Antithesis [Heroes]
Title: Antithesis
Series: Heroes
Rating: PG-13 for violence
Prompt:So maybe we're a bliss of another kind.
Summary: They never do anything together anymore.
A/N: This is romantic, right? Written for prompt #8 at sylelle_chall
No beta. Read with caution.
The sound of bone cracking against concrete is the first thing she hears when she pushes opens the door. The building is unfinished, destined to be a warehouse or a parking garage before it was abandoned, and the air is stale and filled with dust. She can see rebar sticking out of the wall where a portion has collapsed, and a man dressed in black is standing over a man dressed in the red of his own blood as it pours from where his head hit the wall.
Elle’s eyes brighten at the sight, and she can’t stifle the tiny sound that escapes her lips in her excitement and anticipation. It’s barely a gasp, but she sees him stiffen in surprise and knows he heard her. She smiles a timid smile when his eyes meet hers, and she can tell she’s not welcome.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he snaps, irritated by her presence. The man moans in the background, grasping desperately at the rocks behind him in an attempt to crawl away. Gabriel hears this and returns his gaze to him before slamming his boot down on the man’s back, pinning him to the ground on top of the debris and rubble. He cries out as jagged stone presses into his flesh before finally quieting, resigned. Gabriel turns back to Elle with a look of exasperation. “I’m busy.”
She looks at her feet timidly, biting her lip and putting on quite a show. “I know you told me to wait until you were done to come, but I like to watch you,” she replies quietly, peeking over his shoulder to try and sneak a peek at the man behind him, before resuming eye contact with Gabriel. “And I just want-”
“I know, Elle, I know,” he interrupts, and his voice is strained and anxious. At the sound of Elle’s voice the man had begun to writhe under Gabriel’s boot, causing him to have to press even harder to keep him still, and the man cries out again in pain as the sharp rubble presses into his chest. “I just wish you would have waited and come when I told you, is all.”
Elle pouts; they never do anything together anymore.
At this point the man begins to yell out for help, pleading with the empty air and Elle and even God to save him from this monster. He then begins to cry, despairing heaving sobs, and Elle’s pout falls into a frown. She wanders close enough to the two of them that she can see the man’s face, and for a moment they make eye contact and she can see how desperate he really is, begging for his life.
Pathetic.
“Just get it over with, Gabriel. He’s starting to annoy me,” she spits, turning on her heel away from the man and towards Gabriel. Her tone is biting and sharp. “I’ll stay out of your way.”
She sees him flinch when she calls him Gabriel. He’s asked, pleaded for her to not call him that when he’s killing, but it has fallen on deaf ears and she’s glad he’s given up. He may still have a lingering hope that Sylar isn’t really Gabriel, but she knows that they’re one and the same now and giving this side of Gabriel another name just doesn’t work for her anymore. She always liked the name Gabriel better anyway; it sounds better on her tongue.
The man has fallen unconscious now, and it’s probably for the best because Gabriel is getting impatient, fidgeting in anticipation. Elle sighs and steps back behind him, out of his space but still able to watch. He kneels down and examines the man’s head, then begins peeling back the layers of skin and bone like it’s a present on Christmas morning.
When he finally reaches his destination she knows, even though she can’t see much besides blood, because he stops and breathes in sharply to steady himself before he plunges two fingers delicately inside of the man’s brain. She feels jealousy rise in her throat, envious of how he’s touching it, so precisely and with such desire. She wants him to touch only her like that, and she bites her lip to restrain herself from speaking.
She watches him silently, and when she sees him twitch and hears a pop, his shoulders relax and she knows he’s done. He rolls his neck and she hears it pop and crack as he lets out a sigh. She wonders how he feels afterwards, if it tires him or exhilarates him, if he feels accomplishment or regret. Mostly she wonders if he feels as turned on as she does now, a feeling heightened when she sees him rise and walk away from the body and towards her, blood dripping from his fingertips.
