(no subject)
this was actually supposed to be a one-shot, but people thought there'd be more, and then uh.
Summary: What happened after Quinto Formaggi. Basically a shameless Smudge/Sasan love story with bonus!Sylar and lens flare.
Fandoms: So NoTORIous, Off-Centre, Heroes, Star Trek XI, RPF
Words: 3,126
Quinto Formaggi
Plane Between: Chapter 1
II: ghosts. never. die.
For a moment they touch eternity and the worlds all cease to matter.
"I'm here."
Fingers intertwine in eerie perfection, move trembling hands to still. Smudge dares not speak to ask how long they have or how long they should have; he thinks of Zach and feels a twinge of guilt, though that soon fades away.
There are so many things Smudge wants to say. So many things to tell him. Yet he can't seem to bring any of them to mind, still struggling to realise the impossible before him, struggling to figure out if this could, indeed, be happening.
"I can't stay," Sasan says quietly. His eyes - Zach's eyes? - linger on the protective grasp of Smudge's fingers around his forearm, feeling the tremble of each erratic breath that escapes the other's body.
"Why?"
"I don't think it's polite, and I think Zach would probably like full motor control back."
Smudge looks up to meet his gaze. "Where would you go?" he asks.
Sasan thinks of the dead, grey world and the watchmaker's shop under the sepia sky. "I don't know," he admits, and tries not to let the fear into his voice as he lies: "but I'll be all right, okay?" He lightly brushes Smudge's hair off his forehead. "I won't forget you."
Smudge swallows back tears. "Will I see you again?"
"I hope s-"
And Smudge feels the sudden, violent jerk and sees the rush of panic into Sasan's eyes, and Smudge's own grow wide as he grabs him, searching desperately into Sasan's face to understand:
"Sas, what's-"
Another jerk, Sasan grabbing at the couch with barely-controlled hands, gasping for breath, and managing, just barely, to speak:
"Sylar-"
And then the body falls off the couch, forcefully evacuated, and eternity dies in a scream and outstretched arm.
"NO!"
The frightened eyes that look back at Smudge have changed. Zach blinks, getting slowly off the floor, trying to make sense of what's happening as Smudge yells heartrendingly into the air, trying to see the invisible:
"SAS!"
Zach looks uncertainly around. "Smudge-"
"Sylar took him!" Smudge cries. "He took him away! What's he going to do, what if he's hurting him?"
And Zach still feels as though he's in a dream as Smudge falls apart with anguish, turning, lost, around on a spot by the couch, shouting for Sasan, screaming at Sylar, and Zach doesn't know what to do, but he still remembers the presence of the other; and on his lips he feels the memory of a kiss.
And he rushes to grab Smudge and pry the kitchen knife out of his hand amidst violent demands to let him go, Sas needs him, and there is only one way to get there.
*
Sasan lands, and the world is grey again.
From the floor he sees the shoes pace through his field of vision and stop at its edge.
"Having fun?" Sylar asks. "Possession isn't... very polite."
Sasan rolls over, painfully, and tries to get up. He pushes himself into a sitting position and gazes resignedly up at the shop around him; then yells as Sylar telekinetically grabs him off the floor and slams him against the wall.
"Why can't you leave me alone?" Sasan cries.
"Where's the fun in that?
Sylar moves his hand and jerks Sasan's head back. With his other hand he runs a telekinetic line across the exposed neck. Sasan swallows.
"I could kill you," Sylar says. "Again... and again... and again." He grins.
"Why?" Sasan asks, choking back tears. "Why?"
"And your boyfriend won't be here to protect you," Sylar adds.
An invisible punch to the stomach sends Sasan falling off the wall, doubling over and dry retching on the ground. He falls to his hands and tries in desperation to crawl away, but Sylar slams him back against a glass case. It shatters, sending glass and watches showering down on him.
"I get... lonely in here," Sylar says, moving forward and crouching down before Sasan, noting with sadistic pleasure the trembling fear in his face. He smiles. Sasan winces. Sylar shrugs. "I could use the company."
Sylar stands and slowly raises his hand, levitating the shards of glass up into the air, swivelling their sharp points to the front.
"No," Sasan begs. "Please..."
