A Warlock By Any Other Name
Title: A Warlock By Any Other Name
Characters/Pairing: Gabriel (using shape-shifting to appear as Nathan), Simon (11 years old), Monty (8 years old), Gabriel/Heidi, Gabriel/Peter (though Heidi and Peter don't make much of an appearance)
Rating: PG or T
Words: ~3,700
Warnings: Use of mental commands on children (mild), outing of someone's sexual orientation (mild), child violence.
Setting: Shattered Salvation AU, October, 2011.
Summary: Gabriel reveals abilities and more to Nathan's sons, who have different reactions to the news.
Notes: In this AU, Gabriel is Sylar with Nathan's memories. He pretends to be Nathan a lot of the time, using shape-shifting to look like him, having moved in with Heidi, fathered a child with her (10 month old Noah at the point of this story), and being father to Nathan's boys. He has revealed abilities to Heidi, but not as yet to the boys. I started this story with the intention of filling one of the Halloween 2010 prompts on Heroes_Contest on LJ, but it went somewhere else entirely. Oh well.
Gabriel got out the knives while his sons argued over which pumpkin belonged to which boy. He ran his thumb along the blades, pausing as he nicked himself on one. Are they less likely to cut themselves with a dull knife, because it's dull, or a sharp knife, because they don't have to apply as much pressure to use it? He didn't know, so he gave the sharp one to Simon and the dull to Monty.
"Now be careful with these. Do you understand? Do you want me to show you how to use them?"
Simon said, "No, I know how to use a knife!" He picked it up eagerly and at least held it correctly. Monty picked his up too, watching his brother and copying him.
"Before you start carving on those, have you decided what sort of pattern you want to use?"
"I wanna do the Green Goblin or Frankenstein or the Hulk and then use a green light bulb in it to make it green!" Monty exclaimed.
"We don't have a green light bulb. Are you sure you want to do that?"
"We can get one," Monty said.
"Yeah, we could," Gabriel said, moving to sit at the bar. He pulled over the newspaper, but kept watching the kids.
Simon said, "Let's draw out our patterns first, okay?" Monty agreed and they fetched paper and pencils. When they got back, Gabriel was engrossed in an article in the world news section, brows furrowed and lips pursed. He glanced up at them as Simon pulled the kitchen stool over to the island and the boys began arguing again - this time about who got to use the stool.
"You're taller!" Monty said.
"Yeah, so I'm bigger than you and that means I get to use it. Besides, I brought it over here. Go find your own!"
"I'll just keep pushing you off and then you won't get to use it at all!"
"Monty," Gabriel said, "Come get a bar chair. Stop fighting with your brother." Gabriel went back to his article. In the last year and a half, he'd heard enough spats like this not to take much notice of them.
"But the chairs are heavy!" Monty whined.
"Simon, help your brother move the chair."
"He didn't help me get the stool!" Simon said, outraged.
"Do what you're told." He kept reading.
There was a moment of silence. Monty walked over and started pulling on one of the bar chairs, probably deliberately acting weaker and more pathetic than he needed to. Gabriel looked up at Simon, who exhaled suddenly, not quite willing to push it this time, and went to do as he'd been told.
Gabriel went back to reading about the latest policy in regards to Israel. Simon was maturing early and acted more like a teenager than the barely eleven year old that he was. He was big for his age, too. As Gabriel recalled, Nathan had matured early as well, but instead of rebelling against his father, he'd worshipped him. Gabriel was having quite a few more problems with the boy than Arthur had had with Nathan.
Together the two boys moved one of the bar chairs to the kitchen island, whereupon they began to bicker again. Simon climbed up in the bar chair and Monty whined, "Hey, this was mine. You were using the stool."
"This wasn't yours. We just had to get it. You couldn't have gotten it without me."
"But I want to draw my pumpkin face!"
"Use the stool. I like the chair better and I'm bigger so I get to pick."
Gabriel reached up and massaged his brow. As expected, the next line was from Monty, appealing for help: "Dad! He's taller than I am and the chair puts me up higher and Simon's taking the chair and I can't draw so good from here!"
"Simon, you got the chair for him. Let him use it."
True son of a long line of lawyers, Simon answered, "We didn't get the chair for him. We just got it. Either one of us can use it."
Gabriel lifted his head only a little, glaring at the boy from under heavy brows. It was the steady, intimidating gaze of someone who had killed an awful lot of people. Somehow that resolve communicated itself no matter what form he took. After a moment, Simon scrambled off the chair.
