[Heroes] - Set the World on Fire (R, Peter/Sylar)
Welp. I've punched my ticket to hell.
Title: Set the World on Fire
Rating/Warnings: R; Peter/Sylar (related)
Characters: Nathan, Peter, Sylar, Danko
Summary: AU. In Nathan Petrelli's fairy tale life, his brothers are the monsters.
Word Count:: 5000 words
Notes: Nathan, Peter, and Sylar are related in this fic. And there is some Peter/Sylar here, which technically makes it incest and . . . well, um. *puts head in hands*
Nathan makes a deal with the devil. Emile Danko. "I am a man with a problem," Nathan tells him. He says, "There is something I need taken care of. Something only a man with your . . . unique skills can take care of."
Danko smirks, and Nathan can see the scheming, scheming, scheming in his eyes. But he had been assured that this was a man who could get things done, a man who could be counted on to do his job and keep his mouth shut.
"I take it we're talking about specials?" Danko asks.
"Yes," Nathan says. "Two of them. They're murderers - serial killers," he elaborates.
"Who are they?" he asks. "I'll need names, background information."
Nathan slides two glossy photographs across the table. Peter's driver's license photo, Gabriel's mugshot from the one time he'd been arrested. But that had been a game, too. Everything was a game to them.
Danko looks at the photographs one at a time, lifts them up by the bottom edge. "Gabriel Gray and Peter Palese." He drops the photos, waits expectantly. "I'm going to need more than this."
Without looking away, Nathan reaches down for his briefcase. He puts it on the table, pops the locks. There are two files, one for each of them. Gabriel's is slightly thicker, if only because he had simply gotten an earlier start than Peter.
He tosses the files at Danko. They land with a thud and a photograph slides out of Gabriel's file. A man with the top of his skull cast into a corner, his eyes unfocused, his jaw slack, his brain missing.
"You can see what we're dealing with," Nathan says.
Danko opens Peter's file. His eyes move back and forth over the page. He stops halfway through, leans forward. Nathan knows where, exactly, he's stopped. The page, the paragraph, the line. Danko looks up and this is where anyone else would say, This is some kind of joke, isn't it? But Danko doesn't and Nathan knows he's found the right man.
"Telekinesis, phasing, cyrokinesis, pyrokinesis, rapid cellular regeneration. How? One at a time or. . " he trails off, unable to form the words for something too horrible to imagine.
"All together."
"Why these two?" Danko asks, leaning back. "There are others out there. Maybe not as dangerous, but this is the first time a United States Senator has come looking for me. What makes these two so special?"
"They're my brothers," Nathan says. "And more than anything else in this world, I want to see them dead."
Danko drums the fingers of one hand on the table, takes it all in. "And what about you?" he asks. "I hear these things are hereditary. What kind of abilities do you have?"
"None." A lie. "I was a disappointment to my parents in more ways than one." The truth.
Danko pauses, considering. "I'll need a team."
"No," Nathan says. "You'll need an army."
*
Danko's high tech computer system includes a facial recognition program. It flags Gabriel and Peter on four separate occasions.
Number one: a toll booth in Boise. A car that looks bright silver in the black and white of the security camera. Peter's driving, one arm on the door of the open window. Gabriel is curled up in the passenger seat, asleep. There's a road atlas thrown up on top of the dashboard and a half-empty bag of Doritos shoved into one corner. A serial killer road trip.
Dead end.
Number two: a street camera in Grand Junction. The picture hazy and indistinct. It offers a 87.6 percent probability that it's them. Danko's computer technician says it's mostly because the computer is matching the height ratios. Gabriel is a certain fixed number of inches taller than Peter, he says. But it only shows them walking down the street, destination unknown.
Dead end.
Number three: a Walmart outside of Wichita. Gabriel has a bag of apples slung over one shoulder, casually eating one as they walk the aisles. Peter is rage personified. In the camera's colors, his shirt is white splashed with black. Blood.
Gabriel's pace is a casual stroll, Peter's a stalking that makes everybody within ten feet suddenly finding themselves needing to be somewhere else.
They make their way to the men's section. Peter grabs a bag of T-shirts and pulls his own off over his head. He's talking, still angry. Gabriel nods, agreeing, and chucks his apple core two aisles over. Peter puts the new shirt on and runs a hand through his hair. It comes away wet with blood and he wipes it on his shirt, leaving another black smear. Gabriel curls his lip and points.
Peter's face loses all emotion. He calmly reaches a hand out and pushes a display of DVDs down the aisle without touching them.
Gabriel laughs.
Dead end.
Number four: a psychiatric hospital in Wyoming. A man lies on a bed with his hands over his ears, trying to block out the sound of raining falling thirty miles away.
The door to the room is bolted shut, reinforced, and two inches thick. It flies across the room, trailing plaster. The man sits up with a start.
Gabriel enters, hand outstretched. The man is pulled out of his bed and pushed against the wall. He screams and kicks his feet. The camera has no sound, nothing to record the screaming and the drumbeat of the man's heels against the wall.
Gabriel crosses the room and wraps his hand around the man's neck. He slides him higher up the wall. The man scrabbles against the iron grip, still screaming. Gabriel lifts a finger and draws a line across the man's forehead. Blood pours out of the wound, down over his cheeks, his lips, his chin. The top of his skull falls off and Nathan has to sit down before he falls down.
Gently, Gabriel lays the man down on the floor. He crouches down at what's left of his head and starts poking at the man's brain. Nathan chokes down bile.
Eventually, Gabriel finds what he's looking for and stands up. He turns around and grabs the corner of the bedsheet, wiping off the blood.
Peter comes in, the fingers of one hand trailing across the wall. His shoes leave a trail of bloody footprints. He stops suddenly and cocks his head, listening to something far away. His eyes meet Gabriel's. A smile stretches slowly across his face.
He steps over the spreading pool of blood and fists one hand in Gabriel's coat, his long white fingers nearly lost in the black fabric. He pulls Gabriel close and kisses him, hard. Nathan can see the corner of Gabriel's mouth turning up, smiling.
Gabriel puts one hand on the side of Peter's face, leaving a smeared trail of blood down his cheek. Peter pushes him back against the wall and pins his wrist. Gabriel moves his hand from the side of Peter's face to his hair, clenching his fingers and dragging Peter away from his mouth.
