis on a microscopic scale, a certain chemical expertise, and he could spin silk as well as any worm. Glancing down at himself, he saw that the clothes he'd created for himself were of the same color palette as Sylar's, so he wiped his hands along his shirt and trousers, turning them from black and gray to blue and tan.
Sylar rolled his eyes and sighed. "You should shorten your cuffs."
"You should eat a dick."
Sylar arched his eyebrow. "I'd love to."
Sick that that made him want to run back and shove his cock down Sylar's throat. He'd love that. Peter shook the feeling off. "I want to talk to Hiro," he said.
"Then talk to him."
"Well, how do I find him?"
"You'll figure it out." Sylar hummed a pleasant tune to himself, pulling out his pocketwatch and holding it by the chain above one of the racks of busily humming computer storage. As Peter watched curiously, the watch swung and twirled for a moment, then came to a sudden halt, and the patterns on the case began to drift and squirm. Peter shuddered, and walked out of the garage into the hallway.
He walked up the hall, past level after deserted, cavernous level. Sylar's lair was nine stories underground, and the condition of the lots got worse each level Peter went up until he stood at the top level, in front of a set of metal doors. Where there had once been the driving entrance of the parking garage, there was now an impenetrable, tight-packed mountain of rubble.
But the doors worked. And it was daylight, and summer daylight at that, blinding Peter after so many days spent in near-total darkness. It took him a moment to realize that he wasn't in New York anymore; he didn't know where he was. It could have been the industrial outskirts of any major city, smelling like dust and exhaust and ozone, the streets deserted, the two abandoned cars on the street that looked like they'd been stepped on and kicked around by a giant lizard.
Since there was no one around to see, Peter flew over to the next street, practicing his landing, then went another street over, and another. He had become graceful in the air. It was wonderful. He wished he could show Nathan how good at flying he had gotten, then became so painfully sad that he couldn't take off again, and fell over and bumped his knee on the pavement.
When he saw his reflection in a dusty plate-glass window, he could barely recognize that buzz-cutted, painfully thin, stubble-faced figure as himself. He didn't know if his clothes would stay clothes, or would unravel themselves into dust. Sighing, he walked back to the parking garage, and leaned against the wall next to the pile of rubble blocking the entrance. He felt his powers growing stronger as he returned, and as he relaxed and concentrated, he found that his mind was swimming, the world around him shimmering.
He picked up a piece of hard gray stone, shaken loose from the concrete, and holding it in his left hand, began to scratch a pattern onto the metal door.
Hiro. I'm here. Please come.
When he returned to himself, the sun had disappeared into the west, and he had drawn a curvaceous bottle or vase, with stick figures and curly smoke fumes pouring from its mouth, the smoke forming nine lines of text in Japanese katakana. Peter blinked at it; even as he recognized the writing style, he found that he could read it. It made sense.
"Interesting," came a quiet voice from beside Peter, making him jump. "You have written about Kato Danzo, genjutsu... the master of illusion. A master of creating a diversion, allowing him to escape."
"You scared me," said Peter.
"No, I didn't," replied Hiro with a smile. "I startled you. That's different from fear. You need never feel fear again."
"Hiro..." Peter raked his fingernails over the clipped edges of his hair. "Why did you do that? You should have left me there. It would be better if I had died."
"No, Peter," Hiro shook his head, calm, but his eyes constantly glancing around, watching everywhere. He stood very close to the wall, in as much shadow as he could manage. "That was not your destiny. You knew it too; why else would you continue to fight?"
"Why did you bring me to Sylar? I thought you were on my side."
Hiro took a deep breath, and seemed to be at a loss for words. "I am," he said at last. "But... I cannot really know your true heart, Peter. I am shinobi-no-mono. Ninja," he clarified at Peter's baffled look. "I work for hire. This is how I survive. I wouldn't be very good ninja if it wasn't for my powers, but with them..." He gave a deep sigh. "This is a very hard world. But if I hadn't gone back for you, you would have died on that table."