Simon didn't understand it, but since his father had moved back in with them a year and a half ago, he'd been occasionally very, very scary. It was a lot unsettling. His dad hadn't been like that before and in a perverse way, the difference provoked the hell out of Simon. Even as it scared him, it made him needle his father, digging for those discrepancies even if he didn't know what they meant. He was a very smart kid - far more so than most people gave him credit. He was more like his grandfather Arthur than any of the other members of the Petrelli clan.
One of these days when his dad looked at him like that or did something to scare him, Simon resolved, he wouldn't back down. One of these days… but not today. Today he was carving pumpkins with his brother and he forgot about Gabriel's glare in short order, pulling over a piece of paper and starting to draw. Gabriel shook his head slowly and went back to his article.
Simon said, "I'm going to put Mr. Buchfink's face on my pumpkin." Mr. Buchfink was one of his instructors at the military-prep boys school he'd been sent off to, precisely because of the disciplinary problems they'd been having with him at home. He was home now on fall break.
"Why?" Monty asked. "I thought you hated him."
"Yeah, I do. It's so when Halloween is over, I can smash it!" He made mock gestures of destroying the pumpkins. Gabriel frowned and tried to tune out their conversation. He was largely successful, picking up only that the intervening discussion had something to do with Batman and Shrek and various other cartoon figures. He jerked his head up suddenly though when Simon said, "Because Uncle Peter's gay and Shrek is totally lame! Everyone knows that."
"What?" Gabriel said.
Simon said, "Shrek's lame, not gay. Only little babies still think Shrek's cool. He's for little kids, like Monty." Monty looked upset about this, but that wasn't what had caught Gabriel's attention.
"What did you say before that?"
Simon thought about that for a moment. "Um… Uncle Peter is gay and you don't like it. He shouldn't be, I guess. Some of the upperclassmen were telling me about this class we'll have later where they tell us all about sex, but they said they lied in it."
He wondered what they were lying about, but the more pressing question was, "Why do you think Uncle Peter is gay?" It wasn't like Peter went around with a sign on his forehead that said 'GAY' or 'NOT GAY', but Gabriel had only discussed the basic mechanics of sexuality with his sons. He hadn't seen a reason to get into the orientation of their relatives.
Monty answered, "Because he was kissing you the other night before he left and you pushed him away and told him to cut it out. I-"
Simon elbowed him. "Shut up!"
"What?" Monty looked confused.
"Oh," Gabriel said, rubbing the side of his mouth. Yes, Peter and he had shared a probably too-passionate kiss before Peter left just a few nights ago. His fingers passed over his lips in remembrance, then he jerked them away, realizing he was unconsciously tracing where they'd touched. He had been speaking playfully, telling Peter he had to cut it out if he wanted to make it to work on time, but he could see how that could be misconstrued. "I… uh… How did you see that? You were supposed to be in bed."
Simon snorted at Monty. "See? I told you to shut up."
Monty realized his mistake now and mumbled something about being at the top of the stairs and just going to get a drink of water. The latter part of it rang with deceit, but it didn't really matter.
Gabriel said, "Peter got married to Emma just a couple months ago."
Simon gave an exaggerated shrug. "That doesn't matter." Simon's mind worked similarly to how Nathan's did - he formed an opinion, then arranged facts to support it. Someday it would serve him well in law and politics, but for now it was annoying. "It's against the law for gay people to get married, so if you're gay and you want to get married, then you have to marry a girl. Unless you are a girl."
"Ew!" Monty exclaimed. "No one here is a girl!"
"I know that, doofus," Simon said.
"Hrm. Yeah." Gabriel shuffled his newspaper uneasily. "You know, people aren't just gay or straight, one or the other."
"Uh-huh." Simon turned back to his drawing, uninterested. He'd been embarrassed enough to be sat down to listen to the birds and bees discussion last year. He was pretty sure this was a direct result of him saying that Rebecca Bell was 'really hot.' Not wanting a repeat of the uncomfortable discussion, he bent to his paper and said, "Mr. Buchfink has really big ears."
Gabriel watched his sons for a long moment, trying to decide if he needed to explain anything. They were awfully young, probably too young to understand. And neither of them really seemed to care. His right hand went to the left, touching his wedding band and then his watch - signs of his devotion to Heidi and Peter, respectively.
Angela had asked him, only a few months back, if he was willing to explain about his relationship with Peter to his sons. It had been a challenge, thrown down in anger. He'd told her he would, or at least that he would as much as he'd explain any other affair. Of course, what he had with Peter wasn't an affair. Monty at least had seen them kissing and now both of them had jumped to the wrong conclusions.