Sylar tilts his head. Then he jerks his hand forward, and the flying glass erupts in blood and piercing scream.
Sylar watches the show, an odd look on his face.
"Scream, Gabriel," he murmurs, half to himself. "Scream."
*
Zach gets the knife out of Smudge's hand and places it firmly back where it came from. He pushes aside Smudge's reaching hands and pulls him back to the living room.
"Smudge-"
"Let me go!"
"Smudge, he's dead-"
"NO!" Smudge yells. "He's still there! He's still... there... he needs me..."
"You don't know what would happen if you kill yourself."
"I could find him," Smudge insists fiercely. "I'll find him!"
"You don't know that," Zach says.
Smudge glares at him. Zach grasps his arm in a reassuring gesture, but Smudge shrugs it off.
"Don't touch me," he says, and stalks off to the couch. He sits there, angrily regarding the air before him, blinking away tears; until his defences break, and Smudge buries his face in the couch and cries.
For a while, Zach just watches; almost wanting to do something, but not knowing how...
"You need him too, don't you?" Zach asks softly.
Smudge decides that he hates him.
*
The sound of thunder.
Sasan opens his eyes and blinks. The shop has gone dark; objects barely visible save through the faint, eerie light that comes through the shop windows, casting long shadows on the ground.
The shards of glass are gone, reformed back into the case. The pain has slowed to a dull throb. The more he thinks about it, the more it fades away.
He does not dare to get up. Sasan tries to see as much as he can from the floor. Sylar doesn't appear to be around.
Sasan cautiously props himself up on one hand and peeks around the glass case. Still no one.
A little braver, he stands up fully, eyes darting nervously around the shop. A heavy clock pendulum swings gravely to and fro.
Ahead lies the door. The sky outside is dark.
Sasan heads towards it with uncertain, halting steps, looking around him every now and then as though expecting Sylar to suddenly jump out from the shadows. But nothing happens; and he reaches the door, and with racing heart opens it-
A strong draught of wind makes him stumble as he steps out. The door blows out of his hand and slams shut. The draught dies down. Sasan blinks.
The street is gone. The other shops are gone. Gray & Sons sits on a tiny plot of land suspended in a void.
Something white is floating towards him, erratically blown through the air. Sasan catches it - a sheet of paper - and stares down at Sylar's handwriting, identical to his own in a recognition that deeply unnerves him:
You'll never get out.
*
Zach feels the intrusion and wants to scream, but he no longer has control over his mouth. He fights it off, for unlike Sasan, this presence is palpably evil; but Sylar is too strong for him. Trapped behind his own eyes, he watches as they pass Smudge - still sniffing on the couch - and pick up the Interdimensional Travel Device Thingy from the table. The names scroll down the screen as his hand operates the buttons beyond his control. Again he struggles, and feels a silent, mocking laugh sent his way. And then the button is pressed, and his house vanishes around them as they teleport away.
The body is lying right there on the floor when they arrive; right before them, temporarily dead, the knife sticking out the back of its head. And Zach knows what they're here to do, and thrashes futilely against the walls of his mental prison, willing his legs to run and his hands to move away from the knife... but he sees it pulled out, and dropped onto the ground with a satisfying air.
"Pointy-eared bastard," he hears his own mouth mutter. "Thought he could get me."
And then in a slow, seeping freedom that suddenly explodes his restraints, he's in full control again, watching in horrified fascination as the wound on the body heals and the eyes open to focus on him.
Zach sees the slow grin. Too late, he remembers the ITDT and dives for it; only to have it whisked out before his hands in a telepathic grab.
Sylar stands, ITDT in hand. He tosses it a brief distance into the air and catches it. "If I'm not back," he says, "you can have the apartment and all of my friends."
*
"You're a coward," Sasan tells himself in a terrible attempt at a piece of discouraging pep talk, his voice shaking in a way that just reinforces the statement. He can't quite take his gaze away from the edge of the floating island, staring out at the blackness that lies below.
He's been around the floating island. Just the shop in the centre, a bunch of pulsating dark clouds above, and nothing else. No way out. Unless he tries to jump off...
Sasan takes a breath. "You're dead," he tells himself. "You can't die again. What's the worst that can happen?"
