To Kill A Watchmaker - Heroes - Gabriel/Claire - 4/11
Title: To Kill A Watchmaker
Pairing: Claire/Gabriel
Rating: PG
Wordcount: Part 4: 1963 words
Disclaimer: Characters and situations belong to NBC and the show's writing and production staff.
Spoilers: Up to the end of Season3 + one small season 4 spoiler
Request: inspired by this original request by freaky_anomaly on sylar_claire: the main points being: Claire meets Gabriel before he becomes Sylar; he does not become Sylar in the story; they have all their abilities; Gabriel is the sweet, socially awkward, shy type; Gabriel is a virgin (or at least very inexperienced). Not sure if I get the promised cookie, but it got my muse going so here is (nearly) what the OP wanted.
Author's Note: Many thanks to cameroncrazed for providing another pair of eyes! Sorry for the late posting of this part - it's due to a combination of real life factors and multiplying plot bunnies...
Summary: Claire goes back in time to kill Sylar just before his power manifested, but discovers that Gabriel Gray isn't yet the man she's looking for.
After visiting Dr Suresh with Gabriel and avoiding her father by kissing him, Claire agrees to go to Gabriel's place to look up Peter, whom she thinks might be willing to help her.
It didn't seem possible, but Gabriel's apartment was even more depressing than his shop. Although the ceilings were high, the walls were covered in bookcases, giving the series of rooms a claustrophobic feel. The first room they entered appeared to be the kitchen; white wooden units lined one wall, with cupboards and shelves above them, but all the other walls were covered in books. There were even books stacked on top of the refrigerator.
Gabriel placed his keys on a hook beside the door and walked through the opening to their right. Not knowing what else to do, Claire followed him. The second room, down a short corridor, was large but sparsely furnished; a cream easy chair still in its plastic wrapping, a large display case which looked as if it came from his shop, a desk, various mismatched chairs and tables, and, in a separate section at the back of the room, behind a bookcase, a single bed. Once again, every wall was covered with bookcases, even the small section between the high sash windows. The only break was a mirrored door on the wall behind the display case.
Claire was struck by the stark contrast between this musty-smelling apartment and the spacious, newly decorated rental houses where she had grown up. She thought about sitting on the easy chair, but was afraid her jeans would rub noisily against the plastic. Instead, she sat on a narrow dining chair in front of the desk.
"You must read a lot," she said.
"I do, but most of these books aren't mine," said Gabriel, sifting through the mail he had picked up downstairs. "This was my grandparents' apartment; they lived here for something like fifty years."
"I can tell. I mean, it's… I'm surprised you've never redecorated. Or maybe got rid of some of the books?"
Gabriel sorted his mail into neat stacks and looked around. "No, I've never really felt it was mine. Technically, I guess it belongs to my uncle. My grandparents' eldest son. No one has seen him for about thirty years, but he sometimes keeps in touch with my father, so I guess there's always the possibility he might come back. When Nana died, I moved in and no one said anything, so I just stayed on." Gabriel pulled out a laptop from under a pile of papers and started it up. "I'll, uh, just get you into a browser so you can do your search for your uncle."
He seemed a little embarrassed and Claire wondered if he was trying to hide something. She had spent the last few years sharing the family computer with Lyle, after all, and could imagine what a bachelor might be doing with an Internet connection.
A search in the white pages revealed a Manhattan address and fixed line number for Peter Petrelli. Gabriel brought an old-fashioned black telephone in from the corridor, running its long wire across the floor. It was the first time Claire had ever had to turn a dial to enter a number and her nails grated on the old plastic. When the call connected, she listened to Peter's husky voice asking her to leave a message, but hung up without saying anything. Even a man as idealistic and generous as Peter might be reluctant to help someone who claimed to be a niece he didn't know he had from the future. It was also probable that he didn't know about his abilities yet.
Claire wrote down Peter's address and number, but decided that she needed a plan before she tried to contact him again. It occurred to her that she could use her foreknowledge to do more than save Gabriel. People like Linderman were still alive at this time, plotting their convoluted plan to blow up New York. Claire needed to think about what she knew and what she could do about it.
"Petrelli? That rings a bell," said Gabriel looking over her shoulder.
His tone was conversational, but Claire couldn't help giving him a worried look. Gabriel was putting the phone back in its place in the corridor and didn't notice.
"Oh, I know," he continued. "It was some guy whose wife was involved in a car accident. Some kind of city official. I read about it in the paper this morning."
"Yes, Peter's brother Nathan was… is the DA. Or assistant DA, I forget." It seemed odd to be telling Sylar who the Petrellis were, given all the history there was between them in her time. "He's running for senator. Or he will be very soon... Anyway, he became a senator in the end."
She realised that she rarely spoke about Nathan these days.
"A senator?" Gabriel seemed amused. "They must be a rich family. You really have it all. Beauty, money, time travel… Listen, I'll have a look at the dinner situation, but I doubt it's going to be what you're used to."
Claire closed the browser and noticed that Gabriel's desktop image was a picture of an eclipse. It seemed ironic given what would happen to him during the eclipse only a year later. On the other hand, there was no reason to believe that her father would slit Gabriel's throat if the timeline had changed. Claire shut down the computer and joined him in the kitchen.