“That was…” she begins, pointing casually over to the man behind him, his skull savagely ripped open. He’s usually so much cleaner, but this time it was more like the first time, more opportunistic and messy. She supposes the blow to the head did most of the work for him, so it was only reasonable to work with what he had. He’s very resourceful, her Gabriel.
She grins when she finds the right words, “…old school.”
He doesn’t seem to think she’s funny, so she scrambles to find something else to say. “What was he, anyway?”
Gabriel laughs lightly and runs his tongue over his teeth; he likes this question. He leans closer to her as if he’s whispering a secret. “Let’s just say that later tonight, maybe I’ll paint you a picture.”
Elle giggles in delight; so he was a pre-cog. She knows how much Gabriel missed that power, and she’s happy for him even if she’s never been that big of a fan of it herself. She turns her attention back to the man on the ground, his face stained with tears and blood. He had to have seen this coming, so why he had been so undignified about the whole thing she just can’t quite understand.
Her attention reverts to Gabriel, and there is a silence as they stare at one another waiting for the other to speak first.
Gabriel obliges. “Elle, I’m sorry if-”
“You know what Gabriel, it’s fine,” she blurts out, her hands breaking from their crossed position in a grand display of feigned apathy, “I know this is your thing and I’m not a part of it. I’m sorry I interrupted.”
Gabriel’s eyes are cast off to the side and wander behind him, his gaze catching a glimpse of the man’s hand. It twitches. He turns his head sharply and looks at the man behind him in anger, as if not dying completely was his fault, and he sends a steel-toed boot directly into the side of the man’s head. It cracks and splinters like it were made of ice and melts into a pool of sticky red.
“I just wish you would have come when I’d asked.”
Elle feels tears well in her eyes and attempts to strangle them down. She wonders if he feels violated, as if she walked in on him with another woman. She knows she shouldn’t be picky. She’s damaged, used goods, tossed around Level 5 like a toy in her search for a feeling she didn’t think she’d ever find. Boys like Gabriel Gray don’t happen that often, boys that don’t care if you were a whore and that forgive you even if you made them into a monster. Staying out of this part of his life is the least she can offer him, even if it hurts her more than anything in the hollow space where her heart is supposed to be.
She loves him in whatever way she’s capable, but she wonders if it’s become too much for him, just like he worries his hunger will become too much for her. Maybe it has.
“Because,” he continues, “I wanted everything to be ready when you got here.”
Elle is jolted from her thoughts and blinks in confusion. She watches him reach into his jacket pocket and pull out a small, yellow container. She isn’t sure what it is until he uncaps it and begins pouring it over the body, and she recognizes the smell: lighter fluid. The fluid soaks the body and thins the blood underneath it, causing it to run more rapidly towards the drain near Elle’s feet. She steps away, careful to keep her heels out of the mixture.
Gabriel looks back at her, studying her reaction, but for this first time in a while she’s not really sure what to say.
“You say we never do anything together, so…” he gestures back at the body, now soaked with the entire can of fluid, “I thought maybe you could help.”
She stares at him for a moment, then back at the body, and her eyes widen at the realization of what he’s asking. He wanted her to come after he was finished so she could help him clean up, still be a part of his life while giving him the time needs before she arrives. She thought he never listened when she said she missed doing things with him, thought he wasn’t watching when she set fires to piles of leaves and sparked dogs on the nose in delight. But he was, so he set this up just for her, tried so hard to do something nice, and she ruined it. Her tears return, but this time she can’t hold them back and they slip down her cheeks shamefully.
He notices her reaction and frowns. “You don’t like it, do you?”
Elle used to imagine love would find her with flowers and a date to an Italian restaurant, maybe a cliché comment about the color of her eyes somewhere in the middle, and then ending with a chaste kiss outside her door. She would have on a pretty blue dress and he would be tall and handsome and polite. Then she would call her mom after she got inside and talk for hours about how maybe, just maybe, he was the one.