"You know this?"
"Yes."
The truth leapt into Peter's mind. "Because... it already happened, for you."
"Yes. And it was essential that you had Claire's ability, or you wouldn't have survived the time travel."
"And you know this." Peter shook his head, and Hiro smiled and nodded slowly. "Because it happened."
"It has taken," Hiro said with a deep swallow, "some time to get it right."
Peter scratched his head some more. "So now that I'm here, now what do I do?"
"Anything you want. Literally."
"Can I go back?"
"Sure," Hiro said slowly. "Why would you want to?"
"Because... I'm a serial-killing psychopath's fuck-toy?"
"The best way to destroy the enemy," Hiro replied airily, "is from within."
"I'm not sure I..." Peter trailed off. "Oh."
"He will pay for Charlie," Hiro said, voice suddenly very hard. "He has not yet. But he will."
Peter felt a sick, bloodthirsty thrill. "You want to do it, or shall I?"
"Your destiny is not yet set in stone," Hiro warned. "Wait for the moment. My moment may come before yours does; it may be the reverse. What matters is that the correct moment is taken. He is the most powerful being on the planet. He doesn't need your regenerative power; he has his own."
"He didn't get Claire--?!"
"No. I guarantee you that; he would have gloated about that. Some other unfortunates, whose powers combined provide essentially the same end result. He is pre-cognitive, to a very specific degree, and thus immune to any planned attack. His psychokinesis gives him a limited ability of flight. He can become incorporeal. He can--"
"OK, OK, he can't be killed."
"That's not true," Hiro said. "He is flesh and blood, like you and I. And I've seen you die. I know it's possible. We must wait for the right moment."
Peter sighed. "Can I just go home?"
"Theoretically," Hiro replied. "I don't know for sure; we never got that far before. But I guarantee that if you leave now, the human race is done for. Some isolated specials may survive, but not most. We're in a quiet part of the world, thanks to Sylar's zone of avoidance, but the world is at war, a war started by people like us and misunderstood by people that aren't. Some specials do what they can for whatever nation or cause they believe in; some others, like myself, survive on our own. Sylar has an idea for bringing peace, which is unfortunately a very fascistic one. But it would work. Everything that he designs works."
"If you and I shared...," Peter said, "would that increase my chances of getting back in one piece?"
Hiro nodded. "Yes, probably. But you must not let him come into that power. He'd try to steal it if he can, if he knew. He is not a chronopath, and I have kept it that way for a reason. That would be disastrous. I work for him in exchange for him letting me keep my head."
"So there's no way to prevent any of this from happening."
"The explosion happens, Peter. One way or the other. Perhaps in at least one timeline, you did cause it. We can't avoid that. Charlie dies. New York is destroyed. It's only the particulars that differ. If you stay here, at least you have a chance to alter this future for the better. But you must not fear your power. Sylar wants to share with you, he wants to love you, he wants to build a world with you. Don't make him kill you. Because, if he does, he's just going to send me back for you again."
Peter was stunned into silence. "I don't know what to do, then."
"It's like I said," Hiro replied, straightening the strap that held his sword onto his back. "Wait for the right moment. It will come. He could be listening to us now; it doesn't matter. He knows I want him stopped, and he's proud enough to believe that I could never do it, and that you never would. Let him keep thinking that."
Peter felt a sensation like big hands, gently clasping him by the shoulders, turning him back toward the doors. Come back now. You got what you wanted; now come back to where it's safe. He felt a rising hunger, a desire to be back beside Gabriel, protected and adored, surrounded by the humming, breathing rhythms of the world, feeling the power smoldering and rising within him. "I gotta go," Peter mumbled, a little ashamed of his psychic leash, but also a little afraid to trust Hiro, who had so casually betrayed him. To his credit, Hiro only gave a brief bow with his head, and a long, searching look.