Peter laughs and lets go of his wrist. He shrugs out of his coat, turning long enough to throw it across the dead man's body. He slips his hands under the edges of Gabriel's coat and slides it over his shoulders. Gabriel pushes him back to the bed and they fall down together, Gabriel's hips pushing against Peter's. Peter lifts his head to meet his lips and Gabriel rests his weight on one hand to pull his shirt over his head.
Nathan looks away. He reaches out blindly and finds the stop button.
His mother's voice echoes in his ears, "We made a terrible mistake, Nathan. And we made you forget it."
Nathan takes the tape and burns it.
*
Danko's daily reports become every other day reports and then weekly reports. Nothing to report, nothing to report, interrupted with the occasional maybe sighting in the middle of nowhere.
We're never going to find them, Nathan wants to say.
"Any day now," Danko says instead.
*
He's taken to sleeping in his office. Locks the door, sleeps on the couch. He leaves the lights on to give the illusion that he's working late. Poor Senator Petrelli, trying to save the world all by himself.
The phone rings. He doesn't remember falling asleep on the desk. He nearly knocks the phone over, fumbles for the receiver.
"Yeah?"
"I've got a body for you," Danko says.
*
The body bag is too long to be Peter's.
Danko is at the lead, was the first one out of the van even. They wheel the gurney in front of Nathan, a prize to be displayed.
Danko unzips the bag. Gabriel's eyes are clouded white, staring sightlessly. Danko grabs a hold of his chin and jerks it to the side. He taps a finger on the metal spike buried in the base of Gabriel's skull.
"Just like you said, dropped like a rock once we shot him."
Nathan leans forward. Gabriel's throat is a long expanse of white stained red. Blood has thickened to a sticky pool on the inside of the bag.
"The spike was my idea," Danko says, an odd tone in his voice. "Couldn't take the chance of the bullet falling out once we hit the road." His voice slides from odd to boastful. "Pretty resourceful, if I say so myself."
"Yes," Nathan murmurs absently. He reaches out and touches the spike with two fingers. It's cold.
"We have a problem though."
Of course. "Peter," Nathan says without looking up. They would never have separated voluntarily.
"Yeah."
Nathan drops his fingers from the spike to the nape of Gabriel's neck. He brushes at the hair there. It's stiff with dried blood. He slides one finger down the smooth, cold skin that runs over the vertebrae.
"We're going to have to move operations or step up security," Danko says. "I've got three teams out there looking for him."
"Where'd you find them?" Nathan asks.
Danko sighs and Nathan can hear, Are you even listening? in it. "Chicago," he says. "There was a woman with precognition working in one of the high-rises. We followed them there. They never saw us coming."
Nathan frowns. "Why don't you have Peter then?"
"There was a complication. They must have sensed a trap. When we got to the office they were halfway around the desk and heading for the other exit. I had another team coming in that door and we started firing. And then, calm as can be," he gestures to Gabriel, "he reaches out and shoves him through the window. Peter fell 78 floors into the river. An awful way to die, even if you can't be killed."
Nathan straightens. "He killed him to save him," he says. "He knew you wouldn't be able to find him in the river without drawing attention to yourselves and he knew Peter would regenerate."
Danko's jaw clenches, grim. "Brotherly devotion, I guess. Twisted but devotion all the same."
Nathan moves his fingers to the shell of Gabriel's ear. He runs a finger around it, combing back the hair. He wants to be that brother. The brother who would sacrifice himself no matter what the cost.
Danko clears his throat. "What do you want me to do with the body?"
Nathan sees their mother in the curve of Gabriel's jaw, sees himself somewhere in the setting of his eyes.
Danko takes his silence for hesitation.
"Incineration would work the best," he offers.
"No," Nathan says. "I want to talk to him."
"Mr. Petrelli-"
"Can you do it or not?"
"Maybe you don't remember, but when we first met, you told me you wanted nothing more than to see them dead."
Nathan's voice drips scorn. "Take whatever precautions you need to make you happy." He turns on his heel and doesn't look back.
*
Twenty of Danko's men take up positions in the middle of the warehouse. They surround the high-backed chair with its restraints, EKG monitor, and IV machine. The door opens and Danko emerges. Behind him, Gabriel is a boneless weight being dragged across the floor.
His skin seems even more pale next to the white clothes they've put him in, hair an inky black stain.
They aren't gentle when they dump him into the chair. A doctor swarms and ties him down. She expertly inserts the IV and when she pulls his shirt up to connect the heart monitor leads, Nathan counts the spaces between his ribs.
Gabriel's head lulls back and the metal spike strikes a dull note against the back of the chair. Danko fists a hand in his hair and pushes his head forward.
"Target the back of his head," Danko says. Nathan takes a step back. Danko's men bring their weapons to bear.
Danko pulls the spike out and presses the muzzle of his gun against the back of Gabriel's head.
Nothing happens. Nathan shifts and thinks maybe his information was wrong, maybe he's really killed him. His vision spins and he forces himself to breathe.
The heart machine bursts to life, pulse registering 205 beats before settling down to 93. Gabriel's head whips back. Danko moves with him, the gun never wavering.
Now that his heart is beating again, the IV machine starts, flashing and measuring doses. Its beeping is a measured sound against the erratic beating of his heart. Gabriel clenches the fist of the hand with the IV in it. Nathan wonders if the drugs burn.
Gabriel's dark eyes find Nathan standing in the shadows. "Let me go," he growls.
"Danko," Nathan says.
Danko hesitates before gesturing with his chin towards the door. "Everyone out," he says. Danko's men linger and look unhappy, but they leave. It's not that they care what happens to Nathan, they care about Danko.
Real, in front of him and alive, Gabriel is a deadly, poisonous presence spreading throughout the room.
"What do you want?" he asks.
"Do you know who I am?" Nathan counters.
"Yes." Gabriel smiles. "Now ask me if I care."
He doesn't know what to say to that, doesn't know what he was really expecting either.
"Tell me about your parents," he says.
There's a flicker of emotion, immediately smothered.
"You obviously know everything about me, Senator. Why ask me questions you already know the answers to?"
"Because the answers I have aren't the same as yours."
A furrow appears between Gabriel's eyebrows. "What are you talking about?"