Swallowing, he said, "When I told Peter to cut it out, I wasn't telling him I didn't want him kissing me. I just told him that so he wouldn't be late for work."
"Okay," Monty said, obviously not seeing anything unusual with the idea of his father kissing Peter in the not-platonic manner that he had.
Simon was silent, gears turning in his head. He didn't say anything, instead moving on to pick up his knife. Gabriel got up and moved to intercept him. "Simon, let's take your drawing and trace it out on the pumpkin first. Then we'll cut it out."
An hour later, they were finishing up. Gabriel was washing the seeds in a colander in the sink, expecting to bake them later. The kids were talking as they cleaned up the island. Simon was putting their pumpkin patterns into the trash.
Monty said, "Hey! Don't throw that picture away. You ought to use it to put a curse on Mr. Buchfink."
"I can't do that."
"Yeah you can. Just take that drawing of him and burn it while saying something really bad that you want to have happen to him!"
"That won't work."
"Yeah it will. It's magic! Magic can do anything."
"There's no such thing as magic."
"Yeah there is!" Monty argued. "How do you explain people flying?"
Gabriel started slightly, but kept himself from turning around. He continued picking out bits of pulp, separating it from the pumpkin seeds.
"People can't fly," Simon said. "At least, not unless they're in an airplane or they have a jetpack or something."
"They can too!" Monty insisted.
"Dad, tell Monty people can't fly."
"Oh, I don't know. I've been known to fly a few times." He was grinning, but still facing away. He shook his head. Kids say the darnedest things.
Simon didn't say anything. Monty said, "See!"
"You can't fly," Simon said uncertainly.
"Yeah, actually, I can." Gabriel didn't know why he was telling them now. He'd been talking about telling the boys about abilities for the better part of two years, but somehow he'd never gotten around to it - which was kind of dumb, since he'd heard of dozens of people who had manifested their abilities even younger than Simon and Monty were.
"Oh!" Simon called out loudly. "I get it. I said of course people can fly if they're in an airplane or a jet or something. So, yeah… and… like if you had a parachute or you were jumping off something… that's more like falling though."
Gabriel washed his hands and turned around, drying them on a towel. "No, I can fly. And this is a family secret that I'm going to have to make sure you don't… and can't… tell anyone else other than myself, your mother, Peter, Emma, or your grandmother. Or Maury Parkman, I suppose, since he's…" He sighed. Maury had become an unfortunate fixture in the family, annoying as Gabriel found that.
Monty provided, "He's gramma's friend."
"Yeah. So-"
Simon had been waiting patiently and now interrupted, "So what's the flying trick?"
Gabriel held out the towel and let it go. It hung in the air. He moved it over closer to the boys, who stared at it.
"What?" Monty said. "How did that-"
Simon grabbed it out of the air and examined it. He looked his father over with narrowed, suspicious eyes. The towel yanked out of his hands and hung in the air again. Monty jumped for it, laughing. He held the towel, obviously waiting for it to take off from his hands. Gabriel obliged him.
Simon watched, perplexed. "How are you doing that?"
"The power of my mind. It's an ability I have." He thought briefly of Brian Davies. "Someday, you might realize you have a similar one. Or you might not. It's hard to tell. It's inherited, but very few people have the ability anyway."
"You're a witch!" Monty said, waving the towel over his head and whooping. "My Dad's a witch! Woo-hoo! We're witches!"
"Men can't be witches!" Simon snapped, feeling angry because he thought his father was pulling a trick on him and he couldn't see why. Or how.
"Yeah they can," Monty said. "They're man-witches."
"Manwich is a… a thing you eat. Like sloppy joes."
Monty stopped. "Oh, yeah."
Gabriel offered, "The word you're looking for is 'warlock.' That's a male witch. Or 'wizard', which is more gender neutral. But I'm not a witch, a warlock or a wizard. This isn't magic, but I'll agree it's not science. Some people have special abilities. Most don't. I happen to be one of the special ones." He moved his hand and floated the pumpkins from the island over to the counter of the bar.
Simon was still angry. He stared at the floating jack-o-lanterns with bared teeth. "How are you doing that?" he almost yelled, frustrated that he still hadn't been let in on the secret.
Gabriel put the pumpkins down. "Simon, calm down."
"No! Not until you tell me how you're doing that! It's a trick! It's fake!"
"It's magic!" Monty said, still exuberant about it.
Simon wheeled on him, fists clenched. "There's no such thing as magic! No such thing! It's a trick! He's just tricking us!"