And then he thinks up a few possibilities, and regrets the rhetorical question.
He licks dry lips in nervousness. Peers once again over the edge - nothing - and cautiously gets down to his hands and knees, clutching the edge of the patch of land, craning his neck further to see... Still nothing.
He shuts his eyes. You're dead, he reminds himself again. You're dead.
Sasan gives a quick nod for self-reassurance, then pushes off the edge and falls into nothingness.
He opens his eyes mid-fall and sees the darkness swallow him up.
And then the ground grows solid beneath him, and he finds himself back on the floor of the watchmaker's shop.
The note is lying next to him. You'll never get out.
*
It's a while before Smudge lifts his head from the couch and rubs a hand across his eyes to brush off the last tears. He blinks at the seemingly empty house.
"Zach?" he asks, and on getting no response gets off the couch and moves towards one of the rooms; peers in, but there is no one in them save Noah and a napping Harold who glares at Smudge until he leaves.
"Zach?" Smudge asks again, trudging to the other end of the house. He didn't hear him leave, he thinks, and would Zach have left him here on his own? Unless...
Smudge hesitates in the middle of the living room. He fingers the ITDT in his pocket as the dreaded possibility surfaces again.
There's no time to waste, he decides, and teleports to Sylar's apartment.
Zach is there. And Sylar. Smudge fixates him with a glare.
"It's polite to knock," Sylar comments.
"WHAT DID YOU DO WITH SASAN?" Smudge demands. He stalks forward, pushing Zach out of the way.
Sylar shrugs. "I think I killed him-"
Smudge lunges forward in a wild grab. Sylar stumbles, momentarily taken aback, and then Smudge is on him, screaming, kicking and whacking at his head-
Sylar flings him off and slams him against the ceiling. Zach gapes.
"PUT ME DOWN!" Smudge yells.
"I don't like being hit."
Smudge doubles up on the ceiling and yanks at his left shoe. "Put... me... DOWN!" He throws his shoe at Sylar's head.
It hits its mark. Sylar flinches but keeps his grip. "You-"
Smudge's right shoe whams his face.
"THAT'S FOR SAS!"
Sylar rubs his free hand over the impact zone. He glances up at Smudge with a satisfied air. "You're never going to see him aga-"
Zach jumps him from behind. Sylar's telekinetic grip fails as he falls over, and Smudge crashes to the ground. He lies there, unmoving, and Zach wants to call out to him but a stream of heavy books fly off a shelf and knock him over.
Sylar gets back to his feet. "You're out of your league, Quinto," he says. "Go back to Hollywood." He takes out the ITDT. "And it's time to teach pointy-ears a lesson."
He teleports away.
Zach pushes a dog-eared copy of 'Watchmaking For Dummies' off his head and extricates himself from the pile of books.
"Smudge?" he asks, going towards the still form. Not quite still, though... he sees Smudge's eyes are open, and they look at him as Zach gets down by his side.
"...I want my shoes," Smudge says, so Zach collects them from where they fell and brings them over, and puts them on Smudge's feet.
Smudge sits up, wincing. "Go home," he tells Zach. "It's not your fight."
"No-"
Smudge digs out his ITDT. He reaches out a hand to grab the other's shoulders, and teleports them back to Zach's house.
Noah gives a surprised yelp as they appear.
Smudge releases his hand. He tries to get to his feet, and limps towards the couch to pick up the flash drive from the computer. He pockets it. Sasan left it to him.
He scrolls down the destination list on his ITDT.
"Smudge, you can't go after him like that-"
Smudge turns on Zach and glares. "Yes I can!"
"Smudge, you're bleedi-"
Smudge vanishes.
"Smudge!"
Noah sniffs the air where Smudge had been, and then wanders off to a room.
*
Smudge arrives in the increased warmth of Spock's quarters. Furniture is toppled. The door is open, and he hears the sounds of a fight going on outside.
Spock rolls back into the room as an electric blast shakes the hallway in a bloom of blue light. Screams. Spock fires several phaser blasts around the door, then ducks his head back in. He sees Smudge, hesitates for a split second. "Get down," he says. There is the start of a gash across his forehead, green blood seeping through. He fires more blasts at Sylar outside; other blasts join his - ship security, but ensuing screams suggest they don't last long.
