Heroes Fic: The Persistance of Memory (The Dragon Slayer Remix)
Ooo, look! Today's reveal day for Remix Redux! I had so much to choose from from my assignment, mumblemutter, because there was both Heroes and Trek fic! I'm so spoiled! Anyway, this is the first Heroes I've wrote in a while... Since my hope_in_sight fic for perdiccas, in fact! Nice to revisit my boys.
Title: The Persistence of Memory (The Dragon-Slayer Remix)
Pairing: Sylar/Peter, Nathan/Peter implied
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Violence
Notes: Written for the Remix Redux challenge, and based on mumblemutter's fic To See Us Once Beautiful and Brave. Set during episode 4x18, The Wall
Summary: Sylar doesn't know what, exactly, Peter wants him to do about the memories.
We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us.
- Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
One morning during the third year of solitude, Sylar has a dream. He dreams that Peter Petrelli comes to tell him this place isn’t real, that it’s all a trick Matt Parkman has concocted, that the torture he’s been suffering is only in his own mind.
Except that it’s possible Peter isn’t a dream, because he doesn’t fade away like the other ghosts who occasionally plague Sylar. He stays, and he broods just like he always did, with those ridiculous bangs hanging in his eyes, and he keeps looking for a way out. It’s possible, just possible that he may be real.
--
Peter doesn’t take well to a solitary life. He tries keeping away, sitting on roofs alone and silent, but Sylar could have told him that wouldn’t work for long. Peter has always been a social creature, and solitude weighs even heavier on him than it does on Sylar. Still, there’s something about the weariness in Peter’s eyes and the slump of his shoulders Sylar doesn’t like to see.
When he says, because he has to say something, “You look tired. Bad dreams?” Sylar recognizes the look Peter gives him in return. It’s the look of someone who wants to kill you as slowly and painfully as possible. On Peter the expression looks shocking and cruel: woefully out of place on a man who’s always trying to save everyone.
Sylar backs away slowly, suddenly terrified that he’s wrong after all, that Peter is only some creation of his own mind-for no one else could be so sadistic. He says, “I should go.”
Peter tries to return a smile, and that’s enough to show Sylar that he’s no figment. Only Peter himself would think to attempt a smile through such thorough misery.
--
Peter’s appearance is both a blessing and a curse. Peter’s hatred, or more often his indifference, hurts Sylar in a way total solitude never did. But Peter also represents a chance; if he can get Peter to see how he’s changed, how he can be redeemed, then maybe it will be true. He doesn’t like to think about how much he needs Peter to make it true.
But Peter’s obsessed with escape; he seems uninterested in Sylar. He barely acknowledges him. Still, that’s better company than Sylar’s had in three years. He knows how pathetic it is to be grateful. He’s grateful all the same.
He dreams of Kirby Plaza: of Peter bludgeoning him with a broken-off parking meter. When Sylar’s finally lying broken on the pavement, Peter drops his weapon and crouches. He glows with the radioactive energy of Ted Sprague’s power.
“Help me,” he says softly.
Sylar pushes painfully to his feet, gathers Peter in his arms, and takes off into the sky.
--
Sylar wracks his brain for a few days to think of a peace offering. He remembers the artist, Isaac Mendez. Comic books. Peter liked comic books. Sylar knows a few buildings in the area, abandoned shops and the like, where he can sometimes find unusual items. He searches for almost a week before he finds a stash of comic books. He smiles when he sees the pile of Ninth Wonders.
After Peter rejects the comics, Sylar tries giving him a watch. After that doesn’t get the reaction he intended, he’s not sure what to try next. Peter saves him the trouble by bringing him a snow globe.
“There’s a whole room of them,” Peter says. “Now why would you dream up something like that?”
An excellent question, and one that tips Sylar further toward the opinion that this place really is some sick creation of his mind. “My mother collected them,” Sylar says, and after that it’s a matter of moments before the rest comes out: the accident. Then come the accusations. Sylar killed his mother, Peter killed his father, or as good as. After, there’s a renewed silence, solid as a wall.
That night Sylar goes to bed with his words to Peter ringing in his ears: ”Perhaps that makes us even.” The wounded expression on Peter’s face hurt. Worse, Sylar knew that Peter’s attempt to end that monster’s life was if anything, an act of heroism. Not like Gabriel the coward’s reckless accident, killing the only person who’d ever loved him.
When Sylar finally sleeps, he dreams of a familiar little apartment in Queens. He sees the scissors pressing into flesh, but when he looks up it’s Angela’s face frozen in horror, Angela’s blood running over his fingers. In the corner, Peter has turned away, burying his face against Nathan’s shoulder. Nathan meets Sylar’s eyes with a knowing smile.
--
No one has burrowed inside Sylar this way, not like Nathan. Then again, no one ever lived in his skin for months.
Sylar doesn’t know any more which dreams belong to him and which to Nathan. Most of the memories he can easily classify, but the dreams blend together in shared unreality. Sometimes the memories blend with the dreams, and then Sylar wakes up in a tangle, a Gordian knot of consciousness that he can’t bear to cut through. He could probably root Nathan out entirely: destroy every memory that might be his. But that would mean losing his best chance with Peter. Peter, who only tolerates him for the reminder he provides of the man Peter loves the most.