Nathan drags a folding chair over and sits down. He lays an ankle on top of his knee.
"Tell me what you know."
He doesn't say anything. Danko pushes his head with the gun barrel. "Answer him."
Gabriel growls.
"Gray," he says. "My last name is Gray. But you knew that. My mother raised me because my father was a bastard who walked out on his family. But then you probably know that as well. Now tell me, Senator, what is so fascinating about my life?"
"How did you meet Peter?" he asks, ignoring his question.
A flash of frustration and then anger. But Gabriel embraces control above all else. The cold facade slips back, revealing only what Gabriel chooses to show.
"I found him," he says simply. "Or maybe he found me." He shrugs. "Maybe it was fate. He jumped off a six story building and I caught him." He pushes one hand against the restraint and spreads his fingers.
"When did you figure out you were related?" And this is tricky territory. Maybe they don't actually know that they're related, which makes what he saw at the hospital slightly less nauseating.
Gabriel smiles, as if he can read Nathan's mind. "We're so much alike," he says. "Peter and I. We knew there had to be something there, a connection. And the adoption registry at the Department of Health was so informative."
"Those are sealed records." His heart hammers against his chest, even though his mother told him about the records. How she had carefully filled all the forms out, had used all the resources available to her to disguise herself behind a fake name. How she had excluded Nathan from the siblings list but had been unable to split Gabriel from Peter. I have many dreams, she had told Nathan.
"You know everything about me, Senator," Gabriel says. "Do you really think something like a court order is going to stop me?"
His mother's words are eating at him. In almost every dream, they become monsters. In one dream, just one, she had said, holding up one frail finger, you tell them who they really are. It changes everything. His mother's vision of the future has unfolded, a black map creased at the corners.
"Did the birth certificates tell you who your real mother was?"
Gabriel looks at him oddly, sensing a trap. "Shaw," he says finally. "Angela Shaw."
Nathan leans close. "Angela Shaw was married to Arthur Petrelli. My mother, your mother."
"My mother?" he asks, breathless.
"Our mother," Nathan says again. "Our parents."
"Senator," Danko warns.
And he's right, this is madness. Baring his heart and all his secrets to a murderer who would probably slit his throat if he could. But the memory of his mother compels him. He will make her one dream come true.
"You don't have to be like this," Nathan says. "I can help you."
Gabriel laughs. A monster transforming.
"Whoever said I wanted to change?"
Nathan exhales noisily.
"Once I get out of here, I'm going to find enough powers to make this world something special. Nothing is going to stop me, nothing." He's struggling to keep his head straight, fighting against Danko's attempt to push the gun harder against his head. "You're fighting a losing battle, brother. Trying to pass laws and convince people that they should vote and be better people. People are stupid. This world needs to be fixed, broken down into its parts and recreated."
Saying, I'm sorry you feel that way, strikes him as incredibly stupid. "You're wrong," he says.
"Then how do you explain me?" Gabriel asks with a wolfish grin.
Nathan wants to put his head in his hands. He wants to jump on the next plane to nowhere. "Put him in one of the cells," he tells Danko. He doesn't break eye contact with Gabriel. "Have your doctor put him under."
"There's an easier way of keeping him under control," Danko says. He pulls the gun away and Gabriel starts to turn. His fingers clench into white-knuckled fists. Nathan wonders if this was all a game and the drugs had been worthless. Danko picks the metal spike up off the edge of the EKG machine. He drives it in deep into the back of Gabriel's skull. There's a sickening crunch when it breaks through the bone. Gabriel makes a choking noise and falls forward against the restraints.
"That wasn't necessary," Nathan says angrily.
Danko wipes his hand against his pants. "I don't have time to babysit him while your other brother is out there somewhere unknown, trying his best to kill us all." He gestures with two fingers at the doctor waiting near the door. Two of his men accompany her.
Blood drips down the back of Gabriel's neck, slowly staining the white of his T-shirt. The doctor lays two fingers against his neck and nods. Danko's men unstrap him and lay him into a body bag on the floor. A corpse once again.
"Wait," Nathan says before they zip the bag closed. He crouches down and turns Gabriel's head. The sightless stare unnerves him.
Nathan reaches out and closes his brother's eyes.
*
It's on the second day that he begins to have serious doubts about his sanity. It can't possibly be normal to drive thirty minutes out of your way to visit the corpse of your brother.
The first day he sits in the cold storage room and pulls open the drawer. He doesn't do anything else, just sits there and stares at the black body bag.
The second day, he summons the courage to open the bag and stare at Gabriel's pale face. He sits down and doesn't move for half an hour.
On the third day, he pulls out the drawer and opens the bag again. He dares himself to do more. After fifteen minutes, he stands up. The metal spike is still there, blood flaking off the end. Nathan puts one hand on Gabriel's shoulder. His cold skin sucks the warmth out of Nathan's hand.
On the fourth day, he's staring at Gabriel's pale face when realizes he's forgotten about his promise to take Monty to the Giants game. He spends twenty minutes apologizing to Monty over the phone. When Helen gets on, yelling and calling him all the terrible things he is, he hangs up on her. He walks back on numb legs and sits down next to Gabriel.
On the fifth day, everything changes.
*
The warehouse is quiet when he gets there. There's usually not much activity. Sometimes he sees the doctor on her way in or out. Sometimes he passes one of the rooms and sees some of Danko's men playing cards. Danko has them on some kind of rotation, four squads out searching for Peter, one at the warehouse to watch Gabriel. There's usually alcohol and music and laughter. He thinks maybe Danko would be pissed if he knew what was really going on while he was gone. But then, there wasn't much to do guarding a corpse.
But it's far too quiet when he gets there. His feet echo in the halls and there's music but it's not the usual mix of hip/hop and rock. Something older, violins and a warbling voice. It's eerie. It makes him stop in his tracks. He hears laughter.
He's not a fool. He pushes his back against the wall and eases his way down the hall towards the room where Danko's men usually gather. When he gets to the door, he hears the flipping of cards and the eerie music. A laugh. Gabriel's low voice.
Nathan turns and starts back down the hall. He's almost at the end when he suddenly can't move. He looks down and watches the floor slide as he's pulled backwards. At the open door, Gabriel has one hand raised, not looking up from his cards. Peter laughs and says, "You're done for, Gabe. Don't try to pretend you have anything but a pair of twos, at the most."