"I can get you out of here," Smudge says, holding out the ITDT.
"He would just try to find me. There is no knowing how much more damage he might wreak along the way."
Spock glances out the door. A lens flare blossoms and fades. Sylar is mowing through the redshirts, and he feels a twinge of sadness for the lost lives. Sylar is advancing. If he backs him into this room, it's over...
"Stay here," Spock tells Smudge, and then leaps out into the corridor, firing wildly as he backs down the corridor, looking for cover; shoots Sylar in the hand as he sees it raised, and the fingers disintegrate in the blast. They start growing back.
Another room. Spock ducks towards it and hits the door controls, when Sylar raises his other hand and pins him against the door. It opens, and he falls through. Spock lands on the floor, held there by telekinesis, as Sylar casually strolls in for the kill. The redshirts are gone. The bridge crew would be around soon.
"You thought you could kill me," Sylar says.
Spock struggles against the invisible hold. Up the corridor, Smudge cautiously emerges.
"I'm going to savour this," Sylar says. He bends down and runs a finger across a pointy ear, and then along the bloodied wound. Green blood drips off his finger.
Smudge looks around for a weapon; a phaser, something heavy, something sharp...
There's a shard of broken glass lying by a dead redshirt. Smudge limps over to it, blinking at a sudden lens flare, and bends down to pick it off the ground-
Sylar whips it out of his reach. "Don't even think of it," he says, his other hand still holding Spock down. "I should kill you first, you bisexual nuisance."
Distantly, Smudge hears footsteps clanking down a nearby corridor as Sylar's fingers close to point at him, and he screams:
"HELLLLLP!"
Time stops.
Some strange guy who wasn't there before is leaning smugly against a wall. Smudge glances from him to the frozen scene, Sylar's hand still outstretched (Smudge moves out of the way), Spock on the ground, dead redshirts everywhere.
"Who are you?" Smudge asks suspiciously.
"What a mess you've got yourself into," the stranger comments.
"Do you know Dem?" Smudge asks.
"Oh, we've met."
"Who are you?" Smudge asks again.
"Call me Q." He moves away from the wall to closer inspect Sylar.
"Q," Smudge repeats, wondering what kind of name that is. "Are you here to help me?"
"If I say yes, you're just going to rattle off a laundry list of chores, aren't you? Save Spock, save Sasan, kill Sylar, buy you a pony..."
"I don't want a pony."
"Ah, but this is a special pony," Q says. "It's bisexual."
"Are you going to help me or not?" Smudge demands, raising a fist. It gleams in a sudden lens flare.
Q raises an eyebrow. "Aggression. Just another trait symbolic of the inferiority of your race." He wanders casually through the redshirts. "Here's what's going to happen," he says. "You get to tell me one thing to do. Just one. Spock, Sasan, Sylar, pony, whatever else you can think of." Q lowers himself into a sit, fingers steepling beneath his chin. "And I'll do it."
"...anything?" Smudge asks.
Q shrugs. "Within logical possibility. Just one."
"...I just want to be happy," Smudge says softly.
"Is that it?" Q asks. "That'll cost you a dollar for the Prozac-"
"No!" Smudge says.
Q sighs. "What would you prefer? Memory wipe? I could do that. You'll forget everything bad that ever happened to you. Quite a few good things too, but-"
"No," Smudge says, but the cogs are turning. "Memory..."
"What is it."
Smudge hesitates, working things out, coming back to that same, elegant solution...
"Give Sylar a copy of my memories," he says quietly. "A copy of my mind. In place of his."
Q slowly stands up.
"It'd work, wouldn't it?" Smudge asks. "He'd become like me, and then... then he'd understand, and he could bring Sasan back, and kill himself..."
"That could be fun," Q says, and saunters over to Sylar as Smudge follows him with his eyes. "Come here," he says, and Smudge does.
Q extends a hand to Smudge's head and another to the time-frozen Sylar. A moment passes, and then he lowers his hands. "You have half an hour," he says; then time starts moving again, Q has disappeared, and Sylar is no longer Sylar.