“Don’t speak about him. Ever,” Peter says one day.
The next night, when Sylar’s washing the dinner dishes, Peter comes to stand right behind him, whisky-laden breath hot in Sylar’s ear. “Tell me he loved me,” he whispers.
Sylar holds the pot he’s washing under water that’s rapidly becoming too hot. “If this is a test, I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“Forget it.” Peter goes to his room and doesn’t come out for the three days.
--
At first the truth about Peter flickers at the edges of Sylar’s memories-that-are-not-his-memories. He doesn’t look too closely at how Nathan remembers Peter, not yet. Part of him longs desperately to feel what Nathan felt as the object of his younger brother’s hero worship. Another part of him fears he’ll find a memory of the two brothers united against him, talking easily together about Sylar’s pathetic monstrousness. So he doesn’t look too hard at Nathan’s memories.
Then comes the incident in the workshop. Peter’s agitated, pacing frenetically. Three hundred seventy-one days in this God-forsaken place hasn’t worn out Peter’s urge to save the world right now. Sylar’s not convinced that Peter’s right about a world still going on somewhere outside this place, so he works unhurriedly on the latest watch he’s taken apart for the sole purpose of having something to put back together.
“How can you sit there so damn calmly?” Peter demands.
“What would you have me do?” Sylar slowly picks up another cog. He knows his refusal to escalate will irritate Peter; it’s a method that always worked for Nathan.
“Help me!” Peter storms over to Sylar’s table. “Get your head out of this fantasy world!” He lunges forward and sweeps his arm across the desk, sending tiny clockworks tumbling irretrievably into the crevices between warped floorboards. “Listen to me!”
“Okay.” Sylar sits back and lets his legs fall apart slightly, as Nathan did when he sat at his desk. “You’ve got my attention.”
Peter clenches his fists hard, as if he’s going to throw a punch. Then all the anger seems to bleed out of him. He bends down to lean his forehead against the surface of the table. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“Shh.” Sylar’s hand hovers above Peter’s neck for a moment until he finds his courage. He presses his fingers deliberately against Peter’s nape, just the way he knows will calm him. Peter gives a shuddery exhale. He presses into Sylar’s touch and raises his head, slowly.
“Pete,” Sylar says. The word resonates deep within him. It must hit a sympathetic note with Peter; his eyes widen and he holds very still when Sylar leans forward.
When Peter’s lips meet his, the taste sends illumination shining into the shadowy recesses of Sylar’s mind where Nathan’s memories have lain discarded. First he remembers the taste: Peter’s sweet-clean mouth. Next he remembers a single kiss: Nathan’s hand gripping the back of Peter’s neck and pulling him close. Then the memories come crowding forward, a stampede threatening to sweep Sylar away: raw lust, shame, exasperation, longing, affection, regret, contentment, resentment, pleasure, anguish, and through it all the half-painful brightness of what could only be love.
Sylar stumbles back. Once he’s broken contact, the clamoring roar of the memories subsides to a low rumble. “Sorry,” he mutters. He rushes out of the workshop without a backwards glance.
--
Sylar can’t un-know what he knows. Now that he’s seen some of Nathan’s memories of Peter, he can’t stop picking at them like a half-healed wound. He’ll see Peter stretch in the morning on his way to the bathroom. When he wonders if Nathan had ever seen him do that, he’s rewarded with a memory:
Peter’s apartment. Sickly gray light of a winter morning. Nathan’s propped up against the headboard. Peter by the window. He raises his hands to the ceiling. White undershirt riding up. A gap of tantalizingly pale skin above the waistband of his boxers. “Come over here,” Nathan calls.
Sylar feels dirty. He’s more of a voyeur than ever. Each time he looks at Peter, some fresh thought of Nathan’s bubbles up in his mind.
Peter takes off his jacket when he comes back from a walk. A holiday party at the Petrelli mansion. Peter, eighteen, holding a glass of champagne. Nathan’s hand wrapped around Peter’s neck, steering him to the back bedroom. Peter’s laugh, honest and open, as he teasingly strips.
A storm sneaks up while Peter and Sylar are out at the wall. They shelter together under the tin awning of a loading dock. Rain pounds on the top of the car. Peter on his knees; just enough space in the town car for this. Peter’s mouth around him. Brown eyes looking up at him, desperate and trusting.
Sylar starts avoiding Peter during the day.
He dreams of a hot afternoon on a rooftop he knows well, as he knows every corner of this prison. He dreams of Peter, head thrown back, long bare throat inviting as he stretches out beneath him. Peter is soft and yielding in a way Sylar’s never felt. “Come on,” Peter says. “Keep going. We’ve got to find a way out.” The smell of him is vivid: as strong a sense memory as Sylar’s ever experienced. Peter wraps his legs around Sylar’s waist, encouraging him to move. “I love you, Nathan.”
Sylar sits up in bed with a pounding heart and an insistent erection.
When he tells Peter what he’s deduced, he gets a punch in the face and two months of silent treatment.