Gabriel turns his fingers and Nathan turns with them. He slides inside the room. Peter kicks a chair over and lowers his hand. Nathan is forced to sit down so hard his teeth rattle. The metal of the folding chair is too cold against his legs.
There is a pile of bodies in the corner, Danko's black-clothed team and the doctor on top, mouth opened in a rictus of terror. Peter's long coat is thrown across one of the sofas, slowly dripping blood from one of its sleeves. Gabriel is still in the white clothes Danko's doctor put him in. The blood from his neck traces a dark brown trail down his back.
Gabriel lays out his cards. Nathan looks down at the table. Two aces, two eights.
"Dead man's hand," Gabriel says.
Peter has a terrible poker face. He lays his cards down with a grin. Kings.
"Four horsemen," he says. He leans back and puts one foot on the table. "Well, well, well," he says, turning to Nathan as if he's just noticed he's there. "It seems we have a visitor."
Gabriel sweeps the cards off the table and onto the floor with one long pass of his arm.
"We've been waiting for you," Peter says. "Brother." He rocks in his chair, pushing back and forth against the table with his foot. "We have so much to talk about. I hear there are nieces and nephews to meet, an ex-sister-in-law-"
"Don't you dare-"
Peter's brown eyes stare all the way through him. "What? Hurt the only family you have in this world? Because you crossed that line long before I did."
Gabriel holds up a hand and cocks his head, listening.
The radio turns off without anyone touching it.
Peter stops rocking.
"We knew he'd come racing back," he says, letting the chair drop. "You must be paying him an awful lot of money, Nathan - you don't mind that I call you that, right?"
Nathan tries to lean forward, gets stuck against invisible bonds. Without looking at him, Gabriel's mouth quirks. Nathan latches on to the movement. When Danko and his men came searching for them it would be Gabriel who would have to stay with him.
Peter stands and goes to the door. Nathan can't hear anything, but Peter's stolen ability lets him hear something. Behind him, Gabriel rises. He puts one hand on Nathan's shoulder and Nathan realizes just how thin Gabriel is. Something lean and starved, wasted all the way down to his bones.
Peter smiles as he turns back around. He and Gabriel share a look.
Nathan turns his head just in time to catch Gabriel's fist across his jaw.
He wakes up three hours later, Danko's face swimming in front of his. His brothers are gone, leaving nothing but a pile of bodies to show they were there and no reason for why they left him alive.
*
After that, Danko is a man possessed. Nathan wouldn't be able to control him, even if he could. He thinks he could send the other man to a deserted island and Danko would swim back to civilization. He tells Nathan he isn't done after this. He's going to spend the rest of his life hunting down and killing specials. What a terrible monster he has created.
He doesn't understand why they let him live, except maybe to torment him with the idea that they were out there somewhere, lurking, waiting for him.
When the call comes this time, it's a relief.
"I'm coming up there," Danko bites off. "Stay at your office."
"Wait," Nathan starts. "You can't just-"
Danko hangs up on him.
Nathan jumps up out of his chair and out of his office. "Sarah," he says to his secretary. "Can you run and get me a coffee?" He had told Danko, there were precautions that needed to be taken. He was draining his inheritance paying the man, the least he could do was listen to him.
"Sure," Sarah says, rising slowly. "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah," he says, flashing a smile. "I forgot to have the driver stop this morning. And you know how worthless I am without my coffee." He presses a twenty dollar bill into her hand. "Make sure you get something for yourself, too."
He doesn't watch her leave, absently listens to the door open and close, the distant chime of the elevator. He reaches for the phone to call down to the front. It rings before he can pick it up, the light for the front lobby flashing. He pushes the button and picks it up.
"Sarah?" the guard from downstairs asks.
"No," Nathan says. "This is Senator Petrelli."
"Oh. Sorry, Senator. There's a man named Danko here to see you. He says he has an appointment. Shall I let him up?"
Nathan's going to threaten Danko within an inch of his life. "Yes, that's fine."
The elevator chimes again and Nathan opens the office door. Danko steps off the elevator, a file box under one arm.
Nathan has never seen Danko smile. Smirking, yes. But not this look of utter joy. It bothers him.
"What the hell do you think you're doing here?" Nathan demands. "I told you never to come here."
Danko looks around the office, still smiling. "Pretty nice digs you got here. Leeching off the taxpayers has its rewards I guess."
"I don't pay you to insult me," Nathan says, taking a step around the desk. Using his body language to tell the other man that he needs to leave. "Now what's so important that you had to come here when I specifically told you not to?"
"Ah," Danko says. "You're going to love this." He walks over to Nathan's desk, sweeping everything off the top with one long pass of his arm. He sets the box down with a dull thud. Pointing a finger and stepping back he says, "Take a look."
Nathan stares at him a moment before putting his hands on the lid. There's a smell. It doesn't catch up with his brain until he's already pulling the lid off the box.
A severed head. Emile Danko's dead eyes stare up at him.
Nathan drops the lid and steps back. Gabriel is looking at him over the desk.
"That was fun," he says.
"How did you-"
Gabriel smiles. Amusement makes the left side of his mouth quirk up higher. "There was this girl. Candice. Really annoying." His face wavers. A girl with brown hair and a cruel smile. "She looked like this." He turns back. "She tried so hard to get away. But in the end . . " he trails off, draws a finger through the air.
The elevator chimes through the open door. Nathan turns and runs for the door, wanting to keep Sarah out. The elevator doors open, but it isn't Sarah.
"Hello, Nathan," Peter says. He walks out of the elevator and backs Nathan up into the office. Peter looks around. "Nice place you got here."
His rational mind takes over. He'd had contingency plans in place, but all of them hinged on Danko. The supposedly unstoppable Danko. He needs to get them out of here somehow. No matter what the cost.
"What do you want?" he bites off.
"What all good boys crave," Peter says. "Power, money, fame."
"If you want money, you can have it."
"Not just money," Peter says.
Nathan doesn't realize he's been edging towards the phone until Gabriel grabs his upper arm and pulls him up against him.
"You've been senator long enough," Gabriel says. Peter smiles and steps close. His face ripples, reforms itself into Nathan's.
"It's my turn now."
