Lazaret (Kept Woman Verse)
Title: Lazaret
Characters/Pairing: Maya/Gabriel, Peter, Nadia, others.
Fandom: Heroes
Rating: R
Word count: 4, 000
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summery: Nadia goes missing and they have to find her before it's too late.
Note: Kept Woman Verse. Set after Under a Bad Sign. Unbet'd, all mistakes mine.
Parts: 1, 2
Brief recap:
After stabbing Gabriel, who survives, Maya and Nadia are free and living in Hyde Park, New York with the Petrelli's. Peter convinces Maya to use her ability again to eradicate what's left of the virus. She and Peter leave. Gabriel is incarcerated but is still useful to The Company and they move him back to Texas to continue growing food. This story is set a few months after Maya leaves.
*
“I heard that the Suits are gonna take all the special people and put them on buses.”
Nadia looks up and sees a huddle of students standing together. Suits is what people call those who work for the CDC, in particular those that wear the orange hazmat overalls. The speaker, Gerry, is a bully but even so he manages to get people to hang onto his every word. Nadia is half disgusted and half jealous. She sidles up to them, careful no to seem too concerned. She’s still new and while she can take care of herself she doesn’t want any trouble. Caitlin had advised that she lay low at school, not direct too much attention to herself.
“Buses to where?”
“A camp or a school. Something like that. They want to separate the normal kids from those with abilities.” He leans down and lowers his voice. “The kids with dangerous powers get sent to Level 5.”
Theres gasps and muttering from the crowd and Nadia finds herself drifting closer. She had heard of Level 5. It was a place that weird mutated people are sent and they’re never seen from again.
“How do you know that?”
Nadia looks up and feels her stomach flip over. Jaime Bishop is staring at Gerry with every sign of contempt and the people around the two boys back away a little. Jaime is the only person who isn’t afraid of Gerry. Apart from herself of course.
Gerry sneers. “My dad told me.” Nadia knew that his father worked in the government so his story may hold some weight to it. Feeling the first stirrings of unease she watches as Jaime shakes his head.
“They won’t send kids to Hartsdale.”
“What’s there?” One of the kids asks.
“That’s where Level 5 is. They used to keep dangerous people there, that’s true but not kids. He’s just trying to scare you.”
“And how to do know so much about it?!” Gerry demands, stepping closer. Jaime stares down at him with a strange dead eyed glare. He is only a few years older then she is but there’s a maturity to him that only a handful of the other kids have. It’s as if there’s a part missing where fear should be.
Jaime shrugs his shoulders lightly and Nadia finds herself stepping forward, her mouth suddenly no longer under her control. “Both of his parents were agents and inmates.” She says it in a breathless rush, her eyes agleam. Jaime stares at her unblinking, as if she’s unreal. Seeing the awed expression of the other children Gerry backs away with a scowl and leaves with a few of his lackeys.
Seeing that he has audience Jaime tears his burning eyes away from her. He balls his hands and with one reproachful glare turns and walks away. Nadia, her flash of daring fading, follows him nervously.
“Jaime? I’m sorry, I thought they wouldn’t have believed you!”
“Who cares!?” He rounds on her, his thin face sharp with anger. “You had no right to tell them that! I know you’re just a kid but shit are you that stupid?”
Hurt flares through her and she lifts her shoulders and crouches, like a bull about to charge. “I am not stupid! They’re the stupid ones! They have no idea how important we are!”
He shakes his head in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re special. Your mom and dad are special. Why wouldn’t you want others to know that?”
“Because it’s none of their business. Having an ability doesn’t make you some god Nadia. Or a good person.” He sighs and looks over her head. “You don’t understand, you’re too young.”
“Stop saying that.” She grits out and pushes him. He grabs her wrist and stares hard into her face.
“Don’t talk about my parents again. Ever. If you know what’s good for you you won’t mention yours either.”
She lifts her chin. “Why not? I’m proud of them.”
Again he shakes his head but there’s a glimmer of pity in his gaze. “I wish I still was...you need to open your eyes, I can’t do it for you. Just - just don’t talk about them Nadia, especially your father or they really will stick you in Level 5.”
He lets go of her suddenly and she stumbles back. She feels an intense fear sweep her but she tethers it with outrage. “You’re talking shit!”
He looks over his shoulder with a thin lipped smile and she thinks how much he looks like his father. “I wish I was. If they knew the truth they’d stick all of us down there.”