--
Time takes the edge off the shock of having Nathan’s memories crop up at every turn. Most of Nathan’s memories seem safe: detached. They have no meaning here, because they involve times and people and places from long ago and far away. The Peter memories, however, pose a problem. They tangle with the here and now. Sylar finds himself unsure if what he remembers comes from Nathan or from the deep, dark well of his own memory. He knows he’s walking a dangerous line by using Nathan’s memories this way, but nothing else he’s done has reached Peter at all. He has to try.
He finds the chess set in a corner shop down the street, though he’s sure he’s never seen it there before. He’s learned to look for that sharp spark of interest in Peter’s eye, and he catches it when he walks in holding the board. Nathan’s an expert tactician; Sylar easily takes Peter’s queen twice in a row.
“Where’d you learn to play?” Peter asks.
“Oh, here and there.” Sylar’s hand freezes over his knight. He instantly knows that was the wrong answer. He forces his hand back into motion. The pity here is that he used to be a much better liar. Perhaps he’s out of practice.
“Nathan taught me how,” Peter is saying. “Funny, sometimes you play exactly like--.” Then Peter’s grip tightens on the edge of the table as he catches up. “You son of a bitch. I’ve told you--.”
“No,” Sylar says, even but sharp enough to stop Peter mid-rant. “I can’t help that he’s in me. I didn’t ask for his memories. Do you think I could root him out if I tried? He’s tenacious. You wanted to break free of him too, remember?”
Peter’s gone for months: no phone call, nothing. Dad trying not to show how furious he is. Mom mysterious, not saying if she knows what they don’t. He had made plans for that summer: long weekends down at the Cape where they could fuck uninterrupted all afternoon. Thrown away. Peter returns in the fall with a tan, a feigned air of aloofness, and a registration card for NYU’s nursing program. Nathan lets him alone, doesn’t call. Confident in his lure. Has Peter back in his bed within a week.
Peter’s mouth presses and thins; Sylar wonders if he’s remembering this attempt or some other.
“You failed,” Sylar says. “How can you blame me for not being able to get rid of him?”
“You don’t deserve him.” Peter’s voice is low, furious. “He’s more than you could ever hope to be.”
Then, worse than continuing the argument, worse than violence, Peter leaves him alone.
--
Peter climbs into his bed that night for the first time. It takes all of Sylar’s strength not to toss him out again. Peter’s hands on him feel good, but fear thrums through him, half drowning out the pleasure. Peter wants to hurt him, Sylar knows it.
Peter ruts against his back and shoves a hand into Sylar’s pants to grip his half-hard cock. “This seem familiar?” he hisses.
Sylar shakes his head. There was always reverence, always joy in the way Peter touched Nathan. This feels different. But Peter's here in bed with him, which is more than he could have hoped for. He's grateful for the rough, too-dry jerk-off.
Peter says, "You've seen his memories. I know you have. Tell me what it was like for him."
If Peter's testing him this time, Sylar knows he can't help but fail. He can't keep hold of coherent thought with the smell of sex and Peter all around him, with the feel of Peter's body against his.
"His memories-- the way he sees you," Sylar gasps. He wishes it wasn't so dark. He wants his own memories of Peter to counter the ones that fill his dreams now. "When he touched you, he knew how lucky he was. He wanted to protect you, keep you safe always. Peter--." He reaches down, but Peter slaps his hand away and keeps up a slow, tantalizing pace.
"Go on."
"The last time between you. You were so beautiful. He was so sorry."
Peter speeds up, and Sylar bucks into his grip desperately.
"He wanted you so badly, he wanted you to understand how much he needed you, but he was afraid, he was afraid, Peter, please!"
Peter tightens his grip and brushes his thumb against the head of Sylar's cock. "Do it, then," he says gruffly.
Sylar's hips jerk as he comes in Peter's hand.
Peter shoves Sylar roughly onto his stomach, drops on top of him, and ruts furiously against his ass. At last he makes a small, strangled groan and slumps against Sylar.
Sylar knows all the sounds of Peter's breathing, because Nathan knows them. Now Peter's breath comes rough and choppy, and not just from exertion. Sylar rolls gently out from under Peter and turns. Half expecting resistance, he reaches out wrap his arms around Peter. Peter allows himself to be pulled in, and rests his face against Sylar's shoulder.
"I love you," Sylar whispers. He rests his fingers against the back of Peter's neck. "I love you."
--
Sylar reads. It’s something Nathan wished he’d had more time to do. Even when Peter isn’t speaking to him, they sometimes still sit silently together in the living room. Sylar interrupts his twenty-first re-reading of The Pillars of Earth to pick up For Whom the Bell Tolls. Mid-afternoon, he hears Peter coming back to the apartment, and so he props his feet up on the couch the way he knows Nathan did.
He looks up to see Peter staring at him from the doorway. "Pete?"
"That isn't yours."
"What, I'm not allowed to read?" But he knows what Peter means. He's seen the memory: Peter's sophomore year dorm room. Nathan's knock on the door. Not sure of his reception. Peter waves wearily from his desk. "Brought you something." Nathan drifts into the room and sets down the book next to the notebook Peter's writing in. "Something I read when I was in college. Hemingway is..." Nervous laugh. "Manly." Peter's glare cuts him. Nathan's mood falls. His hand on the book again. "If you don't want it-."