"I have some spaghetti and some, um, kosher meatballs," said Gabriel, inspecting a packet he had pulled out of the freezer compartment. "I should have got some groceries on the way home."
"Kosher? I didn't know you were Jewish."
"I'm not." Gabriel laughed. He measured out a quantity of water into a pan and put it on the stove to boil. "I had a Jewish girlfriend once who was very religious and I got to like this brand."
"You had a Jewish girlfriend?" exclaimed Claire, sounding rather too surprised even to her own ears.
"What, is my future self a Nazi as well as everything else?" He sounded half serious.
"No, nothing like that, it's just… I guess I thought…"
Claire knew that Sylar had had at least one girlfriend -- Elle -- but Gabriel didn't seem the type to have that kind of relationship with anyone. On the other hand, she realised that she was judging the book by its cover.
"You thought a nerd like me wouldn't have a girlfriend," he said flatly.
For want of a more rational explanation, Claire flashed her best 'blonde bimbo' smile. "Um, sorry. I used to be a cheerleader. I can be really shallow sometimes."
Gabriel smiled. "Cheerleader. Yeah, you mentioned that." As he spoke, Gabriel opened a jar of tomato sauce, emptied it into a saucepan and carefully spooned some herbs into the mix. "If you really need to know, she was the only one. I guess she was a fellow nerd and we were contemplating breeding a gaggle of nerdlings for a while."
"But it didn't work out?"
"No. Like I said, she came from a very religious family." He weighed the spaghetti before pouring it into the pan of boiling water. "It wasn't a problem from my point of view. I learned everything I could about her faith and what I'd have to do to really become part of her life. I thought it would be a chance to reinvent myself. Become part of a structured society where I would have a place, rules to follow, clear guidelines on how to live my life. It would have meant a few sacrifices, of course."
Claire noticed that his cheeks had gone red again and she had to fight back an irrational urge to give him a hug. Gabriel paused as he lowered the heat under the tomato sauce and counted an even number of meatballs into the pan.
"But then I told my Mom about it," he said flatly. "And that was the end of that."
"You were willing to convert for this woman, but you let your mother talk you out of it?"
"You haven't met my mother. I was only twenty-two and it's mostly been just the two of us after my dad left…" Gabriel shrugged, though Claire could tell it bothered him more than he wanted to admit. "But anyway, no, I'm not Jewish. My most distant known ancestor was apparently a man called Grajinski who came over from Poland in the 19th century. Probably Catholic, though. He obviously decided an English name and a conversion to Protestantism would be beneficial… and ecce Gray!"
Leaving Claire puzzled by his last pronouncement, Gabriel turned on the lights. As the fluorescent tubes flickered into life, Gabriel looked around at the bookshelves and old-fashioned kitchen.
"I guess ever since I broke up with Lilly, I've been… It's like I've been holding my breath, waiting for something to happen. Knowing that something was going to happen; something important." He glanced at Claire. "Not something that involved me becoming the worst serial killer in recent history, either. I'm meant for something bigger. Something important. I know it now."
Claire didn't know what to say. She had never felt that call of destiny, just the weight of the constant adversity fate threw her way. Gabriel and Peter were lucky to feel special. Claire just felt like a freak.
"Hey," said Gabriel and he put his arm around her. Claire leaned into the embrace, because no one ever hugged her now all her parents were gone. "Why don't you tell me about you for a change?"
"There's nothing much to say," she said, even though it was an obvious lie.
"Hmm." Leaning against him, Claire could hear the low sound rumble in his chest. "You could start by telling me about your ability."
Claire drew away. "My ability?"
"Yes. This one."
Gabriel pricked his finger with a carving knife. A drop of blood formed; he wiped it off and showed her the clean, unbroken skin underneath. Claire stared at his finger, her worst fears confirmed. She had come to kill Sylar and she had made him invincible.
"When we were on the bus, I figured you might be wrong about me needing to look at people's brains," explained Gabriel. "It seemed unnecessary if I'm supposed to be really good at understanding how abilities work. I mean, if I want to find out what's wrong with a clock, I watch the hands, listen to it, shake it to see if the sound changes… It's kind of difficult to explain. The first thing I do isn't to open it up and poke around inside. Though that obviously helps too."
"You worked out how to mimic my ability while we were on the bus?"
"I didn't know that it would actually work," he said, his dark eyes bright with enthusiasm. "I just… tested the theory, as it were. It was obvious you had to have an ability when you said you didn't want to talk about it. So I paid more attention and it was like I could feel your emotions, how conflicted you are about your ability, about me, about being here. It wasn't until you burned your lip on the cup that I understood what your ability was. Then it was like something clicked in my mind. I just knew what I needed to do to be like you and I felt… different. It was… God, Claire, it was the best thing I've ever felt in my life. Like a part of me that had been switched off suddenly came alive… Shit!"
Gabriel turned down the heat under the spaghetti, which had started to boil over. He let the conversation drop as he concentrated on getting the dinner ready. Claire looked through his cupboards and laid the table in the kitchen, her head spinning from the implications of what Gabriel had just done.
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