She watches him walk away, bursting with the need to curse and scream but she stays still until he’s gone. Exhaling a pent up breath she looks around the playground and fights back tears. She knows what she said was wrong but what he just said is worse. Why would they want to send her to Level 5? Her ability is harmless. She squints against the wind, her shoulders hunched and watches a woman follow a small girl around the playground. The girl never acknowledges her. The woman smiles sadly and with a blink she’s gone.
Her ability tunes in and out like someone fiddling with a dial to catch a faint song. The more attuned she becomes with her power the easier to is to see them. In that moment she longed for their ephemeral life, flickering in and out and seen by no one. She could go anywhere. She watches the woman appear again, reaching for her child as she leaves through the back gate and Nadia finds herself following them.
Focusing on someone else’s pain is preferable to experiencing her own confusion and anger. She walks out of the school and down the street. When she reaches the old CDC barriers across the street she ducks under them and walks on.
*
The sea is calm and the air hangs around her like a heavy cloud. She has grown used to the arid heat of Texas and it had taken her a few days to get used the humidity of the Caribbean again.
She has been dreaming and threatening of coming back to her home for years. It was a desire that had grown faint as the years drew on and now that she's actually standing in the sand of her home she finds only a pressing need to leave. Her family and friends are long gone, the island deserted. She can’t even bring herself to spread her brother’s ashes.
Nadia is not here and so it can never be home. It's a sad realisation but one that feels freeing. She no longer has to wish for another life, not any longer.
"It's getting dark."
Maya turns to look at Peter who comes to stand beside her. She smiles and takes his arm. "I just wanted to watch the sea. Being landlocked for so long...just listen to that." She closes her eyes and smiles gently, focusing her mind of the sound of the gentle wind through the tress and the cry of gulls overhead. Anything but the swelling ball of panic that sits inside her.
Her ability is back. They had found Rene and he managed to salvage her ability. It had been a surprisingly easy task for him to complete and she wonders just how close to the surface her ability really had been.
"I know you're worried."
Maya shakes her head and looks at him. "I'm more then worried. I am terrified."
He takes her hand and squeezes it. "Everything will be fine. I'm here."
She smiles and looks down at his hands. "If only you weren't married..." They often joke and tease each other.
"If only you didn't have a crazy...I don't even know what to call him."
She snorts with laughter and looks back at the sea. Gabriel. She has been experiencing very conflicting emotions since they last met. She hoped that parting would have a cathartic effect on her but it's only made things worse. She can't get him out of her mind. She will never confess it to anyone but there's a part that misses him. There’s also a part that no longer feels angry. For the first time she feels she has the capacity for forgiveness. Maybe it is that space she needed. Time to herself and time with her God.
Maya shakes her head with tight lipped smile. "Lets not talk about him. I'm sorry Peter. You must think I'm so...weak?"
"No! I'm not expecting you to pick up where you left off."
"Thank goodness," she says darkly and he ignores it.
"It's understandable that you're nervous about using it again...but we came here to try. To help."
"I know...I guess there's a part of me that just doesn't want to believe that I can do anything positive with it."
"You'll get the hang of it," he says encouragingly but Maya shakes her head. She draws him away from the beach and toward a huddle of makeshift tents.
"No, that's not what I mean. Maybe there's something in me that can't do it...it's no accident that my brother got the ability to cure while I got the one that poisons. Maybe something in me -"
"Stop," he takes her shoulders in his hands and stares into her eyes. He is young but the dark circles under his eyes and the pallid complexion tell of a man almost at breaking point. "You're always so negative about yourself. All I'm hearing is doubts, which I think are unfounded. I got this ability from you and I'm in no way shape or form a saint but I found a way to use both sides of it. Just try Maya?"
She stares over his shoulder at the tents filled with the sick and dying and finally nods. "Ok, enough of feeling sorry for myself. Let's go."
*
She had thought it would be a ward of the sick to begin with but instead it is just one person. One very sick person who is possibly minutes from death. She knows why this man has been picked and she doesn't want to feel relieved because of it but she is.
If I kill him it will only be pushing something along that is already happening.
She repeats this to herself as she and Peter take seats beside the man's bed. Peter turns his chair to face her and lifts his hands up, palms outward. Maya stares at his fingers and then again at the man. She inhales and interlocks her fingers through Peter's before she looses her nerve.
"Ok...I'll go first. I'll squeeze your hand when it's your turn."
She watches him gasp and grip her hands tightly. At the sight of his black gaze Maya closes her eyes and begins to hum to herself, trying to keep in control. She hears the man on the bed gasp and then choke but before she has any time to panic Peter squeezes her hands and Maya throws her head back, her eyes springing open.