"No." Peter's hand darts out over Nathan's. "Thanks."
Peter crosses the room in four quick strides, snatches the book out of Sylar's hands, and proceeds to rip out pages by the handful. Sylar reaches out to stop him, but Peter holds the book out of his reach until he's destroyed it beyond repair. Without even a look at Sylar, he storms out again.
Sylar looks at the scraps of paper littering the floor. He follows Peter. He's not surprised to find him at the wall.
Peter's lashing out with bare hands, his wordless screams interspersed with the sick-sounding thud of flesh against unyielding brick.
"Peter." Sylar closes the distance between them cautiously. He grabs Peter's shoulder, but Peter shrugs him off. Peter keeps pounding at the wall until Sylar drags him bodily away.
They sink to the ground, Sylar's back propped against the wall and Peter clinging to him, gasping for air with great, wet sobs.
"It's okay. Shh." Sylar rests his hand against the back of Peter's neck. "It's okay." Peter can't let go, and for the first time Sylar feels a bit of the God-like satisfaction Nathan always had, that this man should love him.
--
Sylar wants to be good for Peter. He wants Peter to love him the same way he loved Nathan. He tries to give Peter everything Nathan gave.
He lets Peter come to him, but when he does, he doesn't hold back any trick he can think of to please him. He's lucky to have an arsenal of tricks from one person who knew only too well how to please Peter.
"Relax," Sylar says.
"I told you not to talk," Peter shoots back. He leans his head back onto the pillow and closes his eyes.
Sylar understands. He's never the one Peter really wants. But perhaps one of these times he can make Peter forget that.
He pushes Peter's thighs apart. He makes sure his touch is certain and authoritative, just like Nathan's. He doesn't tease; he sucks cock efficiently. When his head is bobbing up and down Peter's dick, Peter makes these quiet, high-pitched huffs that heat Sylar's blood.
This time, Peter grips Sylar's hair, hard. He holds him still and bucks up against him, fucking his face mercilessly. Sylar relaxes his throat, breathes through his nose, and takes it. When Peter comes, he pulls Sylar down all the way and holds him there while he empties down Sylar's throat. Peter never did this to Nathan. This is something he only gives Sylar. The thought warms him for weeks.
--
Sylar dreams of a birthday party. He's just come back from somewhere--for some reason he thinks it's Bosnia. Angela is there, and his mother; the front of her sweater is stained with blood.
His mother says, "Happy birthday, baby." She hands him a pair of scissors wrapped with a bright red bow.
Angela says, "I have a surprise for you." She motions behind him, and Peter steps into the room. He goes to stand shyly next to Angela. "He's your brother."
Sylar looks to his mother for confirmation, and she just beams at him.
"I'm giving him to you," Angela says. She shoos Peter forward. "Go on."
Peter looks up at Sylar from under his bangs and smiles shyly. "I missed you," he says.
When Sylar wakes up, he takes a few seconds to calculate what day it is. He goes right to the kitchen to bake Peter a cake.
--
One morning, before dawn, Peter's bed is empty. Sylar walks down to the wall to find Peter slumped against it, asleep. Sylar stops back by the apartment for a blanket and a thermos. The blanket he drapes over Peter. Then he settles himself against the wall a respectful distance away and waits.
Peter wakes with the sun breaking over the wall. Sylar pours a steaming hot cup from the thermos and offers it to him. "Tea?"
"Thanks." Peter wraps his hands around the cup and stares into it for a while, as if preparing to read his fortune in tea leaves. Finally, he says, "I wonder if each of the bricks in the wall represents something terrible you've done."
Sylar doesn't bother to look up at the wall. He's walked its perimeter before; the trip took five hours, ten minutes, and twenty-five seconds. The wall is enormous. Perhaps it could match the weight of his sins.
Peter puts his hand on a brick to his right. "Elle." He moves his hand to the next brick down. "Molly Walker's parents." Next brick. "Isaac Mendez." Next. "Ted Sprague."
Sylar doesn't want to know how long Peter can go on. "You know so many of them," he says weakly.
"Not all of them." Peter takes a sip of his tea.
"I don't want there to be any secrets between us," Sylar says. He knows about all the secrets Nathan kept, how much they hurt. "I want to tell you everything."
Peter's expression sours. He shoves his cup back at Sylar, shrugs off the blanket, and stands. "Don't ask me for forgiveness. You're not going to get it from me."
Sylar stays sitting by the wall as the sun rises, watching the light turn each brick a brighter red.
That afternoon, he digs a leather-bound notebook out of a pile of supplies. He writes. Not just the people he’s killed, but all his sins: the venial as well as the mortal. He describes what he did, and resists the temptation to explain or make excuses. He fills an entire notebook. On the top of the last page he writes Nathan’s name. Of course, Peter will clearly understand this sin, so Sylar doesn’t elaborate. At the bottom of the page, he writes Peter’s name, because he’s wronged him, too.
He hands Peter the notebook and walks away. He never asks if he reads it. Sylar prefers to imagine that he does. But if he doesn’t, Sylar will live with that.
--
Peter comes to his bed that night. He settles himself against Sylar's back. Sylar waits for the usual rough treatment, but it doesn't come.