*
CHAPTER THREE >>
Summary: What happened after Quinto Formaggi. Basically a shameless Smudge/Sasan love story with bonus!Sylar and lens flare.
Fandoms: So NoTORIous, Off-Centre, Heroes, Star Trek XI, RPF
Words: 3,126
Quinto Formaggi
Plane Between: Chapter 1
II: ghosts. never. die.
For a moment they touch eternity and the worlds all cease to matter.
"I'm here."
Fingers intertwine in eerie perfection, move trembling hands to still. Smudge dares not speak to ask how long they have or how long they should have; he thinks of Zach and feels a twinge of guilt, though that soon fades away.
There are so many things Smudge wants to say. So many things to tell him. Yet he can't seem to bring any of them to mind, still struggling to realise the impossible before him, struggling to figure out if this could, indeed, be happening.
"I can't stay," Sasan says quietly. His eyes - Zach's eyes? - linger on the protective grasp of Smudge's fingers around his forearm, feeling the tremble of each erratic breath that escapes the other's body.
"Why?"
"I don't think it's polite, and I think Zach would probably like full motor control back."
Smudge looks up to meet his gaze. "Where would you go?" he asks.
Sasan thinks of the dead, grey world and the watchmaker's shop under the sepia sky. "I don't know," he admits, and tries not to let the fear into his voice as he lies: "but I'll be all right, okay?" He lightly brushes Smudge's hair off his forehead. "I won't forget you."
Smudge swallows back tears. "Will I see you again?"
"I hope s-"
And Smudge feels the sudden, violent jerk and sees the rush of panic into Sasan's eyes, and Smudge's own grow wide as he grabs him, searching desperately into Sasan's face to understand:
"Sas, what's-"
Another jerk, Sasan grabbing at the couch with barely-controlled hands, gasping for breath, and managing, just barely, to speak:
"Sylar-"
And then the body falls off the couch, forcefully evacuated, and eternity dies in a scream and outstretched arm.
"NO!"
The frightened eyes that look back at Smudge have changed. Zach blinks, getting slowly off the floor, trying to make sense of what's happening as Smudge yells heartrendingly into the air, trying to see the invisible:
"SAS!"
Zach looks uncertainly around. "Smudge-"
"Sylar took him!" Smudge cries. "He took him away! What's he going to do, what if he's hurting him?"
And Zach still feels as though he's in a dream as Smudge falls apart with anguish, turning, lost, around on a spot by the couch, shouting for Sasan, screaming at Sylar, and Zach doesn't know what to do, but he still remembers the presence of the other; and on his lips he feels the memory of a kiss.
And he rushes to grab Smudge and pry the kitchen knife out of his hand amidst violent demands to let him go, Sas needs him, and there is only one way to get there.
*
Sasan lands, and the world is grey again.
From the floor he sees the shoes pace through his field of vision and stop at its edge.
"Having fun?" Sylar asks. "Possession isn't... very polite."
Sasan rolls over, painfully, and tries to get up. He pushes himself into a sitting position and gazes resignedly up at the shop around him; then yells as Sylar telekinetically grabs him off the floor and slams him against the wall.
"Why can't you leave me alone?" Sasan cries.
"Where's the fun in that?
Sylar moves his hand and jerks Sasan's head back. With his other hand he runs a telekinetic line across the exposed neck. Sasan swallows.
"I could kill you," Sylar says. "Again... and again... and again." He grins.
"Why?" Sasan asks, choking back tears. "Why?"
"And your boyfriend won't be here to protect you," Sylar adds.
An invisible punch to the stomach sends Sasan falling off the wall, doubling over and dry retching on the ground. He falls to his hands and tries in desperation to crawl away, but Sylar slams him back against a glass case. It shatters, sending glass and watches showering down on him.
"I get... lonely in here," Sylar says, moving forward and crouching down before Sasan, noting with sadistic pleasure the trembling fear in his face. He smiles. Sasan winces. Sylar shrugs. "I could use the company."
Sylar stands and slowly raises his hand, levitating the shards of glass up into the air, swivelling their sharp points to the front.
"No," Sasan begs. "Please..."