The crying had been a form of realise, usually one of pain and anger but this is different. As the emotion sweeps through her body she relishes the sensation of that she's experiencing. It's one of total and complete control. At that moment she has the man's life in her hands but only this time she can give it back to him, not take it away. Cleansing the virus Maya shudders and rocks in her seat before slumping down.
She opens her eyes to a tired but pleased Peter and she looks down to find the man who had been at death's door now sitting up and looking around him in confusion.
After years of nothing but death and pain Maya cries tears of relief.
*
He wore his identity like people wear clothes. Some are lived in, like a pair of jeans that’s weathered years. It’s comfortable. It’s you. Some you have to try on, get used to it because the fit is not quite right.
Like any good actor his costume was part of his act but for Gabriel the act had ceased to be. Costumes were all he had.
He stares at the glasses in his hands, letting the smooth plastic of the legs rub against his fingers, and takes a closer look. They’re his old pair. The Company had kept hold of his stuff, the entire contents of both his apartment and shop, and as an act of good faith had been returning it bit by bit.
He’s at once disturbed and eager for more. He knows that claiming his past possessions is a way for him to reclaim what he was. But what he was is not something he wants anymore. He was a lonely, meek man. That’s what they want him to become. To hide away from the world again, to hide his light under a bushel as his mother used to say.
Gabriel looks up at his reflection and notes with a tingle of surprise that he’s brushed his hair to the side. He hesitates before slipping the glasses on and blinks. His sight is immediately more clear but the years of straining his eyes has taken a tole.
“That’s what you get for being a stubborn idiot...”
He tries to tell himself, now and in the past, that putting on a pair of glasses is nothing to be scared about. He wouldn’t loose himself, he wouldn’t regress but it’s like he is finally giving up in a way. He was Gabriel but who is he? A man who dresses like his father to please and simultaneously cause his mother pain. A man who hides away on purpose, living for the day that someone would finally see just how special he is. Gabriel was a fabrication just as Sylar was.
Sylar. Another part, another costume. At least with that one he felt in control, powerful. Enemies feared him and he could wrap people around his finger. Sometimes when the walls of his cell get too tight, when the angry voices from his past get too loud he’ll pretend, just for a moment.
Now, neither Sylar nor Gabriel he stares at himself, toeing the edge of something vast. It is a scary, exhilarating feeling because it could lead to anything. Death or birth. What is he?
I’m a father.
Nadia. The only person who he has never had to perform for, never felt a lack of depth, never had to strive. She is everything to him and for her sake he will hang on. Months he had been sunk into a depression, months she had shun her. Them.
Maya. She had rejected him. No, she had moved past him and he was left to bleed. To die. She killed him, he should be dead. All those years of her threatening to kill him, so many struggles and battles of will and she had finally done it when it became clear her freedom was sure. All that time, maybe even when he first met her, he had been welcoming death.
There’s is a place inside him that he imagines. A secret cupboard where all his transgressions, all his guilt and shame is stored away. Once, a long time ago now, he had made it a reality when his pain had been too huge to keep inside. Now he peeks at it, tries to accept it. Maya had told him he needs to look at the things he has done and feel that guilt. It is easier said then done. Maya had wanted him dead and that was kinder then confronting his own monstrosity. Even her newly acquired peace had buckled under it. She had stabbed him.
Because I lied. She believed she was in a cage but the door was open the whole time. He told himself it was to keep her safe but he can admit to the truth now. He wanted her to himself, he wanted to rekindle whatever love she had felt for him because it was...pure. No lies, no ill disguised intent masking concern, no twisted sense of possession but something that was open and honest. Fragile. He hadn’t counted on how powerful it was or how rotten it would become with rage at his betrayl.
But he is a patient man and was willing to wait. He had wanted to be Sylar those first few years, it was the only way he cold cope with her hate but as his child grew he had found himself...transitioning. For the first time in his life something inside him responded to another life, something shifted away. Remembering that, remembering her is the thing that stops him from slipping back into masks and acts.
He is a father called Gabriel. If Gabriel was a fabrication then it is something else entirely now. Secure as he’ll ever be in who he is Gabriel straightens his glasses and waits for the door to his cell to be opened. He has work to do, problems to fix.
At least that’s one thing that’s remained constant.
*
Nadia walks aimlessly through empty streets. The sidewalk under her shoes is covered in a brown-yellow mulch and weeds sprouted up from every crack and crevice. The leaves must have been there for years and they crunch under her feet. She had left the school under a head of steam but now her anger is gone. A curiosity has taken it’s place and for the first time since she left Odessa Nadia walks around on her own.