Instead, Peter traces a hand down Sylar's side. "Are you afraid?" he whispers.
Sylar shakes his head. "Not anymore."
Title: The Persistence of Memory (The Dragon-Slayer Remix)
Pairing: Sylar/Peter, Nathan/Peter implied
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Violence
Notes: Written for the Remix Redux challenge, and based on mumblemutter's fic To See Us Once Beautiful and Brave. Set during episode 4x18, The Wall
Summary: Sylar doesn't know what, exactly, Peter wants him to do about the memories.
We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us.
- Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
One morning during the third year of solitude, Sylar has a dream. He dreams that Peter Petrelli comes to tell him this place isn’t real, that it’s all a trick Matt Parkman has concocted, that the torture he’s been suffering is only in his own mind.
Except that it’s possible Peter isn’t a dream, because he doesn’t fade away like the other ghosts who occasionally plague Sylar. He stays, and he broods just like he always did, with those ridiculous bangs hanging in his eyes, and he keeps looking for a way out. It’s possible, just possible that he may be real.
--
Peter doesn’t take well to a solitary life. He tries keeping away, sitting on roofs alone and silent, but Sylar could have told him that wouldn’t work for long. Peter has always been a social creature, and solitude weighs even heavier on him than it does on Sylar. Still, there’s something about the weariness in Peter’s eyes and the slump of his shoulders Sylar doesn’t like to see.
When he says, because he has to say something, “You look tired. Bad dreams?” Sylar recognizes the look Peter gives him in return. It’s the look of someone who wants to kill you as slowly and painfully as possible. On Peter the expression looks shocking and cruel: woefully out of place on a man who’s always trying to save everyone.
Sylar backs away slowly, suddenly terrified that he’s wrong after all, that Peter is only some creation of his own mind-for no one else could be so sadistic. He says, “I should go.”
Peter tries to return a smile, and that’s enough to show Sylar that he’s no figment. Only Peter himself would think to attempt a smile through such thorough misery.
--
Peter’s appearance is both a blessing and a curse. Peter’s hatred, or more often his indifference, hurts Sylar in a way total solitude never did. But Peter also represents a chance; if he can get Peter to see how he’s changed, how he can be redeemed, then maybe it will be true. He doesn’t like to think about how much he needs Peter to make it true.
But Peter’s obsessed with escape; he seems uninterested in Sylar. He barely acknowledges him. Still, that’s better company than Sylar’s had in three years. He knows how pathetic it is to be grateful. He’s grateful all the same.
He dreams of Kirby Plaza: of Peter bludgeoning him with a broken-off parking meter. When Sylar’s finally lying broken on the pavement, Peter drops his weapon and crouches. He glows with the radioactive energy of Ted Sprague’s power.
“Help me,” he says softly.
Sylar pushes painfully to his feet, gathers Peter in his arms, and takes off into the sky.
--
Sylar wracks his brain for a few days to think of a peace offering. He remembers the artist, Isaac Mendez. Comic books. Peter liked comic books. Sylar knows a few buildings in the area, abandoned shops and the like, where he can sometimes find unusual items. He searches for almost a week before he finds a stash of comic books. He smiles when he sees the pile of Ninth Wonders.
After Peter rejects the comics, Sylar tries giving him a watch. After that doesn’t get the reaction he intended, he’s not sure what to try next. Peter saves him the trouble by bringing him a snow globe.
“There’s a whole room of them,” Peter says. “Now why would you dream up something like that?”
An excellent question, and one that tips Sylar further toward the opinion that this place really is some sick creation of his mind. “My mother collected them,” Sylar says, and after that it’s a matter of moments before the rest comes out: the accident. Then come the accusations. Sylar killed his mother, Peter killed his father, or as good as. After, there’s a renewed silence, solid as a wall.
That night Sylar goes to bed with his words to Peter ringing in his ears: ”Perhaps that makes us even.” The wounded expression on Peter’s face hurt. Worse, Sylar knew that Peter’s attempt to end that monster’s life was if anything, an act of heroism. Not like Gabriel the coward’s reckless accident, killing the only person who’d ever loved him.
When Sylar finally sleeps, he dreams of a familiar little apartment in Queens. He sees the scissors pressing into flesh, but when he looks up it’s Angela’s face frozen in horror, Angela’s blood running over his fingers. In the corner, Peter has turned away, burying his face against Nathan’s shoulder. Nathan meets Sylar’s eyes with a knowing smile.
--
No one has burrowed inside Sylar this way, not like Nathan. Then again, no one ever lived in his skin for months.
Sylar doesn’t know any more which dreams belong to him and which to Nathan. Most of the memories he can easily classify, but the dreams blend together in shared unreality. Sometimes the memories blend with the dreams, and then Sylar wakes up in a tangle, a Gordian knot of consciousness that he can’t bear to cut through. He could probably root Nathan out entirely: destroy every memory that might be his. But that would mean losing his best chance with Peter. Peter, who only tolerates him for the reminder he provides of the man Peter loves the most.
“Don’t speak about him. Ever,” Peter says one day.