She thinks it was kind of like that, this thing she has with Gabriel, if you take out the flowers and dates and replace them with pies and deceit. And maybe replace the normal boy and girl kissing at the door with a boy who likes to kill people and a girl who likes to watch him. Oh, and her mom is dead, but it’s her fantasy, isn’t it?
She just imagined it would be a different kind of bliss, a normal kind of love story, the kind with a princess and a prince, not a wicked witch and a beast. But somewhere inside herself she knows that if he weren’t a monster she wouldn’t love him like she does, and only a monster could love a villain like her. So she thinks she likes the version she has now better than any fantasy, because this one is real and here with her right now, pleading for her love with blood and flames.
She looks at him and laughs a little between her tears. “No, Gabriel,” she says quietly. She wipes the back of her hand against her cheek and shakes her head. “I love it,”
Gabriel smiles and it’s one of those real ones she feels like she hasn’t seen from him in such a long time. She walks closer to the body and he steps out of the way. Elle’s fingertips light up and a ball of electricity forms in her hand that she shuttles forward, ripping into the corpse. His clothes begin to smolder first, smoke filling the air, and as the body begins to smoke as well the clothes alight into flame. Soon enough the entire body is aflame and the air is thick with greasy black smoke and she gasps, spent. Her body is filled with adrenaline and she can’t keep her fingertips from sparking with eager static.
She feels his hands on her and he spins her towards him. She barely has time to register his presence before his lips are on hers. He’s insistent and oppressive like he’s trying to swallow her whole, and if she’s not careful she just might let him. He’s all she wants, all she needs, and she wants to be that for him too, so desperately wants to fill his hunger and make him want her just as much as he wants to feel the pop and crack and sticky wetness of power.
He breaks the kiss and runs his hands up her shirt so his fingers touch bare skin, ghostly white like a canvas. He slides his finger over it like a brush and she shivers at the sensation. When he finishes and invites her to look, she places her own finger on the trail of blood he has left and smiles lovingly as she slowly traces a perfect heart.
Series: Heroes
Rating: PG-13 for violence
Prompt:So maybe we're a bliss of another kind.
Summary: They never do anything together anymore.
A/N: This is romantic, right? Written for prompt #8 at sylelle_chall
No beta. Read with caution.
The sound of bone cracking against concrete is the first thing she hears when she pushes opens the door. The building is unfinished, destined to be a warehouse or a parking garage before it was abandoned, and the air is stale and filled with dust. She can see rebar sticking out of the wall where a portion has collapsed, and a man dressed in black is standing over a man dressed in the red of his own blood as it pours from where his head hit the wall.
Elle’s eyes brighten at the sight, and she can’t stifle the tiny sound that escapes her lips in her excitement and anticipation. It’s barely a gasp, but she sees him stiffen in surprise and knows he heard her. She smiles a timid smile when his eyes meet hers, and she can tell she’s not welcome.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he snaps, irritated by her presence. The man moans in the background, grasping desperately at the rocks behind him in an attempt to crawl away. Gabriel hears this and returns his gaze to him before slamming his boot down on the man’s back, pinning him to the ground on top of the debris and rubble. He cries out as jagged stone presses into his flesh before finally quieting, resigned. Gabriel turns back to Elle with a look of exasperation. “I’m busy.”
She looks at her feet timidly, biting her lip and putting on quite a show. “I know you told me to wait until you were done to come, but I like to watch you,” she replies quietly, peeking over his shoulder to try and sneak a peek at the man behind him, before resuming eye contact with Gabriel. “And I just want-”
“I know, Elle, I know,” he interrupts, and his voice is strained and anxious. At the sound of Elle’s voice the man had begun to writhe under Gabriel’s boot, causing him to have to press even harder to keep him still, and the man cries out again in pain as the sharp rubble presses into his chest. “I just wish you would have waited and come when I told you, is all.”
Elle pouts; they never do anything together anymore.