She had heard of New York before. Her father would tell her about Queens and Brooklyn, the places he lived and worked, in a rather dry tone. When her mother was in a good mood she would talk about seeing the city for the first time and her eyes would shine. Nadia used to dream of seeing it, imaging all those people walking beside her.
It’s now a city home to ghosts.
She sees them now and then. A face in a window, someone walking down the other side of the street. In the past she had tried to approach them but it is as if they’re in their own world. She thinks they go through routines they would have done while alive. They’re not like Eden, who had approached her and talked to her.
She has no connection to them nor they to her.
It makes her think of her dad, stuck in a hospital somewhere. He had been injured, she had seen it for herself but had been assured that her father is now well. She had been writing to him steadily and had even got a few replies. He had told her that he was recovering and was unable to see her. He hoped he could soon. He missed her.
Nadia knows he isn’t in a hospital. If he is truly well enough then he would be free to leave and if he misses her as much as he says then he would be with them. The answer has been formulating in her mind for months and while she has not talked about it with others she feels in her bones that it is right.
He can’t see her because he’s not allowed. Her father is in prison for a crime she can’t fathom. Her mother had called him insane on numerous occasions, especially when she was younger, but Nadia had dismissed it. Now she starts to question, going over memories of things he had said or did that maybe were not quite right. The way he acted around her mother is the main question, one that even as a small child she knew was strange. The fights and the sudden hush of peace, her mother’s moments of unbridled rage. She feels like the answer is just a fingertip away and it is maddening.
The living will give her no answers but maybe the dead can. Mind shifting to thoughts of her dead uncle she notices a building across the street and stops. It’s a quarantine building and by the looks of it an abandoned one. Nadia had checked the date of the barricades before venturing on and was placated by the old date. Anyone who had been sick would be dead for years now. No one alive lived in these buildings.
She reaches the front door and stands on tiptoe and peers through the window. A skylight lets in a diffused beam of sunshine and for a moment she blinks, blinded by the light. Vision clearing she narrows her eyes and sees a round reception desk with a symbol for the CDC department painted on the wall above. A heavy door is next to it, bolted closed. Apart from the paraphernalia dotted around about diseases and guidelines it looks like any doctor’s surgery you would find in Odessa. Harmless.
She looks down the street, thinking of all the abandoned homes and business and feels a surge of sadness. So many empty places and they’ll never be filled again. Her teacher told her that they could fit the whole world population into the New York with room to spare. Empty towns is all she’s ever known but she can sympathise, especially in such a huge place like New York. The whole world is in exactly the same state. The only difference is they don’t have the fortune of having someone like Peter Petrelli to help them.
“He’s only one man...my dad could probably do a better job. He and mom.” She imagines her parents curing people with just a snap of their fingers and smiles. Nadia looks back though the window and suddenly gasps and stumbles back.
The reception area is filled with people. Sick people. Dead people.
Heart beating like a drum Nadia steps forward and with her breath caught in her throat she stretches up to look again. The room is once again empty but Nadia knows if she focuses she’ll see them again. With a dawning realisation Nadia realises that they’re always there. They don’t disappear just because she can’t see them. Her eyes prick with tears.
“Hey! Kid?”
Nadia turns sharply and sees a man in a lumpy hazmat suit. She freezes and her body is flooded with adrenaline. Fight or flight?
“Run,” she whispers and turns on her heel.
“Wait! Don’t run, you might be sick!”
Frightened she looks over her shoulder and shouts. “There are people stuck in there! They’re trapped!”
The man stalls and looks back at the quarantine building. Nadia races around a corner and runs until her lungs burn. As the barricades come into view and the bulk of her school looms overhead Nadia slows and finally comes to a stop. She hasn’t been followed. She places a hand on a barricade and stares up the road, trying to catch her breath. She plucks at her shirt, trying to cool herself and stops suddenly. She is hot, sweating and it’s only a few degrees above freezing. The man said she could be sick.
Full of doubt and a building panic Nadia looks back the way she has come and then again at her school. The rules are very clear. It is the first thing she had been taught at school. If you think you are sick don’t go to the doctor or the hospital. Contact the CDC. If that is not an option then place a sign on your door and the CDC will recognise it and respond.
As young as she is it’s clear that only one of those scenarios ends with someone being rescued. Dead or alive.
Already feeling light headed Nadia grips the barricade hard and fights with the stubborn side of her that wants to walk through and strut into school. She can picture the panic she would generate, the attention and that side of her squirms with ill delight at the prospect.
But that side also doesn’t believe she’s sick. Even if it’s just a suspicion it’s too dangerous for her to risk it. Nadia turns with a sigh and mentally hitting herself for her own bull headed curiosity she walks back to find the man in the hazmat suit.