The next night, when Sylar’s washing the dinner dishes, Peter comes to stand right behind him, whisky-laden breath hot in Sylar’s ear. “Tell me he loved me,” he whispers.
Sylar holds the pot he’s washing under water that’s rapidly becoming too hot. “If this is a test, I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“Forget it.” Peter goes to his room and doesn’t come out for the three days.
--
At first the truth about Peter flickers at the edges of Sylar’s memories-that-are-not-his-memories. He doesn’t look too closely at how Nathan remembers Peter, not yet. Part of him longs desperately to feel what Nathan felt as the object of his younger brother’s hero worship. Another part of him fears he’ll find a memory of the two brothers united against him, talking easily together about Sylar’s pathetic monstrousness. So he doesn’t look too hard at Nathan’s memories.
Then comes the incident in the workshop. Peter’s agitated, pacing frenetically. Three hundred seventy-one days in this God-forsaken place hasn’t worn out Peter’s urge to save the world right now. Sylar’s not convinced that Peter’s right about a world still going on somewhere outside this place, so he works unhurriedly on the latest watch he’s taken apart for the sole purpose of having something to put back together.
“How can you sit there so damn calmly?” Peter demands.
“What would you have me do?” Sylar slowly picks up another cog. He knows his refusal to escalate will irritate Peter; it’s a method that always worked for Nathan.
“Help me!” Peter storms over to Sylar’s table. “Get your head out of this fantasy world!” He lunges forward and sweeps his arm across the desk, sending tiny clockworks tumbling irretrievably into the crevices between warped floorboards. “Listen to me!”
“Okay.” Sylar sits back and lets his legs fall apart slightly, as Nathan did when he sat at his desk. “You’ve got my attention.”
Peter clenches his fists hard, as if he’s going to throw a punch. Then all the anger seems to bleed out of him. He bends down to lean his forehead against the surface of the table. “I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“Shh.” Sylar’s hand hovers above Peter’s neck for a moment until he finds his courage. He presses his fingers deliberately against Peter’s nape, just the way he knows will calm him. Peter gives a shuddery exhale. He presses into Sylar’s touch and raises his head, slowly.
“Pete,” Sylar says. The word resonates deep within him. It must hit a sympathetic note with Peter; his eyes widen and he holds very still when Sylar leans forward.
When Peter’s lips meet his, the taste sends illumination shining into the shadowy recesses of Sylar’s mind where Nathan’s memories have lain discarded. First he remembers the taste: Peter’s sweet-clean mouth. Next he remembers a single kiss: Nathan’s hand gripping the back of Peter’s neck and pulling him close. Then the memories come crowding forward, a stampede threatening to sweep Sylar away: raw lust, shame, exasperation, longing, affection, regret, contentment, resentment, pleasure, anguish, and through it all the half-painful brightness of what could only be love.
Sylar stumbles back. Once he’s broken contact, the clamoring roar of the memories subsides to a low rumble. “Sorry,” he mutters. He rushes out of the workshop without a backwards glance.
--
Sylar can’t un-know what he knows. Now that he’s seen some of Nathan’s memories of Peter, he can’t stop picking at them like a half-healed wound. He’ll see Peter stretch in the morning on his way to the bathroom. When he wonders if Nathan had ever seen him do that, he’s rewarded with a memory:
Peter’s apartment. Sickly gray light of a winter morning. Nathan’s propped up against the headboard. Peter by the window. He raises his hands to the ceiling. White undershirt riding up. A gap of tantalizingly pale skin above the waistband of his boxers. “Come over here,” Nathan calls.
Sylar feels dirty. He’s more of a voyeur than ever. Each time he looks at Peter, some fresh thought of Nathan’s bubbles up in his mind.
Peter takes off his jacket when he comes back from a walk. A holiday party at the Petrelli mansion. Peter, eighteen, holding a glass of champagne. Nathan’s hand wrapped around Peter’s neck, steering him to the back bedroom. Peter’s laugh, honest and open, as he teasingly strips.
A storm sneaks up while Peter and Sylar are out at the wall. They shelter together under the tin awning of a loading dock. Rain pounds on the top of the car. Peter on his knees; just enough space in the town car for this. Peter’s mouth around him. Brown eyes looking up at him, desperate and trusting.
Sylar starts avoiding Peter during the day.
He dreams of a hot afternoon on a rooftop he knows well, as he knows every corner of this prison. He dreams of Peter, head thrown back, long bare throat inviting as he stretches out beneath him. Peter is soft and yielding in a way Sylar’s never felt. “Come on,” Peter says. “Keep going. We’ve got to find a way out.” The smell of him is vivid: as strong a sense memory as Sylar’s ever experienced. Peter wraps his legs around Sylar’s waist, encouraging him to move. “I love you, Nathan.”
Sylar sits up in bed with a pounding heart and an insistent erection.
When he tells Peter what he’s deduced, he gets a punch in the face and two months of silent treatment.
--
Time takes the edge off the shock of having Nathan’s memories crop up at every turn. Most of Nathan’s memories seem safe: detached. They have no meaning here, because they involve times and people and places from long ago and far away. The Peter memories, however, pose a problem. They tangle with the here and now. Sylar finds himself unsure if what he remembers comes from Nathan or from the deep, dark well of his own memory. He knows he’s walking a dangerous line by using Nathan’s memories this way, but nothing else he’s done has reached Peter at all. He has to try.