The blood that drips down into his eyes feels like rain.
Title: Set the World on Fire
Rating/Warnings: R; Peter/Sylar (related)
Characters: Nathan, Peter, Sylar, Danko
Summary: AU. In Nathan Petrelli's fairy tale life, his brothers are the monsters.
Word Count:: 5000 words
Notes: Nathan, Peter, and Sylar are related in this fic. And there is some Peter/Sylar here, which technically makes it incest and . . . well, um. *puts head in hands*
Nathan makes a deal with the devil. Emile Danko. "I am a man with a problem," Nathan tells him. He says, "There is something I need taken care of. Something only a man with your . . . unique skills can take care of."
Danko smirks, and Nathan can see the scheming, scheming, scheming in his eyes. But he had been assured that this was a man who could get things done, a man who could be counted on to do his job and keep his mouth shut.
"I take it we're talking about specials?" Danko asks.
"Yes," Nathan says. "Two of them. They're murderers - serial killers," he elaborates.
"Who are they?" he asks. "I'll need names, background information."
Nathan slides two glossy photographs across the table. Peter's driver's license photo, Gabriel's mugshot from the one time he'd been arrested. But that had been a game, too. Everything was a game to them.
Danko looks at the photographs one at a time, lifts them up by the bottom edge. "Gabriel Gray and Peter Palese." He drops the photos, waits expectantly. "I'm going to need more than this."
Without looking away, Nathan reaches down for his briefcase. He puts it on the table, pops the locks. There are two files, one for each of them. Gabriel's is slightly thicker, if only because he had simply gotten an earlier start than Peter.
He tosses the files at Danko. They land with a thud and a photograph slides out of Gabriel's file. A man with the top of his skull cast into a corner, his eyes unfocused, his jaw slack, his brain missing.
"You can see what we're dealing with," Nathan says.
Danko opens Peter's file. His eyes move back and forth over the page. He stops halfway through, leans forward. Nathan knows where, exactly, he's stopped. The page, the paragraph, the line. Danko looks up and this is where anyone else would say, This is some kind of joke, isn't it? But Danko doesn't and Nathan knows he's found the right man.
"Telekinesis, phasing, cyrokinesis, pyrokinesis, rapid cellular regeneration. How? One at a time or. . " he trails off, unable to form the words for something too horrible to imagine.
"All together."
"Why these two?" Danko asks, leaning back. "There are others out there. Maybe not as dangerous, but this is the first time a United States Senator has come looking for me. What makes these two so special?"
"They're my brothers," Nathan says. "And more than anything else in this world, I want to see them dead."
Danko drums the fingers of one hand on the table, takes it all in. "And what about you?" he asks. "I hear these things are hereditary. What kind of abilities do you have?"
"None." A lie. "I was a disappointment to my parents in more ways than one." The truth.
Danko pauses, considering. "I'll need a team."
"No," Nathan says. "You'll need an army."
*
Danko's high tech computer system includes a facial recognition program. It flags Gabriel and Peter on four separate occasions.
Number one: a toll booth in Boise. A car that looks bright silver in the black and white of the security camera. Peter's driving, one arm on the door of the open window. Gabriel is curled up in the passenger seat, asleep. There's a road atlas thrown up on top of the dashboard and a half-empty bag of Doritos shoved into one corner. A serial killer road trip.
Dead end.
Number two: a street camera in Grand Junction. The picture hazy and indistinct. It offers a 87.6 percent probability that it's them. Danko's computer technician says it's mostly because the computer is matching the height ratios. Gabriel is a certain fixed number of inches taller than Peter, he says. But it only shows them walking down the street, destination unknown.
Dead end.
Number three: a Walmart outside of Wichita. Gabriel has a bag of apples slung over one shoulder, casually eating one as they walk the aisles. Peter is rage personified. In the camera's colors, his shirt is white splashed with black. Blood.
Gabriel's pace is a casual stroll, Peter's a stalking that makes everybody within ten feet suddenly finding themselves needing to be somewhere else.
They make their way to the men's section. Peter grabs a bag of T-shirts and pulls his own off over his head. He's talking, still angry. Gabriel nods, agreeing, and chucks his apple core two aisles over. Peter puts the new shirt on and runs a hand through his hair. It comes away wet with blood and he wipes it on his shirt, leaving another black smear. Gabriel curls his lip and points.
Peter's face loses all emotion. He calmly reaches a hand out and pushes a display of DVDs down the aisle without touching them.
Gabriel laughs.
Dead end.
Number four: a psychiatric hospital in Wyoming. A man lies on a bed with his hands over his ears, trying to block out the sound of raining falling thirty miles away.
The door to the room is bolted shut, reinforced, and two inches thick. It flies across the room, trailing plaster. The man sits up with a start.
Gabriel enters, hand outstretched. The man is pulled out of his bed and pushed against the wall. He screams and kicks his feet. The camera has no sound, nothing to record the screaming and the drumbeat of the man's heels against the wall.
Gabriel crosses the room and wraps his hand around the man's neck. He slides him higher up the wall. The man scrabbles against the iron grip, still screaming. Gabriel lifts a finger and draws a line across the man's forehead. Blood pours out of the wound, down over his cheeks, his lips, his chin. The top of his skull falls off and Nathan has to sit down before he falls down.
Gently, Gabriel lays the man down on the floor. He crouches down at what's left of his head and starts poking at the man's brain. Nathan chokes down bile.
Eventually, Gabriel finds what he's looking for and stands up. He turns around and grabs the corner of the bedsheet, wiping off the blood.
Peter comes in, the fingers of one hand trailing across the wall. His shoes leave a trail of bloody footprints. He stops suddenly and cocks his head, listening to something far away. His eyes meet Gabriel's. A smile stretches slowly across his face.
He steps over the spreading pool of blood and fists one hand in Gabriel's coat, his long white fingers nearly lost in the black fabric. He pulls Gabriel close and kisses him, hard. Nathan can see the corner of Gabriel's mouth turning up, smiling.
Gabriel puts one hand on the side of Peter's face, leaving a smeared trail of blood down his cheek. Peter pushes him back against the wall and pins his wrist. Gabriel moves his hand from the side of Peter's face to his hair, clenching his fingers and dragging Peter away from his mouth.
