(no subject)
Um.. So yeah.
Title: Depersonalized
Characters: Gabriel, Sylar.
Set: Pre-Season One.
Rating/Warnings: Mental Disorder, Depersonalization.
Summary: There's the first crack in Gabriel's head.
A/N: Written for mission_insane's Mental Illness/Depersonalization.
“And who do I make it out to?”
“Hm?”
“The cheque…”
Gabriel looks up at the woman and blinks, pulls off his glasses. “Oh. Um.”
He gets the vaguest feeling he’s watching himself from outside, sees a third person view of a silent watch maker struggling to remember his own name.
“Gabriel. Gray.”
His voice clicks him back into his head, but it sounds heavier than his own, distorted. She smiles at him kindly and pens out his name, pushes the cheque onto his desk.
“Thank you so much once again.”
He nods mechanically, jerky movement that makes his neck click. She pockets the watch and walks out, sets the bell tingling in the background over the shop door. He stares at the source of noise. It looks smaller than it should, far away and flat.
He must keep staring in some sort of trance. He can’t remember thinking much, just settling into that staring into space kind of blankness, watching himself fall so still and steady. He looks lost. But he’s not the one that thought that.
His hands start to move over the timepiece in his fingers, no conscious control, just following routine. He doesn’t even have to look down in the weirdest sense of disconnection, as though his body and his mind are totally unsyncopated.
He’s waiting to wake up, really. It feels like everything about is a bit blurred, all he has is a third person view of himself, hands working over the clock and eyes fixed on a still tingling bell that looks flat and sounds weak.
He tries blinking, sees himself do it. It doesn’t send him back. He doesn’t care.
He stands up, walks to the mirror. He’s pretty sure he didn’t tell his body to do that. But- he?- lifts a hand, draws a nail over his cheek and leaves a red mark and spot of blood. The eyes in the mirror fly up and lock with the view Gabriel’s watching from.
He spins around, clasps his hand to his bleeding face, back in control of his body. He forgets there’s blood on his hand and walks over to his desk again, sits down. He wonders vaguely why there is blood on the dial foot hole. He also wonders when it got so dark, as he clicks the last piece of watch into place and secures it together, sets is off on a tick.
He turns it over and stares past the face with wide eyes. It’s been seven hours. When did that happen?
He places the watch to the side and turns his eyes to the dark window, streets still busy at eleven at night. He rises, closes the blinds, locks the door, heads to his apartment over the shop.
He pulls his clothes off and lets them drop on the floor instead of putting them away. He pads over to the bathroom and brushes his teeth. He walks back to his bedroom. He stands in the middle of the room.
Maybe he should be cold, or something? His body should be cold.
He doesn’t seem to be in his body right now.
He hasn’t really been in his body for the past few weeks.
He walks over to his mirror, an object that’s suddenly become important to him recently. He checks in it to reassure himself he exists.
The problem is, he doesn’t really know who keeps staring back.
It’s some piece of him. It’s the same reflection. It’s just not helping him believe he exists, it’s making him think he’s the reflection of something else. He’s the one trapped in the mirror, following someone behind who suddenly seems a lot more sinister.
He’s starting to feel like he’s outside a game, like the rest of the world is going to their business genuinely worried about how their hair looks. And he’s watching from the sidelines, he’s realized none of it is real and he’s a puppet reflection for something much bigger.
He wants to poke right through the mirror, to get back into something that matters. Ignorance is bliss, and he if he could care, he wouldn’t like this existence. He’d find it apathetic and disconnected and robotic. But his caring has been cut out somehow, along with conscious thought and body control, a sense of time or purpose. It’s all gone, all leaked through the crack in the mirror.
He hits it with the heel of his palm, a hard downward stroke. It forms a long crack, splits across his forehead in a diagonal slash and leaves an open razor cut on his hand. He pulls away carefully. It doesn’t hurt anymore.
He crawls into bed and fall asleep with no effort. He doesn’t dream. He doesn’t move. He just sleeps.
And from the other side of the mirror, Sylar realizes there’s now the first crack into Gabriel’s head.