Sylar tilts his head. Then he jerks his hand forward, and the flying glass erupts in blood and piercing scream.
Sylar watches the show, an odd look on his face.
"Scream, Gabriel," he murmurs, half to himself. "Scream."
*
Zach gets the knife out of Smudge's hand and places it firmly back where it came from. He pushes aside Smudge's reaching hands and pulls him back to the living room.
"Smudge-"
"Let me go!"
"Smudge, he's dead-"
"NO!" Smudge yells. "He's still there! He's still... there... he needs me..."
"You don't know what would happen if you kill yourself."
"I could find him," Smudge insists fiercely. "I'll find him!"
"You don't know that," Zach says.
Smudge glares at him. Zach grasps his arm in a reassuring gesture, but Smudge shrugs it off.
"Don't touch me," he says, and stalks off to the couch. He sits there, angrily regarding the air before him, blinking away tears; until his defences break, and Smudge buries his face in the couch and cries.
For a while, Zach just watches; almost wanting to do something, but not knowing how...
"You need him too, don't you?" Zach asks softly.
Smudge decides that he hates him.
*
The sound of thunder.
Sasan opens his eyes and blinks. The shop has gone dark; objects barely visible save through the faint, eerie light that comes through the shop windows, casting long shadows on the ground.
The shards of glass are gone, reformed back into the case. The pain has slowed to a dull throb. The more he thinks about it, the more it fades away.
He does not dare to get up. Sasan tries to see as much as he can from the floor. Sylar doesn't appear to be around.
Sasan cautiously props himself up on one hand and peeks around the glass case. Still no one.
A little braver, he stands up fully, eyes darting nervously around the shop. A heavy clock pendulum swings gravely to and fro.
Ahead lies the door. The sky outside is dark.
Sasan heads towards it with uncertain, halting steps, looking around him every now and then as though expecting Sylar to suddenly jump out from the shadows. But nothing happens; and he reaches the door, and with racing heart opens it-
A strong draught of wind makes him stumble as he steps out. The door blows out of his hand and slams shut. The draught dies down. Sasan blinks.
The street is gone. The other shops are gone. Gray & Sons sits on a tiny plot of land suspended in a void.
Something white is floating towards him, erratically blown through the air. Sasan catches it - a sheet of paper - and stares down at Sylar's handwriting, identical to his own in a recognition that deeply unnerves him:
You'll never get out.
*
Zach feels the intrusion and wants to scream, but he no longer has control over his mouth. He fights it off, for unlike Sasan, this presence is palpably evil; but Sylar is too strong for him. Trapped behind his own eyes, he watches as they pass Smudge - still sniffing on the couch - and pick up the Interdimensional Travel Device Thingy from the table. The names scroll down the screen as his hand operates the buttons beyond his control. Again he struggles, and feels a silent, mocking laugh sent his way. And then the button is pressed, and his house vanishes around them as they teleport away.
The body is lying right there on the floor when they arrive; right before them, temporarily dead, the knife sticking out the back of its head. And Zach knows what they're here to do, and thrashes futilely against the walls of his mental prison, willing his legs to run and his hands to move away from the knife... but he sees it pulled out, and dropped onto the ground with a satisfying air.
"Pointy-eared bastard," he hears his own mouth mutter. "Thought he could get me."
And then in a slow, seeping freedom that suddenly explodes his restraints, he's in full control again, watching in horrified fascination as the wound on the body heals and the eyes open to focus on him.
Zach sees the slow grin. Too late, he remembers the ITDT and dives for it; only to have it whisked out before his hands in a telepathic grab.
Sylar stands, ITDT in hand. He tosses it a brief distance into the air and catches it. "If I'm not back," he says, "you can have the apartment and all of my friends."
*
"You're a coward," Sasan tells himself in a terrible attempt at a piece of discouraging pep talk, his voice shaking in a way that just reinforces the statement. He can't quite take his gaze away from the edge of the floating island, staring out at the blackness that lies below.
He's been around the floating island. Just the shop in the centre, a bunch of pulsating dark clouds above, and nothing else. No way out. Unless he tries to jump off...
Sasan takes a breath. "You're dead," he tells himself. "You can't die again. What's the worst that can happen?"