Peter laughs and lets go of his wrist. He shrugs out of his coat, turning long enough to throw it across the dead man's body. He slips his hands under the edges of Gabriel's coat and slides it over his shoulders. Gabriel pushes him back to the bed and they fall down together, Gabriel's hips pushing against Peter's. Peter lifts his head to meet his lips and Gabriel rests his weight on one hand to pull his shirt over his head.
Nathan looks away. He reaches out blindly and finds the stop button.
His mother's voice echoes in his ears, "We made a terrible mistake, Nathan. And we made you forget it."
Nathan takes the tape and burns it.
*
Danko's daily reports become every other day reports and then weekly reports. Nothing to report, nothing to report, interrupted with the occasional maybe sighting in the middle of nowhere.
We're never going to find them, Nathan wants to say.
"Any day now," Danko says instead.
*
He's taken to sleeping in his office. Locks the door, sleeps on the couch. He leaves the lights on to give the illusion that he's working late. Poor Senator Petrelli, trying to save the world all by himself.
The phone rings. He doesn't remember falling asleep on the desk. He nearly knocks the phone over, fumbles for the receiver.
"Yeah?"
"I've got a body for you," Danko says.
*
The body bag is too long to be Peter's.
Danko is at the lead, was the first one out of the van even. They wheel the gurney in front of Nathan, a prize to be displayed.
Danko unzips the bag. Gabriel's eyes are clouded white, staring sightlessly. Danko grabs a hold of his chin and jerks it to the side. He taps a finger on the metal spike buried in the base of Gabriel's skull.
"Just like you said, dropped like a rock once we shot him."
Nathan leans forward. Gabriel's throat is a long expanse of white stained red. Blood has thickened to a sticky pool on the inside of the bag.
"The spike was my idea," Danko says, an odd tone in his voice. "Couldn't take the chance of the bullet falling out once we hit the road." His voice slides from odd to boastful. "Pretty resourceful, if I say so myself."
"Yes," Nathan murmurs absently. He reaches out and touches the spike with two fingers. It's cold.
"We have a problem though."
Of course. "Peter," Nathan says without looking up. They would never have separated voluntarily.
"Yeah."
Nathan drops his fingers from the spike to the nape of Gabriel's neck. He brushes at the hair there. It's stiff with dried blood. He slides one finger down the smooth, cold skin that runs over the vertebrae.
"We're going to have to move operations or step up security," Danko says. "I've got three teams out there looking for him."
"Where'd you find them?" Nathan asks.
Danko sighs and Nathan can hear, Are you even listening? in it. "Chicago," he says. "There was a woman with precognition working in one of the high-rises. We followed them there. They never saw us coming."
Nathan frowns. "Why don't you have Peter then?"
"There was a complication. They must have sensed a trap. When we got to the office they were halfway around the desk and heading for the other exit. I had another team coming in that door and we started firing. And then, calm as can be," he gestures to Gabriel, "he reaches out and shoves him through the window. Peter fell 78 floors into the river. An awful way to die, even if you can't be killed."
Nathan straightens. "He killed him to save him," he says. "He knew you wouldn't be able to find him in the river without drawing attention to yourselves and he knew Peter would regenerate."
Danko's jaw clenches, grim. "Brotherly devotion, I guess. Twisted but devotion all the same."
Nathan moves his fingers to the shell of Gabriel's ear. He runs a finger around it, combing back the hair. He wants to be that brother. The brother who would sacrifice himself no matter what the cost.
Danko clears his throat. "What do you want me to do with the body?"
Nathan sees their mother in the curve of Gabriel's jaw, sees himself somewhere in the setting of his eyes.
Danko takes his silence for hesitation.
"Incineration would work the best," he offers.
"No," Nathan says. "I want to talk to him."
"Mr. Petrelli-"
"Can you do it or not?"
"Maybe you don't remember, but when we first met, you told me you wanted nothing more than to see them dead."
Nathan's voice drips scorn. "Take whatever precautions you need to make you happy." He turns on his heel and doesn't look back.
*
Twenty of Danko's men take up positions in the middle of the warehouse. They surround the high-backed chair with its restraints, EKG monitor, and IV machine. The door opens and Danko emerges. Behind him, Gabriel is a boneless weight being dragged across the floor.
His skin seems even more pale next to the white clothes they've put him in, hair an inky black stain.
They aren't gentle when they dump him into the chair. A doctor swarms and ties him down. She expertly inserts the IV and when she pulls his shirt up to connect the heart monitor leads, Nathan counts the spaces between his ribs.
Gabriel's head lulls back and the metal spike strikes a dull note against the back of the chair. Danko fists a hand in his hair and pushes his head forward.
"Target the back of his head," Danko says. Nathan takes a step back. Danko's men bring their weapons to bear.
Danko pulls the spike out and presses the muzzle of his gun against the back of Gabriel's head.
Nothing happens. Nathan shifts and thinks maybe his information was wrong, maybe he's really killed him. His vision spins and he forces himself to breathe.
The heart machine bursts to life, pulse registering 205 beats before settling down to 93. Gabriel's head whips back. Danko moves with him, the gun never wavering.
Now that his heart is beating again, the IV machine starts, flashing and measuring doses. Its beeping is a measured sound against the erratic beating of his heart. Gabriel clenches the fist of the hand with the IV in it. Nathan wonders if the drugs burn.
Gabriel's dark eyes find Nathan standing in the shadows. "Let me go," he growls.
"Danko," Nathan says.
Danko hesitates before gesturing with his chin towards the door. "Everyone out," he says. Danko's men linger and look unhappy, but they leave. It's not that they care what happens to Nathan, they care about Danko.
Real, in front of him and alive, Gabriel is a deadly, poisonous presence spreading throughout the room.
"What do you want?" he asks.
"Do you know who I am?" Nathan counters.
"Yes." Gabriel smiles. "Now ask me if I care."
He doesn't know what to say to that, doesn't know what he was really expecting either.
"Tell me about your parents," he says.
There's a flicker of emotion, immediately smothered.
"You obviously know everything about me, Senator. Why ask me questions you already know the answers to?"
"Because the answers I have aren't the same as yours."
A furrow appears between Gabriel's eyebrows. "What are you talking about?"
Nathan drags a folding chair over and sits down. He lays an ankle on top of his knee.