Gabriel considered his son's fury. An overt display would be harder to deny. If he could just get through the denial, he figured Simon would calm down. He squatted down. "Now watch." He shape-shifted into Peter. Simon stared at him, eyes wide. He said nothing, but he hadn't stopped thinking. He came to a conclusion immediately as a whole lot of things clicked into place at once. Gabriel shrugged a little at the lack of visible reaction and shifted into Heidi, then Angela, then Noah Bennet.
"Wow," Monty breathed in wonder.
Simon swung his fist at Gabriel's face as hard as he could, yelling, "YOU'RE NOT MY FATHER!"
Gabriel jerked his head back instinctively, dodging the blow, but the boy threw himself on him in a thrashing of angry limbs. The man grappled with the boy to stop his attack. Simon seemed berserk. Monty stood there gaping.
"Simon! Simon! Stop it!" The boy kept struggling and writhing, kicking and lashing out. Finally Gabriel commanded, "Stop fighting me."
Simon did, but as soon as he got a breath he started yelling, "LET ME GO! LET ME GO! LET ME GO!"
Gabriel did, and Simon raced away, feet hammering up the stairs, followed by the distant slam of his bedroom door. Gabriel sat on the floor, not moving while Simon made his progress to sanctuary. He looked at Monty, who seemed calm, but bewildered.
Monty asked, "Are you Noah, or Dad?"
Gabriel touched his face and shifted back into Nathan's image. "I'm your dad," he said softly, wondering where things had gone wrong with Simon. It occurred to him, now, that denial had always been a strong suit for the Petrelli family.
"Okay," Monty said, accepting it as easily as he had accepted everything else. He looked in the direction of Simon's room with a worried expression.
Gabriel got to his feet. "Monty, you can't talk about these powers with anyone other than myself, your mother, your grandmother, Uncle Peter, Emma, Noah Bennet, or Claire. Or Maury Parkman," he added. "You can't tell anyone about abilities, that I can fly, or use magic, or change shape, or anything like that. It's not allowed. Do you understand?"
Monty nodded and asked, "Can I talk to Simon about it?"
"Yes, you can. You can talk to Simon too about it. You won't talk about it where other people might overhear you. This command applies to talking, showing, writing things down, texting, filming, typing or anything else that lets someone else know what you mean." He waited a few beats, listening to Monty's thoughts and making sure the command didn't cause too much conflict. Gabriel had given his sons only one other lasting command, which made them see him as their father whether he wore Gabriel's face or Nathan's. He wondered now if that had something to do with Simon's outburst.
He ran a hand through his hair. He had no idea. He was trying to think of what to do, when Monty asked, "Are you a werewolf?"
"No," he answered absently.
"A vampire?"
"No."
"A superhero?"
"N-…" He looked at Monty and smiled. "Sometimes I try, but no, not really."
"Are you one of the bad guys?"
"No." Not anymore. Not if I can help it.
"Can you really fly?"
"Yes. Monty, go on. I need to talk to Simon." He patted Monty on the head and went upstairs slowly, trying to think of what he was going to say. He stopped outside the door and knocked solidly.
Simon's voice called out immediately, "Go away!"
Gabriel considered that. He used telekinesis to feel his way through the doorknob. It was locked. He unlocked it. He considered that he didn't have much of a right to barge into Simon's room. It was a boundary he probably shouldn't cross. He opened the door anyway.
Simon's eyes widened at the intrusion and he scrambled across the bed. "Stay away from me!"
Gabriel stood in the doorway, trying to think of what he could do to fix this. Peter would know what to do, he was sure of it. He sighed. He wasn't Peter and this was his family. Heidi wouldn't be back from shopping for a while longer. He worried. In the end he just repeated the commands he'd given to Monty and left it at that. He backed out, shutting the door.
Later they sat down around the dinner table. Simon shot uncertain looks at his 'father' and didn't eat much. Monty seemed confused by the tension and kept trying to talk about how wonderful it would be to be able to fly or make things float. Heidi and Gabriel were quiet, having already discussed the matter and decided to leave it alone. After they ate, Simon came over half defiant, half afraid, and asked, "Are you going to show me the trick? How you did those things?"
Gabriel said, "It's not something I can just explain. It's like trying to describe the color orange to a blind person. I can tell you about it, but if you don't have the ability I'm talking about, then it won't make much sense to you."
Simon huffed. "So you're not going to tell me?"
"Do you still think it's fake?"
"It's gotta be fake." There was such unwavering certainty in his voice.
Gabriel smiled and shrugged. "Okay. That's good."
Simon's eyes narrowed. "Why is that good?"
"Because if it's fake, then there's no way I'm not really your dad, is there?"