"Bishonen," Hiro said, "don't give up."
***
Back in the underground lair, Peter stood at the entrance of the room, watching Sylar deep in concentration with the pocketwatch in his palm, seated cross-legged in lotus position, levitating a few inches above the ground. Using instinct as pure as flexing a foot against the ground as he walked, Peter held out his hand and suspended Sylar seven feet above the ground, then flung him toward the far left wall.
As smoothly, as instinctively, Sylar extended his legs and straightened to a standing position on nothing, halting himself inches away from the wall; his long coat swirled and snapped in the air. He smiled at Peter. "Good talk?" he said pleasantly.
"Great talk," Peter smiled back. He dropped his hold, and Sylar gracefully dropped the few inches separating him from the floor. He strode up to Peter and seized him in a fierce kiss, and Peter kissed back, wrapping his arms around Sylar, digging his fingertips into Sylar's backside so hard that he knew there'd be bruises there, if only for a moment. "Let's fuck for no reason. I'm not going anywhere."
"For no reason...?"
"Right now, I just want to fuck. You still have to prove yourself to me."
"Violating the laws of time and space isn't proof? You do play hard to get."
"Violating... yes. You do like to violate, don't you? No... I still haven't seen my dreams become real yet. Show me that what I saw there wasn't a lie."
"I never lie to you, Peter," he whispered.
"Show me, Gabriel," Peter whispered back. "Prove to me that I love you." With a shuddering, hesitant breath, Sylar kissed Peter again. and Peter focused his thoughts inward, setting up mirrors so that no one would see his innermost mind but he himself.
I never said that I wouldn't lie to you, my dearest Gabriel...
...TO BE CONTINUED...
Note: Penultimate chapter. Title taken from Richard Dawkins's controversial book ; Dawkins is also famous for writing the book The Blind Watchmaker. Apologies if this chapter is a little Matrix-y; you start dealing with superpowers, and long black coats are the next logical step. :) There's more of that to come.
previous: next
Pairing: Peter/Sylar
Rating: NC-17 (slash, slight non-con, language)
Length: about 4000 words
Spoilers: All episodes 1-11: Fallout; AU begins from that point
Summary: Sylar gets his wish at last, only to find that it's not as perfect as he'd imagined; Hiro explains his actions; and Peter tries to adjust to his new reality.
Be Near Me (11): The God Delusion
You and me will never be fine.
--The Beta Band, "Al Sharp"
Out of the frying pan, into the inferno. From being Mr. Bennet's prisoner, to being rescued by the same future version of Hiro who had come to Peter so many times in the last week, to being brought here to stand before a benevolently smiling Sylar; it boggled Peter's mind, and he stood there blinking and hyperventilating for a good thirty seconds. It was impossible--but if there was one thing Peter had learned, it was that nothing was impossible anymore.
When Peter was finally able to speak, he said in a tight, furious voice, "Explain."
"Leave us," Sylar said, and Hiro took a step back and gave them both a deep, formal bow. When he straightened up, he met Peter's eyes briefly, but his face was completely and carefully expressionless. Hiro turned on his heel and walked away, back down the hallway through which he and Peter had just come.
This left Peter alone in the huge, oddly warm concrete room with Sylar. A quick glance didn't show Peter any other way out besides the way he'd come; didn't even show him anything he could use as a weapon. Fight or flight; Sylar had already thought of it all.
"Finally," he said, his smile taking over his face, lighting up his amber-colored eyes. "I've been waiting for this for such a long time." His thoughts were completely veiled, impossible to read behind a barrier of low, humming static. After a moment, Peter shook his head and gave up trying.
"So... are you gonna kill me?" Peter asked resignedly.
Sylar shook his head slowly. "No," he said, almost as if this had just occurred to him for the first time, and surprised him. "I don't think so. Unless it becomes necessary." Peter scoffed. Sylar raised his eyebrows. "Don't look so offended. You'd kill me if it became necessary, lover."