"Tell me what you know."
He doesn't say anything. Danko pushes his head with the gun barrel. "Answer him."
Gabriel growls.
"Gray," he says. "My last name is Gray. But you knew that. My mother raised me because my father was a bastard who walked out on his family. But then you probably know that as well. Now tell me, Senator, what is so fascinating about my life?"
"How did you meet Peter?" he asks, ignoring his question.
A flash of frustration and then anger. But Gabriel embraces control above all else. The cold facade slips back, revealing only what Gabriel chooses to show.
"I found him," he says simply. "Or maybe he found me." He shrugs. "Maybe it was fate. He jumped off a six story building and I caught him." He pushes one hand against the restraint and spreads his fingers.
"When did you figure out you were related?" And this is tricky territory. Maybe they don't actually know that they're related, which makes what he saw at the hospital slightly less nauseating.
Gabriel smiles, as if he can read Nathan's mind. "We're so much alike," he says. "Peter and I. We knew there had to be something there, a connection. And the adoption registry at the Department of Health was so informative."
"Those are sealed records." His heart hammers against his chest, even though his mother told him about the records. How she had carefully filled all the forms out, had used all the resources available to her to disguise herself behind a fake name. How she had excluded Nathan from the siblings list but had been unable to split Gabriel from Peter. I have many dreams, she had told Nathan.
"You know everything about me, Senator," Gabriel says. "Do you really think something like a court order is going to stop me?"
His mother's words are eating at him. In almost every dream, they become monsters. In one dream, just one, she had said, holding up one frail finger, you tell them who they really are. It changes everything. His mother's vision of the future has unfolded, a black map creased at the corners.
"Did the birth certificates tell you who your real mother was?"
Gabriel looks at him oddly, sensing a trap. "Shaw," he says finally. "Angela Shaw."
Nathan leans close. "Angela Shaw was married to Arthur Petrelli. My mother, your mother."
"My mother?" he asks, breathless.
"Our mother," Nathan says again. "Our parents."
"Senator," Danko warns.
And he's right, this is madness. Baring his heart and all his secrets to a murderer who would probably slit his throat if he could. But the memory of his mother compels him. He will make her one dream come true.
"You don't have to be like this," Nathan says. "I can help you."
Gabriel laughs. A monster transforming.
"Whoever said I wanted to change?"
Nathan exhales noisily.
"Once I get out of here, I'm going to find enough powers to make this world something special. Nothing is going to stop me, nothing." He's struggling to keep his head straight, fighting against Danko's attempt to push the gun harder against his head. "You're fighting a losing battle, brother. Trying to pass laws and convince people that they should vote and be better people. People are stupid. This world needs to be fixed, broken down into its parts and recreated."
Saying, I'm sorry you feel that way, strikes him as incredibly stupid. "You're wrong," he says.
"Then how do you explain me?" Gabriel asks with a wolfish grin.
Nathan wants to put his head in his hands. He wants to jump on the next plane to nowhere. "Put him in one of the cells," he tells Danko. He doesn't break eye contact with Gabriel. "Have your doctor put him under."
"There's an easier way of keeping him under control," Danko says. He pulls the gun away and Gabriel starts to turn. His fingers clench into white-knuckled fists. Nathan wonders if this was all a game and the drugs had been worthless. Danko picks the metal spike up off the edge of the EKG machine. He drives it in deep into the back of Gabriel's skull. There's a sickening crunch when it breaks through the bone. Gabriel makes a choking noise and falls forward against the restraints.
"That wasn't necessary," Nathan says angrily.
Danko wipes his hand against his pants. "I don't have time to babysit him while your other brother is out there somewhere unknown, trying his best to kill us all." He gestures with two fingers at the doctor waiting near the door. Two of his men accompany her.
Blood drips down the back of Gabriel's neck, slowly staining the white of his T-shirt. The doctor lays two fingers against his neck and nods. Danko's men unstrap him and lay him into a body bag on the floor. A corpse once again.
"Wait," Nathan says before they zip the bag closed. He crouches down and turns Gabriel's head. The sightless stare unnerves him.
Nathan reaches out and closes his brother's eyes.
*
It's on the second day that he begins to have serious doubts about his sanity. It can't possibly be normal to drive thirty minutes out of your way to visit the corpse of your brother.
The first day he sits in the cold storage room and pulls open the drawer. He doesn't do anything else, just sits there and stares at the black body bag.
The second day, he summons the courage to open the bag and stare at Gabriel's pale face. He sits down and doesn't move for half an hour.
On the third day, he pulls out the drawer and opens the bag again. He dares himself to do more. After fifteen minutes, he stands up. The metal spike is still there, blood flaking off the end. Nathan puts one hand on Gabriel's shoulder. His cold skin sucks the warmth out of Nathan's hand.
On the fourth day, he's staring at Gabriel's pale face when realizes he's forgotten about his promise to take Monty to the Giants game. He spends twenty minutes apologizing to Monty over the phone. When Helen gets on, yelling and calling him all the terrible things he is, he hangs up on her. He walks back on numb legs and sits down next to Gabriel.
On the fifth day, everything changes.
*
The warehouse is quiet when he gets there. There's usually not much activity. Sometimes he sees the doctor on her way in or out. Sometimes he passes one of the rooms and sees some of Danko's men playing cards. Danko has them on some kind of rotation, four squads out searching for Peter, one at the warehouse to watch Gabriel. There's usually alcohol and music and laughter. He thinks maybe Danko would be pissed if he knew what was really going on while he was gone. But then, there wasn't much to do guarding a corpse.
But it's far too quiet when he gets there. His feet echo in the halls and there's music but it's not the usual mix of hip/hop and rock. Something older, violins and a warbling voice. It's eerie. It makes him stop in his tracks. He hears laughter.
He's not a fool. He pushes his back against the wall and eases his way down the hall towards the room where Danko's men usually gather. When he gets to the door, he hears the flipping of cards and the eerie music. A laugh. Gabriel's low voice.
Nathan turns and starts back down the hall. He's almost at the end when he suddenly can't move. He looks down and watches the floor slide as he's pulled backwards. At the open door, Gabriel has one hand raised, not looking up from his cards. Peter laughs and says, "You're done for, Gabe. Don't try to pretend you have anything but a pair of twos, at the most."