He finds the chess set in a corner shop down the street, though he’s sure he’s never seen it there before. He’s learned to look for that sharp spark of interest in Peter’s eye, and he catches it when he walks in holding the board. Nathan’s an expert tactician; Sylar easily takes Peter’s queen twice in a row.
“Where’d you learn to play?” Peter asks.
“Oh, here and there.” Sylar’s hand freezes over his knight. He instantly knows that was the wrong answer. He forces his hand back into motion. The pity here is that he used to be a much better liar. Perhaps he’s out of practice.
“Nathan taught me how,” Peter is saying. “Funny, sometimes you play exactly like--.” Then Peter’s grip tightens on the edge of the table as he catches up. “You son of a bitch. I’ve told you--.”
“No,” Sylar says, even but sharp enough to stop Peter mid-rant. “I can’t help that he’s in me. I didn’t ask for his memories. Do you think I could root him out if I tried? He’s tenacious. You wanted to break free of him too, remember?”
Peter’s gone for months: no phone call, nothing. Dad trying not to show how furious he is. Mom mysterious, not saying if she knows what they don’t. He had made plans for that summer: long weekends down at the Cape where they could fuck uninterrupted all afternoon. Thrown away. Peter returns in the fall with a tan, a feigned air of aloofness, and a registration card for NYU’s nursing program. Nathan lets him alone, doesn’t call. Confident in his lure. Has Peter back in his bed within a week.
Peter’s mouth presses and thins; Sylar wonders if he’s remembering this attempt or some other.
“You failed,” Sylar says. “How can you blame me for not being able to get rid of him?”
“You don’t deserve him.” Peter’s voice is low, furious. “He’s more than you could ever hope to be.”
Then, worse than continuing the argument, worse than violence, Peter leaves him alone.
--
Peter climbs into his bed that night for the first time. It takes all of Sylar’s strength not to toss him out again. Peter’s hands on him feel good, but fear thrums through him, half drowning out the pleasure. Peter wants to hurt him, Sylar knows it.
Peter ruts against his back and shoves a hand into Sylar’s pants to grip his half-hard cock. “This seem familiar?” he hisses.
Sylar shakes his head. There was always reverence, always joy in the way Peter touched Nathan. This feels different. But Peter's here in bed with him, which is more than he could have hoped for. He's grateful for the rough, too-dry jerk-off.
Peter says, "You've seen his memories. I know you have. Tell me what it was like for him."
If Peter's testing him this time, Sylar knows he can't help but fail. He can't keep hold of coherent thought with the smell of sex and Peter all around him, with the feel of Peter's body against his.
"His memories-- the way he sees you," Sylar gasps. He wishes it wasn't so dark. He wants his own memories of Peter to counter the ones that fill his dreams now. "When he touched you, he knew how lucky he was. He wanted to protect you, keep you safe always. Peter--." He reaches down, but Peter slaps his hand away and keeps up a slow, tantalizing pace.
"Go on."
"The last time between you. You were so beautiful. He was so sorry."
Peter speeds up, and Sylar bucks into his grip desperately.
"He wanted you so badly, he wanted you to understand how much he needed you, but he was afraid, he was afraid, Peter, please!"
Peter tightens his grip and brushes his thumb against the head of Sylar's cock. "Do it, then," he says gruffly.
Sylar's hips jerk as he comes in Peter's hand.
Peter shoves Sylar roughly onto his stomach, drops on top of him, and ruts furiously against his ass. At last he makes a small, strangled groan and slumps against Sylar.
Sylar knows all the sounds of Peter's breathing, because Nathan knows them. Now Peter's breath comes rough and choppy, and not just from exertion. Sylar rolls gently out from under Peter and turns. Half expecting resistance, he reaches out wrap his arms around Peter. Peter allows himself to be pulled in, and rests his face against Sylar's shoulder.
"I love you," Sylar whispers. He rests his fingers against the back of Peter's neck. "I love you."
--
Sylar reads. It’s something Nathan wished he’d had more time to do. Even when Peter isn’t speaking to him, they sometimes still sit silently together in the living room. Sylar interrupts his twenty-first re-reading of The Pillars of Earth to pick up For Whom the Bell Tolls. Mid-afternoon, he hears Peter coming back to the apartment, and so he props his feet up on the couch the way he knows Nathan did.
He looks up to see Peter staring at him from the doorway. "Pete?"
"That isn't yours."
"What, I'm not allowed to read?" But he knows what Peter means. He's seen the memory: Peter's sophomore year dorm room. Nathan's knock on the door. Not sure of his reception. Peter waves wearily from his desk. "Brought you something." Nathan drifts into the room and sets down the book next to the notebook Peter's writing in. "Something I read when I was in college. Hemingway is..." Nervous laugh. "Manly." Peter's glare cuts him. Nathan's mood falls. His hand on the book again. "If you don't want it-."
"No." Peter's hand darts out over Nathan's. "Thanks."