"I'm not talking about semantics. I need answers. Where. When."
Sylar took a few casual steps, deep in thought, his arms linked behind his back, his dark coat swallowing the light that his glossy, overgrown hair reflected. He only resembled the way he appeared in Peter's dreams as much as the bespectacled, tousled, playful Hiro resembled the black-clad, sword-wielding Hiro that had come to Peter on the subway, only a few weeks in the past, but what felt like a lifetime ago. Both men were older, harder, more determined, the edges of youthful uncertainty polished away. Sylar radiated a strong field of "other"-ness; Peter imagined that if he had been in this Sylar's presence before Peter had the power of regeneration, it probably would have killed him instantly. As it was, being near him made Peter feel dizzy as his brain scrambled to keep up, to absorb the power and reflect it back.
"You are now three years, two hundred eighty-nine days, ten minutes and twelve seconds forward from where you left," Sylar said. "I could give you milliseconds, too... but you don't really need to know that."
"Three years," Peter repeated numbly. "I jumped three years... into the future."
"Almost four," Sylar corrected with a little smile.
"You brought me here?"
"Hiro brought you here. And you brought yourself here. I wouldn't have been able to do what you just did. You're still the only one who can do that." Sylar licked his lips a little, practically vibrating with oddly shy excitement.
"And you're not going to kill me for it."
"No," was the delighted reply.
"Why not? Isn't that what you do?"
"Why not?" Sylar repeated, shaking his head. "Because I love you and we're meant to be together. Don't you see?"
Peter waved his arms. "Look--OK, that's really fucking twisted and weird and I am not OK with that, and I do not..." Peter found his voice failing, and he twisted his mouth, trying to say what he knew wasn't true. "You can't do this," he was finally able to say. "You can't just yank people through time and space and beg them to love you. You just can't do that."
"I didn't 'yank' anybody anywhere. I painstakingly engineered a rescue, and sent the only person capable of carrying it out. It took me years, but I did it. I saved your life." Sylar raised his clenched fists to his lips, then let them drop. "We have to be together. It's the only way. We have work to do, you and I. Now that you're here, the world is ours. But we've still got some things to take care of before this ultimate goal can be accomplished..."
Sylar glanced again at his pocketwatch, and Peter took a closer look; the surface wasn't tarnished or engraved after all, but swirling, a cloudy swarm of impossibly fine specks, continuously forming new configurations and patterns. As Peter looked closer, he saw that the specks were submicroscopic gears, springs, and levers, tiny interlocking wheels only a few nanometers across, and he could see every cog, every rotation.
Sylar's ultimate timepiece, powered by biometrics as subtle as emotions.
Peter saw it and understood instantly how it worked. When he looked back at the banks of machinery along the walls, he understood them, too; every tiny circuit and screw in its proper place, even the parts that were slowly breaking down or becoming loose due to the vibrations of his footsteps on the floor. CPUs and microprocessors; surveillance equipment, monitoring every single form of electronic communication on the planet; Geiger counters and seismographs and barometers. There were no video monitors, because they weren't necessary; Sylar could read the equipment by vibration, by heat signature, by feel.
And now, Peter could, too.
Dizzying, seductive, delicious, this power. Standing in this parking garage, Peter saw the workings of the entire planet, the layers of communication above the sky, the whispering of radiation vibrating through the solar system.
It was like being God.
"Bennet's still out there," Sylar whispered. "I know he is. It's not in the press; no one even mentions him by an alias or a codename on the net. But I know he's out there; I can see his patterns. He gave me plenty of time to learn his thumbprint."
Peter snapped out of his trippy fascination with the pocketwatch, and when he looked back, it just looked slightly dented and dirty. Sylar gave his head a tiny shake at Peter, and slipped the watch into his hip pocket. Then he moved closer to Peter, the hip cocked toward him as if daring Peter to reach into his pocket and take the watch. Peter stared the floor.