Gabriel turns his fingers and Nathan turns with them. He slides inside the room. Peter kicks a chair over and lowers his hand. Nathan is forced to sit down so hard his teeth rattle. The metal of the folding chair is too cold against his legs.
There is a pile of bodies in the corner, Danko's black-clothed team and the doctor on top, mouth opened in a rictus of terror. Peter's long coat is thrown across one of the sofas, slowly dripping blood from one of its sleeves. Gabriel is still in the white clothes Danko's doctor put him in. The blood from his neck traces a dark brown trail down his back.
Gabriel lays out his cards. Nathan looks down at the table. Two aces, two eights.
"Dead man's hand," Gabriel says.
Peter has a terrible poker face. He lays his cards down with a grin. Kings.
"Four horsemen," he says. He leans back and puts one foot on the table. "Well, well, well," he says, turning to Nathan as if he's just noticed he's there. "It seems we have a visitor."
Gabriel sweeps the cards off the table and onto the floor with one long pass of his arm.
"We've been waiting for you," Peter says. "Brother." He rocks in his chair, pushing back and forth against the table with his foot. "We have so much to talk about. I hear there are nieces and nephews to meet, an ex-sister-in-law-"
"Don't you dare-"
Peter's brown eyes stare all the way through him. "What? Hurt the only family you have in this world? Because you crossed that line long before I did."
Gabriel holds up a hand and cocks his head, listening.
The radio turns off without anyone touching it.
Peter stops rocking.
"We knew he'd come racing back," he says, letting the chair drop. "You must be paying him an awful lot of money, Nathan - you don't mind that I call you that, right?"
Nathan tries to lean forward, gets stuck against invisible bonds. Without looking at him, Gabriel's mouth quirks. Nathan latches on to the movement. When Danko and his men came searching for them it would be Gabriel who would have to stay with him.
Peter stands and goes to the door. Nathan can't hear anything, but Peter's stolen ability lets him hear something. Behind him, Gabriel rises. He puts one hand on Nathan's shoulder and Nathan realizes just how thin Gabriel is. Something lean and starved, wasted all the way down to his bones.
Peter smiles as he turns back around. He and Gabriel share a look.
Nathan turns his head just in time to catch Gabriel's fist across his jaw.
He wakes up three hours later, Danko's face swimming in front of his. His brothers are gone, leaving nothing but a pile of bodies to show they were there and no reason for why they left him alive.
*
After that, Danko is a man possessed. Nathan wouldn't be able to control him, even if he could. He thinks he could send the other man to a deserted island and Danko would swim back to civilization. He tells Nathan he isn't done after this. He's going to spend the rest of his life hunting down and killing specials. What a terrible monster he has created.
He doesn't understand why they let him live, except maybe to torment him with the idea that they were out there somewhere, lurking, waiting for him.
When the call comes this time, it's a relief.
"I'm coming up there," Danko bites off. "Stay at your office."
"Wait," Nathan starts. "You can't just-"
Danko hangs up on him.
Nathan jumps up out of his chair and out of his office. "Sarah," he says to his secretary. "Can you run and get me a coffee?" He had told Danko, there were precautions that needed to be taken. He was draining his inheritance paying the man, the least he could do was listen to him.
"Sure," Sarah says, rising slowly. "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah," he says, flashing a smile. "I forgot to have the driver stop this morning. And you know how worthless I am without my coffee." He presses a twenty dollar bill into her hand. "Make sure you get something for yourself, too."
He doesn't watch her leave, absently listens to the door open and close, the distant chime of the elevator. He reaches for the phone to call down to the front. It rings before he can pick it up, the light for the front lobby flashing. He pushes the button and picks it up.
"Sarah?" the guard from downstairs asks.
"No," Nathan says. "This is Senator Petrelli."
"Oh. Sorry, Senator. There's a man named Danko here to see you. He says he has an appointment. Shall I let him up?"
Nathan's going to threaten Danko within an inch of his life. "Yes, that's fine."
The elevator chimes again and Nathan opens the office door. Danko steps off the elevator, a file box under one arm.
Nathan has never seen Danko smile. Smirking, yes. But not this look of utter joy. It bothers him.
"What the hell do you think you're doing here?" Nathan demands. "I told you never to come here."
Danko looks around the office, still smiling. "Pretty nice digs you got here. Leeching off the taxpayers has its rewards I guess."
"I don't pay you to insult me," Nathan says, taking a step around the desk. Using his body language to tell the other man that he needs to leave. "Now what's so important that you had to come here when I specifically told you not to?"
"Ah," Danko says. "You're going to love this." He walks over to Nathan's desk, sweeping everything off the top with one long pass of his arm. He sets the box down with a dull thud. Pointing a finger and stepping back he says, "Take a look."
Nathan stares at him a moment before putting his hands on the lid. There's a smell. It doesn't catch up with his brain until he's already pulling the lid off the box.
A severed head. Emile Danko's dead eyes stare up at him.
Nathan drops the lid and steps back. Gabriel is looking at him over the desk.
"That was fun," he says.
"How did you-"
Gabriel smiles. Amusement makes the left side of his mouth quirk up higher. "There was this girl. Candice. Really annoying." His face wavers. A girl with brown hair and a cruel smile. "She looked like this." He turns back. "She tried so hard to get away. But in the end . . " he trails off, draws a finger through the air.
The elevator chimes through the open door. Nathan turns and runs for the door, wanting to keep Sarah out. The elevator doors open, but it isn't Sarah.
"Hello, Nathan," Peter says. He walks out of the elevator and backs Nathan up into the office. Peter looks around. "Nice place you got here."
His rational mind takes over. He'd had contingency plans in place, but all of them hinged on Danko. The supposedly unstoppable Danko. He needs to get them out of here somehow. No matter what the cost.
"What do you want?" he bites off.
"What all good boys crave," Peter says. "Power, money, fame."
"If you want money, you can have it."
"Not just money," Peter says.
Nathan doesn't realize he's been edging towards the phone until Gabriel grabs his upper arm and pulls him up against him.
"You've been senator long enough," Gabriel says. Peter smiles and steps close. His face ripples, reforms itself into Nathan's.
"It's my turn now."
The blood that drips down into his eyes feels like rain.