At this point the man begins to yell out for help, pleading with the empty air and Elle and even God to save him from this monster. He then begins to cry, despairing heaving sobs, and Elle’s pout falls into a frown. She wanders close enough to the two of them that she can see the man’s face, and for a moment they make eye contact and she can see how desperate he really is, begging for his life.
Pathetic.
“Just get it over with, Gabriel. He’s starting to annoy me,” she spits, turning on her heel away from the man and towards Gabriel. Her tone is biting and sharp. “I’ll stay out of your way.”
She sees him flinch when she calls him Gabriel. He’s asked, pleaded for her to not call him that when he’s killing, but it has fallen on deaf ears and she’s glad he’s given up. He may still have a lingering hope that Sylar isn’t really Gabriel, but she knows that they’re one and the same now and giving this side of Gabriel another name just doesn’t work for her anymore. She always liked the name Gabriel better anyway; it sounds better on her tongue.
The man has fallen unconscious now, and it’s probably for the best because Gabriel is getting impatient, fidgeting in anticipation. Elle sighs and steps back behind him, out of his space but still able to watch. He kneels down and examines the man’s head, then begins peeling back the layers of skin and bone like it’s a present on Christmas morning.
When he finally reaches his destination she knows, even though she can’t see much besides blood, because he stops and breathes in sharply to steady himself before he plunges two fingers delicately inside of the man’s brain. She feels jealousy rise in her throat, envious of how he’s touching it, so precisely and with such desire. She wants him to touch only her like that, and she bites her lip to restrain herself from speaking.
She watches him silently, and when she sees him twitch and hears a pop, his shoulders relax and she knows he’s done. He rolls his neck and she hears it pop and crack as he lets out a sigh. She wonders how he feels afterwards, if it tires him or exhilarates him, if he feels accomplishment or regret. Mostly she wonders if he feels as turned on as she does now, a feeling heightened when she sees him rise and walk away from the body and towards her, blood dripping from his fingertips.
“That was…” she begins, pointing casually over to the man behind him, his skull savagely ripped open. He’s usually so much cleaner, but this time it was more like the first time, more opportunistic and messy. She supposes the blow to the head did most of the work for him, so it was only reasonable to work with what he had. He’s very resourceful, her Gabriel.
She grins when she finds the right words, “…old school.”
He doesn’t seem to think she’s funny, so she scrambles to find something else to say. “What was he, anyway?”
Gabriel laughs lightly and runs his tongue over his teeth; he likes this question. He leans closer to her as if he’s whispering a secret. “Let’s just say that later tonight, maybe I’ll paint you a picture.”
Elle giggles in delight; so he was a pre-cog. She knows how much Gabriel missed that power, and she’s happy for him even if she’s never been that big of a fan of it herself. She turns her attention back to the man on the ground, his face stained with tears and blood. He had to have seen this coming, so why he had been so undignified about the whole thing she just can’t quite understand.
Her attention reverts to Gabriel, and there is a silence as they stare at one another waiting for the other to speak first.
Gabriel obliges. “Elle, I’m sorry if-”
“You know what Gabriel, it’s fine,” she blurts out, her hands breaking from their crossed position in a grand display of feigned apathy, “I know this is your thing and I’m not a part of it. I’m sorry I interrupted.”
Gabriel’s eyes are cast off to the side and wander behind him, his gaze catching a glimpse of the man’s hand. It twitches. He turns his head sharply and looks at the man behind him in anger, as if not dying completely was his fault, and he sends a steel-toed boot directly into the side of the man’s head. It cracks and splinters like it were made of ice and melts into a pool of sticky red.
“I just wish you would have come when I’d asked.”
Elle feels tears well in her eyes and attempts to strangle them down. She wonders if he feels violated, as if she walked in on him with another woman. She knows she shouldn’t be picky. She’s damaged, used goods, tossed around Level 5 like a toy in her search for a feeling she didn’t think she’d ever find. Boys like Gabriel Gray don’t happen that often, boys that don’t care if you were a whore and that forgive you even if you made them into a monster. Staying out of this part of his life is the least she can offer him, even if it hurts her more than anything in the hollow space where her heart is supposed to be.