Characters/Pairing: Maya/Gabriel, Peter, Nadia, others.
Fandom: Heroes
Rating: R
Word count: 4, 000
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summery: Nadia goes missing and they have to find her before it's too late.
Note: Kept Woman Verse. Set after Under a Bad Sign. Unbet'd, all mistakes mine.
Parts: 1, 2
Brief recap:
After stabbing Gabriel, who survives, Maya and Nadia are free and living in Hyde Park, New York with the Petrelli's. Peter convinces Maya to use her ability again to eradicate what's left of the virus. She and Peter leave. Gabriel is incarcerated but is still useful to The Company and they move him back to Texas to continue growing food. This story is set a few months after Maya leaves.
*
“I heard that the Suits are gonna take all the special people and put them on buses.”
Nadia looks up and sees a huddle of students standing together. Suits is what people call those who work for the CDC, in particular those that wear the orange hazmat overalls. The speaker, Gerry, is a bully but even so he manages to get people to hang onto his every word. Nadia is half disgusted and half jealous. She sidles up to them, careful no to seem too concerned. She’s still new and while she can take care of herself she doesn’t want any trouble. Caitlin had advised that she lay low at school, not direct too much attention to herself.
“Buses to where?”
“A camp or a school. Something like that. They want to separate the normal kids from those with abilities.” He leans down and lowers his voice. “The kids with dangerous powers get sent to Level 5.”
Theres gasps and muttering from the crowd and Nadia finds herself drifting closer. She had heard of Level 5. It was a place that weird mutated people are sent and they’re never seen from again.
“How do you know that?”
Nadia looks up and feels her stomach flip over. Jaime Bishop is staring at Gerry with every sign of contempt and the people around the two boys back away a little. Jaime is the only person who isn’t afraid of Gerry. Apart from herself of course.
Gerry sneers. “My dad told me.” Nadia knew that his father worked in the government so his story may hold some weight to it. Feeling the first stirrings of unease she watches as Jaime shakes his head.
“They won’t send kids to Hartsdale.”
“What’s there?” One of the kids asks.
“That’s where Level 5 is. They used to keep dangerous people there, that’s true but not kids. He’s just trying to scare you.”
“And how to do know so much about it?!” Gerry demands, stepping closer. Jaime stares down at him with a strange dead eyed glare. He is only a few years older then she is but there’s a maturity to him that only a handful of the other kids have. It’s as if there’s a part missing where fear should be.
Jaime shrugs his shoulders lightly and Nadia finds herself stepping forward, her mouth suddenly no longer under her control. “Both of his parents were agents and inmates.” She says it in a breathless rush, her eyes agleam. Jaime stares at her unblinking, as if she’s unreal. Seeing the awed expression of the other children Gerry backs away with a scowl and leaves with a few of his lackeys.
Seeing that he has audience Jaime tears his burning eyes away from her. He balls his hands and with one reproachful glare turns and walks away. Nadia, her flash of daring fading, follows him nervously.
“Jaime? I’m sorry, I thought they wouldn’t have believed you!”
“Who cares!?” He rounds on her, his thin face sharp with anger. “You had no right to tell them that! I know you’re just a kid but shit are you that stupid?”
Hurt flares through her and she lifts her shoulders and crouches, like a bull about to charge. “I am not stupid! They’re the stupid ones! They have no idea how important we are!”
He shakes his head in disbelief. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re special. Your mom and dad are special. Why wouldn’t you want others to know that?”
“Because it’s none of their business. Having an ability doesn’t make you some god Nadia. Or a good person.” He sighs and looks over her head. “You don’t understand, you’re too young.”
“Stop saying that.” She grits out and pushes him. He grabs her wrist and stares hard into her face.
“Don’t talk about my parents again. Ever. If you know what’s good for you you won’t mention yours either.”
She lifts her chin. “Why not? I’m proud of them.”
Again he shakes his head but there’s a glimmer of pity in his gaze. “I wish I still was...you need to open your eyes, I can’t do it for you. Just - just don’t talk about them Nadia, especially your father or they really will stick you in Level 5.”
He lets go of her suddenly and she stumbles back. She feels an intense fear sweep her but she tethers it with outrage. “You’re talking shit!”
He looks over his shoulder with a thin lipped smile and she thinks how much he looks like his father. “I wish I was. If they knew the truth they’d stick all of us down there.”
She watches him walk away, bursting with the need to curse and scream but she stays still until he’s gone. Exhaling a pent up breath she looks around the playground and fights back tears. She knows what she said was wrong but what he just said is worse. Why would they want to send her to Level 5? Her ability is harmless. She squints against the wind, her shoulders hunched and watches a woman follow a small girl around the playground. The girl never acknowledges her. The woman smiles sadly and with a blink she’s gone.