Peter crosses the room in four quick strides, snatches the book out of Sylar's hands, and proceeds to rip out pages by the handful. Sylar reaches out to stop him, but Peter holds the book out of his reach until he's destroyed it beyond repair. Without even a look at Sylar, he storms out again.
Sylar looks at the scraps of paper littering the floor. He follows Peter. He's not surprised to find him at the wall.
Peter's lashing out with bare hands, his wordless screams interspersed with the sick-sounding thud of flesh against unyielding brick.
"Peter." Sylar closes the distance between them cautiously. He grabs Peter's shoulder, but Peter shrugs him off. Peter keeps pounding at the wall until Sylar drags him bodily away.
They sink to the ground, Sylar's back propped against the wall and Peter clinging to him, gasping for air with great, wet sobs.
"It's okay. Shh." Sylar rests his hand against the back of Peter's neck. "It's okay." Peter can't let go, and for the first time Sylar feels a bit of the God-like satisfaction Nathan always had, that this man should love him.
--
Sylar wants to be good for Peter. He wants Peter to love him the same way he loved Nathan. He tries to give Peter everything Nathan gave.
He lets Peter come to him, but when he does, he doesn't hold back any trick he can think of to please him. He's lucky to have an arsenal of tricks from one person who knew only too well how to please Peter.
"Relax," Sylar says.
"I told you not to talk," Peter shoots back. He leans his head back onto the pillow and closes his eyes.
Sylar understands. He's never the one Peter really wants. But perhaps one of these times he can make Peter forget that.
He pushes Peter's thighs apart. He makes sure his touch is certain and authoritative, just like Nathan's. He doesn't tease; he sucks cock efficiently. When his head is bobbing up and down Peter's dick, Peter makes these quiet, high-pitched huffs that heat Sylar's blood.
This time, Peter grips Sylar's hair, hard. He holds him still and bucks up against him, fucking his face mercilessly. Sylar relaxes his throat, breathes through his nose, and takes it. When Peter comes, he pulls Sylar down all the way and holds him there while he empties down Sylar's throat. Peter never did this to Nathan. This is something he only gives Sylar. The thought warms him for weeks.
--
Sylar dreams of a birthday party. He's just come back from somewhere--for some reason he thinks it's Bosnia. Angela is there, and his mother; the front of her sweater is stained with blood.
His mother says, "Happy birthday, baby." She hands him a pair of scissors wrapped with a bright red bow.
Angela says, "I have a surprise for you." She motions behind him, and Peter steps into the room. He goes to stand shyly next to Angela. "He's your brother."
Sylar looks to his mother for confirmation, and she just beams at him.
"I'm giving him to you," Angela says. She shoos Peter forward. "Go on."
Peter looks up at Sylar from under his bangs and smiles shyly. "I missed you," he says.
When Sylar wakes up, he takes a few seconds to calculate what day it is. He goes right to the kitchen to bake Peter a cake.
--
One morning, before dawn, Peter's bed is empty. Sylar walks down to the wall to find Peter slumped against it, asleep. Sylar stops back by the apartment for a blanket and a thermos. The blanket he drapes over Peter. Then he settles himself against the wall a respectful distance away and waits.
Peter wakes with the sun breaking over the wall. Sylar pours a steaming hot cup from the thermos and offers it to him. "Tea?"
"Thanks." Peter wraps his hands around the cup and stares into it for a while, as if preparing to read his fortune in tea leaves. Finally, he says, "I wonder if each of the bricks in the wall represents something terrible you've done."
Sylar doesn't bother to look up at the wall. He's walked its perimeter before; the trip took five hours, ten minutes, and twenty-five seconds. The wall is enormous. Perhaps it could match the weight of his sins.
Peter puts his hand on a brick to his right. "Elle." He moves his hand to the next brick down. "Molly Walker's parents." Next brick. "Isaac Mendez." Next. "Ted Sprague."
Sylar doesn't want to know how long Peter can go on. "You know so many of them," he says weakly.
"Not all of them." Peter takes a sip of his tea.
"I don't want there to be any secrets between us," Sylar says. He knows about all the secrets Nathan kept, how much they hurt. "I want to tell you everything."
Peter's expression sours. He shoves his cup back at Sylar, shrugs off the blanket, and stands. "Don't ask me for forgiveness. You're not going to get it from me."
Sylar stays sitting by the wall as the sun rises, watching the light turn each brick a brighter red.
That afternoon, he digs a leather-bound notebook out of a pile of supplies. He writes. Not just the people he’s killed, but all his sins: the venial as well as the mortal. He describes what he did, and resists the temptation to explain or make excuses. He fills an entire notebook. On the top of the last page he writes Nathan’s name. Of course, Peter will clearly understand this sin, so Sylar doesn’t elaborate. At the bottom of the page, he writes Peter’s name, because he’s wronged him, too.
He hands Peter the notebook and walks away. He never asks if he reads it. Sylar prefers to imagine that he does. But if he doesn’t, Sylar will live with that.
--
Peter comes to his bed that night. He settles himself against Sylar's back. Sylar waits for the usual rough treatment, but it doesn't come.
Instead, Peter traces a hand down Sylar's side. "Are you afraid?" he whispers.
Sylar shakes his head. "Not anymore."