"What about Claire," he said in a dull voice.
"I don't know. She is nowhere; off the grid. She is deeply hidden, or she is dead. Or she's on ice. They're doing that to some of us. It's what they would have done with you. You know, set you aside for study. Very slow vivisection. I got special treatment. Sometimes being hated and feared comes in handy." He was suddenly grim and vicious-looking; but the moment was brief, and he quickly became still and thoughtful again.
"What about Nathan? My mom? Are they alive?"
"Nathan is in Washington, working as one of them. I don't know anything about your mother. If she's usually in New York, she's probably dead. Nathan assumes that you are dead. Because you disappeared."
"Is that why he's working with--them? The government? Bennet's group?"
"They're the same, now," Sylar said. "And no. He's working with them because he's a politician. He is government. That's his first priority. Not to you and your... memory. His true nature is in secret, though. He took a bullet rather than break his cover. He doesn't want to happen to him what happened to you, probably."
"Simone. Isaac. Parkman." Peter's heart was going a mile a minute.
Sylar held up his hand. "Enough. We'll get to it later. Now, I'm tired of standing; I'm tired of waiting. We have dreamt about it for long enough." Peter felt those strong, soft-tipped fingers grasping his jaw, lifting his chin, and as his eyes locked with Sylar's, Peter knew he was lost. The tall man wore a faint smile of infinitely calm joy. "Let's make it real. Besides, where else are you going to go?"
"Yeah," Peter whispered in reply, his heart fracturing in his chest, then reforming itself, harder and stronger than before. I am Peter Petrelli, and I will only be used as it suits me. "Let's make it real. Gabriel."
***
"...I can see in the dark..."
"Because I can."
"Who did you steal that from...?"
A hundred kisses before a reply. He did that often; a very soft, but effective form of control. "Lisa Katz, Green Bay, Wisconsin. Three years, fourteen days, five hours, six minutes ago. The funny thing is, she never saw me coming..."
"You remember that?"
"I remember everything. For that, I can thank Nakamura's sweet Charlene."
"That's horrible..." Peter turned over, pressed his face down onto a pillow, drifting away on the feather-light touch of fingers stroking the small of his back. If he kept his eyes closed, it almost wasn't so bad; he could pretend that they were just lovers in bed, enjoying pillow talk between fucks.
Sylar purred happily. "It's worth it. I am a psychokinetic, an alchemist, a pyrokinetic, a shape-shifter, a dreamwalker, a technopath--"
"You're a psychopath. How many people have you killed for their abilities?"
"Seventy-two. And eleven mundanes who were unfortunate enough to get in my way."
"God...! Where does it end?"
"Oh, don't be upset. I almost never do it, anymore. Only the ones that are really worth it."
Laugh or cry; it made no difference. "Between you and Bennet, it's a wonder there's anybody left."
"No, no, no," Sylar said, his hand disappearing from Peter's back for a moment. "No, it's happening all over. Powers awakening; new beings born every day. New possibilities, constantly." The fingertips returned, wet and slippery, and gently but forcefully slid into Peter's ass. Peter bit the pillow and moaned, and Sylar sighed with satisfaction. "I could never kill them all. The Program could never find them all fast enough. That's why we're dangerous. We might be the only ones who survive."
"Survive what?"
"Sssh."
Fingerfucking became cockfucking; Peter jerked himself to orgasm within seconds. Sylar gave an aggravated sigh, pausing still inside, locked to the hilt. "You'll share with me eventually. I've got the patience of a saint," he said to Peter, slicking his fingers in Peter's spilled semen, and shoving the fingers into Peter's mouth, "and the vengefulness of Ahab."
"Bring it on, watchmaker," Peter whispered, smiling to himself. "I'm indestructible."
"We'll see, lover... we'll see."