Her ability tunes in and out like someone fiddling with a dial to catch a faint song. The more attuned she becomes with her power the easier to is to see them. In that moment she longed for their ephemeral life, flickering in and out and seen by no one. She could go anywhere. She watches the woman appear again, reaching for her child as she leaves through the back gate and Nadia finds herself following them.
Focusing on someone else’s pain is preferable to experiencing her own confusion and anger. She walks out of the school and down the street. When she reaches the old CDC barriers across the street she ducks under them and walks on.
*
The sea is calm and the air hangs around her like a heavy cloud. She has grown used to the arid heat of Texas and it had taken her a few days to get used the humidity of the Caribbean again.
She has been dreaming and threatening of coming back to her home for years. It was a desire that had grown faint as the years drew on and now that she's actually standing in the sand of her home she finds only a pressing need to leave. Her family and friends are long gone, the island deserted. She can’t even bring herself to spread her brother’s ashes.
Nadia is not here and so it can never be home. It's a sad realisation but one that feels freeing. She no longer has to wish for another life, not any longer.
"It's getting dark."
Maya turns to look at Peter who comes to stand beside her. She smiles and takes his arm. "I just wanted to watch the sea. Being landlocked for so long...just listen to that." She closes her eyes and smiles gently, focusing her mind of the sound of the gentle wind through the tress and the cry of gulls overhead. Anything but the swelling ball of panic that sits inside her.
Her ability is back. They had found Rene and he managed to salvage her ability. It had been a surprisingly easy task for him to complete and she wonders just how close to the surface her ability really had been.
"I know you're worried."
Maya shakes her head and looks at him. "I'm more then worried. I am terrified."
He takes her hand and squeezes it. "Everything will be fine. I'm here."
She smiles and looks down at his hands. "If only you weren't married..." They often joke and tease each other.
"If only you didn't have a crazy...I don't even know what to call him."
She snorts with laughter and looks back at the sea. Gabriel. She has been experiencing very conflicting emotions since they last met. She hoped that parting would have a cathartic effect on her but it's only made things worse. She can't get him out of her mind. She will never confess it to anyone but there's a part that misses him. There’s also a part that no longer feels angry. For the first time she feels she has the capacity for forgiveness. Maybe it is that space she needed. Time to herself and time with her God.
Maya shakes her head with tight lipped smile. "Lets not talk about him. I'm sorry Peter. You must think I'm so...weak?"
"No! I'm not expecting you to pick up where you left off."
"Thank goodness," she says darkly and he ignores it.
"It's understandable that you're nervous about using it again...but we came here to try. To help."
"I know...I guess there's a part of me that just doesn't want to believe that I can do anything positive with it."
"You'll get the hang of it," he says encouragingly but Maya shakes her head. She draws him away from the beach and toward a huddle of makeshift tents.
"No, that's not what I mean. Maybe there's something in me that can't do it...it's no accident that my brother got the ability to cure while I got the one that poisons. Maybe something in me -"
"Stop," he takes her shoulders in his hands and stares into her eyes. He is young but the dark circles under his eyes and the pallid complexion tell of a man almost at breaking point. "You're always so negative about yourself. All I'm hearing is doubts, which I think are unfounded. I got this ability from you and I'm in no way shape or form a saint but I found a way to use both sides of it. Just try Maya?"
She stares over his shoulder at the tents filled with the sick and dying and finally nods. "Ok, enough of feeling sorry for myself. Let's go."
*
She had thought it would be a ward of the sick to begin with but instead it is just one person. One very sick person who is possibly minutes from death. She knows why this man has been picked and she doesn't want to feel relieved because of it but she is.
If I kill him it will only be pushing something along that is already happening.
She repeats this to herself as she and Peter take seats beside the man's bed. Peter turns his chair to face her and lifts his hands up, palms outward. Maya stares at his fingers and then again at the man. She inhales and interlocks her fingers through Peter's before she looses her nerve.
"Ok...I'll go first. I'll squeeze your hand when it's your turn."
She watches him gasp and grip her hands tightly. At the sight of his black gaze Maya closes her eyes and begins to hum to herself, trying to keep in control. She hears the man on the bed gasp and then choke but before she has any time to panic Peter squeezes her hands and Maya throws her head back, her eyes springing open.