And then he thinks up a few possibilities, and regrets the rhetorical question.
He licks dry lips in nervousness. Peers once again over the edge - nothing - and cautiously gets down to his hands and knees, clutching the edge of the patch of land, craning his neck further to see... Still nothing.
He shuts his eyes. You're dead, he reminds himself again. You're dead.
Sasan gives a quick nod for self-reassurance, then pushes off the edge and falls into nothingness.
He opens his eyes mid-fall and sees the darkness swallow him up.
And then the ground grows solid beneath him, and he finds himself back on the floor of the watchmaker's shop.
The note is lying next to him. You'll never get out.
*
It's a while before Smudge lifts his head from the couch and rubs a hand across his eyes to brush off the last tears. He blinks at the seemingly empty house.
"Zach?" he asks, and on getting no response gets off the couch and moves towards one of the rooms; peers in, but there is no one in them save Noah and a napping Harold who glares at Smudge until he leaves.
"Zach?" Smudge asks again, trudging to the other end of the house. He didn't hear him leave, he thinks, and would Zach have left him here on his own? Unless...
Smudge hesitates in the middle of the living room. He fingers the ITDT in his pocket as the dreaded possibility surfaces again.
There's no time to waste, he decides, and teleports to Sylar's apartment.
Zach is there. And Sylar. Smudge fixates him with a glare.
"It's polite to knock," Sylar comments.
"WHAT DID YOU DO WITH SASAN?" Smudge demands. He stalks forward, pushing Zach out of the way.
Sylar shrugs. "I think I killed him-"
Smudge lunges forward in a wild grab. Sylar stumbles, momentarily taken aback, and then Smudge is on him, screaming, kicking and whacking at his head-
Sylar flings him off and slams him against the ceiling. Zach gapes.
"PUT ME DOWN!" Smudge yells.
"I don't like being hit."
Smudge doubles up on the ceiling and yanks at his left shoe. "Put... me... DOWN!" He throws his shoe at Sylar's head.
It hits its mark. Sylar flinches but keeps his grip. "You-"
Smudge's right shoe whams his face.
"THAT'S FOR SAS!"
Sylar rubs his free hand over the impact zone. He glances up at Smudge with a satisfied air. "You're never going to see him aga-"
Zach jumps him from behind. Sylar's telekinetic grip fails as he falls over, and Smudge crashes to the ground. He lies there, unmoving, and Zach wants to call out to him but a stream of heavy books fly off a shelf and knock him over.
Sylar gets back to his feet. "You're out of your league, Quinto," he says. "Go back to Hollywood." He takes out the ITDT. "And it's time to teach pointy-ears a lesson."
He teleports away.
Zach pushes a dog-eared copy of 'Watchmaking For Dummies' off his head and extricates himself from the pile of books.
"Smudge?" he asks, going towards the still form. Not quite still, though... he sees Smudge's eyes are open, and they look at him as Zach gets down by his side.
"...I want my shoes," Smudge says, so Zach collects them from where they fell and brings them over, and puts them on Smudge's feet.
Smudge sits up, wincing. "Go home," he tells Zach. "It's not your fight."
"No-"
Smudge digs out his ITDT. He reaches out a hand to grab the other's shoulders, and teleports them back to Zach's house.
Noah gives a surprised yelp as they appear.
Smudge releases his hand. He tries to get to his feet, and limps towards the couch to pick up the flash drive from the computer. He pockets it. Sasan left it to him.
He scrolls down the destination list on his ITDT.
"Smudge, you can't go after him like that-"
Smudge turns on Zach and glares. "Yes I can!"
"Smudge, you're bleedi-"
Smudge vanishes.
"Smudge!"
Noah sniffs the air where Smudge had been, and then wanders off to a room.
*
Smudge arrives in the increased warmth of Spock's quarters. Furniture is toppled. The door is open, and he hears the sounds of a fight going on outside.
Spock rolls back into the room as an electric blast shakes the hallway in a bloom of blue light. Screams. Spock fires several phaser blasts around the door, then ducks his head back in. He sees Smudge, hesitates for a split second. "Get down," he says. There is the start of a gash across his forehead, green blood seeping through. He fires more blasts at Sylar outside; other blasts join his - ship security, but ensuing screams suggest they don't last long.