***
Drifting into sleep, dreaming of the surface of the world, news headlines, emoticons, dropped calls, jet streams, thunderstorms. Peter could see Bennet, too, like a snag in a smooth cloth, manipulating, promoting, dipping back below the surface. He wondered if, in time, he would find Claire, find Simone, find his mother.
Drifting back into the dreamlike waking life of darkness and softness and the endless explanation and the endless fuck.
"How did you... manipulate me? Was it here...oh... or in the past?"
"Both. The art of the dreamwalker obeys no temporal rules. I've had access to your subconscious mind for quite some time now, even before I absorbed the dreamwalker's ability. You and I shared something that no one else could share. We died in each other's arms, even if only momentarily. The mirror image of of your other technique; an exchange of life energy. A little death; a big death. Once I had restarted my heart, I fled, but I knew you had left some part of yourself in my mind." As he was speaking, he had put his hands onto Peter's shoulders, slowly and by tiny degrees pulling him closer, until their bodies had just made full contact, without pressure. A layer of body heat built up between them. "How ironic; in trying to kill me, you locked yourself to me forever. You were in my nightmares before I was in yours."
"So this is all... just an accident."
"No, Peter," was the quiet reply. "I don't think so. I think it's just meant to be."
This time, Peter held himself back as Sylar came, watching the taller man groan and spasm beneath him, climbing off, walking away, willing down his arousal. When he glanced back to the dark alcove behind the satellite-monitoring device, Sylar was staring after him, his pouting, confused, angry, hurt expression delicious.
"Yeah," Peter said, "it's meant to be, all right."
***
"I'm going outside, Gabriel."
Sylar, still lying in bed, glanced up from beneath his heavy dark eyebrows. "Be my guest, Peter," he said.
That wasn't the response Peter had expected. "You're not going to stop me?"
"I know you'll come back to me." Sylar sat up, holding out his hands and closing his eyes momentarily; clothes constructed themselves from the bedsheets, from dust on the floor, and slithered on to cover him. With a little more blinking and shaking his head, Peter was able to perform the same trick; telekinesis on a microscopic scale, a certain chemical expertise, and he could spin silk as well as any worm. Glancing down at himself, he saw that the clothes he'd created for himself were of the same color palette as Sylar's, so he wiped his hands along his shirt and trousers, turning them from black and gray to blue and tan.
Sylar rolled his eyes and sighed. "You should shorten your cuffs."
"You should eat a dick."
Sylar arched his eyebrow. "I'd love to."
Sick that that made him want to run back and shove his cock down Sylar's throat. He'd love that. Peter shook the feeling off. "I want to talk to Hiro," he said.
"Then talk to him."
"Well, how do I find him?"
"You'll figure it out." Sylar hummed a pleasant tune to himself, pulling out his pocketwatch and holding it by the chain above one of the racks of busily humming computer storage. As Peter watched curiously, the watch swung and twirled for a moment, then came to a sudden halt, and the patterns on the case began to drift and squirm. Peter shuddered, and walked out of the garage into the hallway.
He walked up the hall, past level after deserted, cavernous level. Sylar's lair was nine stories underground, and the condition of the lots got worse each level Peter went up until he stood at the top level, in front of a set of metal doors. Where there had once been the driving entrance of the parking garage, there was now an impenetrable, tight-packed mountain of rubble.
But the doors worked. And it was daylight, and summer daylight at that, blinding Peter after so many days spent in near-total darkness. It took him a moment to realize that he wasn't in New York anymore; he didn't know where he was. It could have been the industrial outskirts of any major city, smelling like dust and exhaust and ozone, the streets deserted, the two abandoned cars on the street that looked like they'd been stepped on and kicked around by a giant lizard.
Since there was no one around to see, Peter flew over to the next street, practicing his landing, then went another street over, and another. He had become graceful in the air. It was wonderful. He wished he could show Nathan how good at flying he had gotten, then became so painfully sad that he couldn't take off again, and fell over and bumped his knee on the pavement.