She loves him in whatever way she’s capable, but she wonders if it’s become too much for him, just like he worries his hunger will become too much for her. Maybe it has.
“Because,” he continues, “I wanted everything to be ready when you got here.”
Elle is jolted from her thoughts and blinks in confusion. She watches him reach into his jacket pocket and pull out a small, yellow container. She isn’t sure what it is until he uncaps it and begins pouring it over the body, and she recognizes the smell: lighter fluid. The fluid soaks the body and thins the blood underneath it, causing it to run more rapidly towards the drain near Elle’s feet. She steps away, careful to keep her heels out of the mixture.
Gabriel looks back at her, studying her reaction, but for this first time in a while she’s not really sure what to say.
“You say we never do anything together, so…” he gestures back at the body, now soaked with the entire can of fluid, “I thought maybe you could help.”
She stares at him for a moment, then back at the body, and her eyes widen at the realization of what he’s asking. He wanted her to come after he was finished so she could help him clean up, still be a part of his life while giving him the time needs before she arrives. She thought he never listened when she said she missed doing things with him, thought he wasn’t watching when she set fires to piles of leaves and sparked dogs on the nose in delight. But he was, so he set this up just for her, tried so hard to do something nice, and she ruined it. Her tears return, but this time she can’t hold them back and they slip down her cheeks shamefully.
He notices her reaction and frowns. “You don’t like it, do you?”
Elle used to imagine love would find her with flowers and a date to an Italian restaurant, maybe a cliché comment about the color of her eyes somewhere in the middle, and then ending with a chaste kiss outside her door. She would have on a pretty blue dress and he would be tall and handsome and polite. Then she would call her mom after she got inside and talk for hours about how maybe, just maybe, he was the one.
She thinks it was kind of like that, this thing she has with Gabriel, if you take out the flowers and dates and replace them with pies and deceit. And maybe replace the normal boy and girl kissing at the door with a boy who likes to kill people and a girl who likes to watch him. Oh, and her mom is dead, but it’s her fantasy, isn’t it?
She just imagined it would be a different kind of bliss, a normal kind of love story, the kind with a princess and a prince, not a wicked witch and a beast. But somewhere inside herself she knows that if he weren’t a monster she wouldn’t love him like she does, and only a monster could love a villain like her. So she thinks she likes the version she has now better than any fantasy, because this one is real and here with her right now, pleading for her love with blood and flames.
She looks at him and laughs a little between her tears. “No, Gabriel,” she says quietly. She wipes the back of her hand against her cheek and shakes her head. “I love it,”
Gabriel smiles and it’s one of those real ones she feels like she hasn’t seen from him in such a long time. She walks closer to the body and he steps out of the way. Elle’s fingertips light up and a ball of electricity forms in her hand that she shuttles forward, ripping into the corpse. His clothes begin to smolder first, smoke filling the air, and as the body begins to smoke as well the clothes alight into flame. Soon enough the entire body is aflame and the air is thick with greasy black smoke and she gasps, spent. Her body is filled with adrenaline and she can’t keep her fingertips from sparking with eager static.
She feels his hands on her and he spins her towards him. She barely has time to register his presence before his lips are on hers. He’s insistent and oppressive like he’s trying to swallow her whole, and if she’s not careful she just might let him. He’s all she wants, all she needs, and she wants to be that for him too, so desperately wants to fill his hunger and make him want her just as much as he wants to feel the pop and crack and sticky wetness of power.
He breaks the kiss and runs his hands up her shirt so his fingers touch bare skin, ghostly white like a canvas. He slides his finger over it like a brush and she shivers at the sensation. When he finishes and invites her to look, she places her own finger on the trail of blood he has left and smiles lovingly as she slowly traces a perfect heart.