"I can get you out of here," Smudge says, holding out the ITDT.
"He would just try to find me. There is no knowing how much more damage he might wreak along the way."
Spock glances out the door. A lens flare blossoms and fades. Sylar is mowing through the redshirts, and he feels a twinge of sadness for the lost lives. Sylar is advancing. If he backs him into this room, it's over...
"Stay here," Spock tells Smudge, and then leaps out into the corridor, firing wildly as he backs down the corridor, looking for cover; shoots Sylar in the hand as he sees it raised, and the fingers disintegrate in the blast. They start growing back.
Another room. Spock ducks towards it and hits the door controls, when Sylar raises his other hand and pins him against the door. It opens, and he falls through. Spock lands on the floor, held there by telekinesis, as Sylar casually strolls in for the kill. The redshirts are gone. The bridge crew would be around soon.
"You thought you could kill me," Sylar says.
Spock struggles against the invisible hold. Up the corridor, Smudge cautiously emerges.
"I'm going to savour this," Sylar says. He bends down and runs a finger across a pointy ear, and then along the bloodied wound. Green blood drips off his finger.
Smudge looks around for a weapon; a phaser, something heavy, something sharp...
There's a shard of broken glass lying by a dead redshirt. Smudge limps over to it, blinking at a sudden lens flare, and bends down to pick it off the ground-
Sylar whips it out of his reach. "Don't even think of it," he says, his other hand still holding Spock down. "I should kill you first, you bisexual nuisance."
Distantly, Smudge hears footsteps clanking down a nearby corridor as Sylar's fingers close to point at him, and he screams:
"HELLLLLP!"
Time stops.
Some strange guy who wasn't there before is leaning smugly against a wall. Smudge glances from him to the frozen scene, Sylar's hand still outstretched (Smudge moves out of the way), Spock on the ground, dead redshirts everywhere.
"Who are you?" Smudge asks suspiciously.
"What a mess you've got yourself into," the stranger comments.
"Do you know Dem?" Smudge asks.
"Oh, we've met."
"Who are you?" Smudge asks again.
"Call me Q." He moves away from the wall to closer inspect Sylar.
"Q," Smudge repeats, wondering what kind of name that is. "Are you here to help me?"
"If I say yes, you're just going to rattle off a laundry list of chores, aren't you? Save Spock, save Sasan, kill Sylar, buy you a pony..."
"I don't want a pony."
"Ah, but this is a special pony," Q says. "It's bisexual."
"Are you going to help me or not?" Smudge demands, raising a fist. It gleams in a sudden lens flare.
Q raises an eyebrow. "Aggression. Just another trait symbolic of the inferiority of your race." He wanders casually through the redshirts. "Here's what's going to happen," he says. "You get to tell me one thing to do. Just one. Spock, Sasan, Sylar, pony, whatever else you can think of." Q lowers himself into a sit, fingers steepling beneath his chin. "And I'll do it."
"...anything?" Smudge asks.
Q shrugs. "Within logical possibility. Just one."
"...I just want to be happy," Smudge says softly.
"Is that it?" Q asks. "That'll cost you a dollar for the Prozac-"
"No!" Smudge says.
Q sighs. "What would you prefer? Memory wipe? I could do that. You'll forget everything bad that ever happened to you. Quite a few good things too, but-"
"No," Smudge says, but the cogs are turning. "Memory..."
"What is it."
Smudge hesitates, working things out, coming back to that same, elegant solution...
"Give Sylar a copy of my memories," he says quietly. "A copy of my mind. In place of his."
Q slowly stands up.
"It'd work, wouldn't it?" Smudge asks. "He'd become like me, and then... then he'd understand, and he could bring Sasan back, and kill himself..."
"That could be fun," Q says, and saunters over to Sylar as Smudge follows him with his eyes. "Come here," he says, and Smudge does.
Q extends a hand to Smudge's head and another to the time-frozen Sylar. A moment passes, and then he lowers his hands. "You have half an hour," he says; then time starts moving again, Q has disappeared, and Sylar is no longer Sylar.
*
CHAPTER THREE >>