When he saw his reflection in a dusty plate-glass window, he could barely recognize that buzz-cutted, painfully thin, stubble-faced figure as himself. He didn't know if his clothes would stay clothes, or would unravel themselves into dust. Sighing, he walked back to the parking garage, and leaned against the wall next to the pile of rubble blocking the entrance. He felt his powers growing stronger as he returned, and as he relaxed and concentrated, he found that his mind was swimming, the world around him shimmering.
He picked up a piece of hard gray stone, shaken loose from the concrete, and holding it in his left hand, began to scratch a pattern onto the metal door.
Hiro. I'm here. Please come.
When he returned to himself, the sun had disappeared into the west, and he had drawn a curvaceous bottle or vase, with stick figures and curly smoke fumes pouring from its mouth, the smoke forming nine lines of text in Japanese katakana. Peter blinked at it; even as he recognized the writing style, he found that he could read it. It made sense.
"Interesting," came a quiet voice from beside Peter, making him jump. "You have written about Kato Danzo, genjutsu... the master of illusion. A master of creating a diversion, allowing him to escape."
"You scared me," said Peter.
"No, I didn't," replied Hiro with a smile. "I startled you. That's different from fear. You need never feel fear again."
"Hiro..." Peter raked his fingernails over the clipped edges of his hair. "Why did you do that? You should have left me there. It would be better if I had died."
"No, Peter," Hiro shook his head, calm, but his eyes constantly glancing around, watching everywhere. He stood very close to the wall, in as much shadow as he could manage. "That was not your destiny. You knew it too; why else would you continue to fight?"
"Why did you bring me to Sylar? I thought you were on my side."
Hiro took a deep breath, and seemed to be at a loss for words. "I am," he said at last. "But... I cannot really know your true heart, Peter. I am shinobi-no-mono. Ninja," he clarified at Peter's baffled look. "I work for hire. This is how I survive. I wouldn't be very good ninja if it wasn't for my powers, but with them..." He gave a deep sigh. "This is a very hard world. But if I hadn't gone back for you, you would have died on that table."
"You know this?"
"Yes."
The truth leapt into Peter's mind. "Because... it already happened, for you."
"Yes. And it was essential that you had Claire's ability, or you wouldn't have survived the time travel."
"And you know this." Peter shook his head, and Hiro smiled and nodded slowly. "Because it happened."
"It has taken," Hiro said with a deep swallow, "some time to get it right."
Peter scratched his head some more. "So now that I'm here, now what do I do?"
"Anything you want. Literally."
"Can I go back?"
"Sure," Hiro said slowly. "Why would you want to?"
"Because... I'm a serial-killing psychopath's fuck-toy?"
"The best way to destroy the enemy," Hiro replied airily, "is from within."
"I'm not sure I..." Peter trailed off. "Oh."
"He will pay for Charlie," Hiro said, voice suddenly very hard. "He has not yet. But he will."
Peter felt a sick, bloodthirsty thrill. "You want to do it, or shall I?"
"Your destiny is not yet set in stone," Hiro warned. "Wait for the moment. My moment may come before yours does; it may be the reverse. What matters is that the correct moment is taken. He is the most powerful being on the planet. He doesn't need your regenerative power; he has his own."
"He didn't get Claire--?!"
"No. I guarantee you that; he would have gloated about that. Some other unfortunates, whose powers combined provide essentially the same end result. He is pre-cognitive, to a very specific degree, and thus immune to any planned attack. His psychokinesis gives him a limited ability of flight. He can become incorporeal. He can--"
"OK, OK, he can't be killed."
"That's not true," Hiro said. "He is flesh and blood, like you and I. And I've seen you die. I know it's possible. We must wait for the right moment."
Peter sighed. "Can I just go home?"