The crying had been a form of realise, usually one of pain and anger but this is different. As the emotion sweeps through her body she relishes the sensation of that she's experiencing. It's one of total and complete control. At that moment she has the man's life in her hands but only this time she can give it back to him, not take it away. Cleansing the virus Maya shudders and rocks in her seat before slumping down.
She opens her eyes to a tired but pleased Peter and she looks down to find the man who had been at death's door now sitting up and looking around him in confusion.
After years of nothing but death and pain Maya cries tears of relief.
*
He wore his identity like people wear clothes. Some are lived in, like a pair of jeans that’s weathered years. It’s comfortable. It’s you. Some you have to try on, get used to it because the fit is not quite right.
Like any good actor his costume was part of his act but for Gabriel the act had ceased to be. Costumes were all he had.
He stares at the glasses in his hands, letting the smooth plastic of the legs rub against his fingers, and takes a closer look. They’re his old pair. The Company had kept hold of his stuff, the entire contents of both his apartment and shop, and as an act of good faith had been returning it bit by bit.
He’s at once disturbed and eager for more. He knows that claiming his past possessions is a way for him to reclaim what he was. But what he was is not something he wants anymore. He was a lonely, meek man. That’s what they want him to become. To hide away from the world again, to hide his light under a bushel as his mother used to say.
Gabriel looks up at his reflection and notes with a tingle of surprise that he’s brushed his hair to the side. He hesitates before slipping the glasses on and blinks. His sight is immediately more clear but the years of straining his eyes has taken a tole.
“That’s what you get for being a stubborn idiot...”
He tries to tell himself, now and in the past, that putting on a pair of glasses is nothing to be scared about. He wouldn’t loose himself, he wouldn’t regress but it’s like he is finally giving up in a way. He was Gabriel but who is he? A man who dresses like his father to please and simultaneously cause his mother pain. A man who hides away on purpose, living for the day that someone would finally see just how special he is. Gabriel was a fabrication just as Sylar was.
Sylar. Another part, another costume. At least with that one he felt in control, powerful. Enemies feared him and he could wrap people around his finger. Sometimes when the walls of his cell get too tight, when the angry voices from his past get too loud he’ll pretend, just for a moment.
Now, neither Sylar nor Gabriel he stares at himself, toeing the edge of something vast. It is a scary, exhilarating feeling because it could lead to anything. Death or birth. What is he?
I’m a father.
Nadia. The only person who he has never had to perform for, never felt a lack of depth, never had to strive. She is everything to him and for her sake he will hang on. Months he had been sunk into a depression, months she had shun her. Them.
Maya. She had rejected him. No, she had moved past him and he was left to bleed. To die. She killed him, he should be dead. All those years of her threatening to kill him, so many struggles and battles of will and she had finally done it when it became clear her freedom was sure. All that time, maybe even when he first met her, he had been welcoming death.
There’s is a place inside him that he imagines. A secret cupboard where all his transgressions, all his guilt and shame is stored away. Once, a long time ago now, he had made it a reality when his pain had been too huge to keep inside. Now he peeks at it, tries to accept it. Maya had told him he needs to look at the things he has done and feel that guilt. It is easier said then done. Maya had wanted him dead and that was kinder then confronting his own monstrosity. Even her newly acquired peace had buckled under it. She had stabbed him.
Because I lied. She believed she was in a cage but the door was open the whole time. He told himself it was to keep her safe but he can admit to the truth now. He wanted her to himself, he wanted to rekindle whatever love she had felt for him because it was...pure. No lies, no ill disguised intent masking concern, no twisted sense of possession but something that was open and honest. Fragile. He hadn’t counted on how powerful it was or how rotten it would become with rage at his betrayl.
But he is a patient man and was willing to wait. He had wanted to be Sylar those first few years, it was the only way he cold cope with her hate but as his child grew he had found himself...transitioning. For the first time in his life something inside him responded to another life, something shifted away. Remembering that, remembering her is the thing that stops him from slipping back into masks and acts.
He is a father called Gabriel. If Gabriel was a fabrication then it is something else entirely now. Secure as he’ll ever be in who he is Gabriel straightens his glasses and waits for the door to his cell to be opened. He has work to do, problems to fix.
At least that’s one thing that’s remained constant.
*
Nadia walks aimlessly through empty streets. The sidewalk under her shoes is covered in a brown-yellow mulch and weeds sprouted up from every crack and crevice. The leaves must have been there for years and they crunch under her feet. She had left the school under a head of steam but now her anger is gone. A curiosity has taken it’s place and for the first time since she left Odessa Nadia walks around on her own.
She had heard of New York before. Her father would tell her about Queens and Brooklyn, the places he lived and worked, in a rather dry tone. When her mother was in a good mood she would talk about seeing the city for the first time and her eyes would shine. Nadia used to dream of seeing it, imaging all those people walking beside her.