"Theoretically," Hiro replied. "I don't know for sure; we never got that far before. But I guarantee that if you leave now, the human race is done for. Some isolated specials may survive, but not most. We're in a quiet part of the world, thanks to Sylar's zone of avoidance, but the world is at war, a war started by people like us and misunderstood by people that aren't. Some specials do what they can for whatever nation or cause they believe in; some others, like myself, survive on our own. Sylar has an idea for bringing peace, which is unfortunately a very fascistic one. But it would work. Everything that he designs works."
"If you and I shared...," Peter said, "would that increase my chances of getting back in one piece?"
Hiro nodded. "Yes, probably. But you must not let him come into that power. He'd try to steal it if he can, if he knew. He is not a chronopath, and I have kept it that way for a reason. That would be disastrous. I work for him in exchange for him letting me keep my head."
"So there's no way to prevent any of this from happening."
"The explosion happens, Peter. One way or the other. Perhaps in at least one timeline, you did cause it. We can't avoid that. Charlie dies. New York is destroyed. It's only the particulars that differ. If you stay here, at least you have a chance to alter this future for the better. But you must not fear your power. Sylar wants to share with you, he wants to love you, he wants to build a world with you. Don't make him kill you. Because, if he does, he's just going to send me back for you again."
Peter was stunned into silence. "I don't know what to do, then."
"It's like I said," Hiro replied, straightening the strap that held his sword onto his back. "Wait for the right moment. It will come. He could be listening to us now; it doesn't matter. He knows I want him stopped, and he's proud enough to believe that I could never do it, and that you never would. Let him keep thinking that."
Peter felt a sensation like big hands, gently clasping him by the shoulders, turning him back toward the doors. Come back now. You got what you wanted; now come back to where it's safe. He felt a rising hunger, a desire to be back beside Gabriel, protected and adored, surrounded by the humming, breathing rhythms of the world, feeling the power smoldering and rising within him. "I gotta go," Peter mumbled, a little ashamed of his psychic leash, but also a little afraid to trust Hiro, who had so casually betrayed him. To his credit, Hiro only gave a brief bow with his head, and a long, searching look.
"Bishonen," Hiro said, "don't give up."
***
Back in the underground lair, Peter stood at the entrance of the room, watching Sylar deep in concentration with the pocketwatch in his palm, seated cross-legged in lotus position, levitating a few inches above the ground. Using instinct as pure as flexing a foot against the ground as he walked, Peter held out his hand and suspended Sylar seven feet above the ground, then flung him toward the far left wall.
As smoothly, as instinctively, Sylar extended his legs and straightened to a standing position on nothing, halting himself inches away from the wall; his long coat swirled and snapped in the air. He smiled at Peter. "Good talk?" he said pleasantly.
"Great talk," Peter smiled back. He dropped his hold, and Sylar gracefully dropped the few inches separating him from the floor. He strode up to Peter and seized him in a fierce kiss, and Peter kissed back, wrapping his arms around Sylar, digging his fingertips into Sylar's backside so hard that he knew there'd be bruises there, if only for a moment. "Let's fuck for no reason. I'm not going anywhere."
"For no reason...?"
"Right now, I just want to fuck. You still have to prove yourself to me."
"Violating the laws of time and space isn't proof? You do play hard to get."
"Violating... yes. You do like to violate, don't you? No... I still haven't seen my dreams become real yet. Show me that what I saw there wasn't a lie."
"I never lie to you, Peter," he whispered.
"Show me, Gabriel," Peter whispered back. "Prove to me that I love you." With a shuddering, hesitant breath, Sylar kissed Peter again. and Peter focused his thoughts inward, setting up mirrors so that no one would see his innermost mind but he himself.
I never said that I wouldn't lie to you, my dearest Gabriel...
...TO BE CONTINUED...
Note: Penultimate chapter. Title taken from Richard Dawkins's controversial book ; Dawkins is also famous for writing the book The Blind Watchmaker. Apologies if this chapter is a little Matrix-y; you start dealing with superpowers, and long black coats are the next logical step. :) There's more of that to come.
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