It’s now a city home to ghosts.
She sees them now and then. A face in a window, someone walking down the other side of the street. In the past she had tried to approach them but it is as if they’re in their own world. She thinks they go through routines they would have done while alive. They’re not like Eden, who had approached her and talked to her.
She has no connection to them nor they to her.
It makes her think of her dad, stuck in a hospital somewhere. He had been injured, she had seen it for herself but had been assured that her father is now well. She had been writing to him steadily and had even got a few replies. He had told her that he was recovering and was unable to see her. He hoped he could soon. He missed her.
Nadia knows he isn’t in a hospital. If he is truly well enough then he would be free to leave and if he misses her as much as he says then he would be with them. The answer has been formulating in her mind for months and while she has not talked about it with others she feels in her bones that it is right.
He can’t see her because he’s not allowed. Her father is in prison for a crime she can’t fathom. Her mother had called him insane on numerous occasions, especially when she was younger, but Nadia had dismissed it. Now she starts to question, going over memories of things he had said or did that maybe were not quite right. The way he acted around her mother is the main question, one that even as a small child she knew was strange. The fights and the sudden hush of peace, her mother’s moments of unbridled rage. She feels like the answer is just a fingertip away and it is maddening.
The living will give her no answers but maybe the dead can. Mind shifting to thoughts of her dead uncle she notices a building across the street and stops. It’s a quarantine building and by the looks of it an abandoned one. Nadia had checked the date of the barricades before venturing on and was placated by the old date. Anyone who had been sick would be dead for years now. No one alive lived in these buildings.
She reaches the front door and stands on tiptoe and peers through the window. A skylight lets in a diffused beam of sunshine and for a moment she blinks, blinded by the light. Vision clearing she narrows her eyes and sees a round reception desk with a symbol for the CDC department painted on the wall above. A heavy door is next to it, bolted closed. Apart from the paraphernalia dotted around about diseases and guidelines it looks like any doctor’s surgery you would find in Odessa. Harmless.
She looks down the street, thinking of all the abandoned homes and business and feels a surge of sadness. So many empty places and they’ll never be filled again. Her teacher told her that they could fit the whole world population into the New York with room to spare. Empty towns is all she’s ever known but she can sympathise, especially in such a huge place like New York. The whole world is in exactly the same state. The only difference is they don’t have the fortune of having someone like Peter Petrelli to help them.
“He’s only one man...my dad could probably do a better job. He and mom.” She imagines her parents curing people with just a snap of their fingers and smiles. Nadia looks back though the window and suddenly gasps and stumbles back.
The reception area is filled with people. Sick people. Dead people.
Heart beating like a drum Nadia steps forward and with her breath caught in her throat she stretches up to look again. The room is once again empty but Nadia knows if she focuses she’ll see them again. With a dawning realisation Nadia realises that they’re always there. They don’t disappear just because she can’t see them. Her eyes prick with tears.
“Hey! Kid?”
Nadia turns sharply and sees a man in a lumpy hazmat suit. She freezes and her body is flooded with adrenaline. Fight or flight?
“Run,” she whispers and turns on her heel.
“Wait! Don’t run, you might be sick!”
Frightened she looks over her shoulder and shouts. “There are people stuck in there! They’re trapped!”
The man stalls and looks back at the quarantine building. Nadia races around a corner and runs until her lungs burn. As the barricades come into view and the bulk of her school looms overhead Nadia slows and finally comes to a stop. She hasn’t been followed. She places a hand on a barricade and stares up the road, trying to catch her breath. She plucks at her shirt, trying to cool herself and stops suddenly. She is hot, sweating and it’s only a few degrees above freezing. The man said she could be sick.
Full of doubt and a building panic Nadia looks back the way she has come and then again at her school. The rules are very clear. It is the first thing she had been taught at school. If you think you are sick don’t go to the doctor or the hospital. Contact the CDC. If that is not an option then place a sign on your door and the CDC will recognise it and respond.
As young as she is it’s clear that only one of those scenarios ends with someone being rescued. Dead or alive.
Already feeling light headed Nadia grips the barricade hard and fights with the stubborn side of her that wants to walk through and strut into school. She can picture the panic she would generate, the attention and that side of her squirms with ill delight at the prospect.
But that side also doesn’t believe she’s sick. Even if it’s just a suspicion it’s too dangerous for her to risk it. Nadia turns with a sigh and mentally hitting herself for her own bull headed curiosity she walks back to find the man in the hazmat suit.