Bricks in the Wall, Chapter 79: The Arena
Title: The Arena
Characters: Peter, Sylar
Words: 500
Rating: PG
Warnings: Dream/nightmare
Setting: The Wall
Summary: Peter has a bad dream. Sylar wakes him.
Notes: If I had more time to write, this would have been followed by a sweaty make-out session when Sylar decides he *must* take advantage of Peter falling asleep in his arms like that, and then Peter's highly awkward morning as he realizes his mouth tastes profoundly of Sylar and they did things to one another in the dead of the night that he really had no intention of ever doing, so what to do about it now? But I didn't have time to write that much. Instead, I saved my beleagured beehive, worked out, argued with my kids about how they did not get to upbraid me about my schedule, and published what I *did* have written. Sleep now. :)
He stood on hot, pale sand within a brick arena. Across from him was Sylar. Both were clad as gladiators in leather and bronze. Each was holding a short, sharp bronze sword. Peter blinked at the person obviously intended to be his opponent. Sylar looked grim and resolute.
"No!" Peter objected, letting his sword hang to his side. "I won't do it! I came here to get his help, not to kill him!" He spun, searching the empty brick and stone bleachers to find Matt Parkman outfitted as Caesar, toga and golden laurel included. "That's not what I came here for," Peter complained.
"It's what I'm here for," Matt said reasonably. "I'm tired of supporting you inside his head. It's not working. Just give up and put an end to it."
"No!" With Peter's refusal to fight, Sylar sat down heavily on the sand. He put his face into his hands and started crying about all the other people he'd had to kill in here. Peter looked at him, torn inside. It seemed senseless to blame a gladiator for murder.
Matt shrugged and put his out his thumb, downturned in a gesture of finality. "Then I will."
Heretofore unseen entrances to the arena opened to release lions into the fighting pit with them. Sylar remained sitting on the sand, helpless in his grief. Peter ran, interposing himself between Sylar and the lions, somehow snatching up Sylar's sword along the way. A weapon in each hand, he stood, looking between the blades and the circling, wary lions. "I don't know how to use swords," he said. His voice sounded strange to his ears.
"Peter?" Sylar called from behind him, also sounding odd.
But Peter couldn't spare the time to look. He slashed at one of the lions which had rushed him, barely evading the razor-like claws. He had trouble telling how big the lions were. At one moment they seemed like monsters; the next unruly house cats. It must be the fear, he told himself. He tried to slice at the nearest cat-lion, waving his sword in a slow, wide arc that never even got near the cat. That was when he realized someone had thrown a net over him. They must be trying to get him out of the way, so he couldn't protect Sylar! He struggled with it, but it was everywhere he reached. He could barely breathe. "No!"
"Peter!"
Sylar was grabbing his forearm, maybe trying to help with the net? Peter remembered that he'd taken Sylar's sword and left him defenseless. Maybe he could cut his way free … Then he was on his back, in bed. Peter fought with the tangled sheet, taking out his frustrations on it and finally flinging it off the end of the bed. Panting, he stared after it with a dazed, numb expression before turning to embrace Sylar without warning or preamble. "I'm glad you're okay," he murmured.
After a moment of tension at being seized so abruptly, Sylar softened. "Who were you fighting?"
"Matt," Peter said, processing that it had all been a dream. "And lions." He supposed there was no reason to be awake anymore. Exhaustion tugged at his consciousness.
"Interesting combination."
"Not as interesting as you in a gladiator outfit," Peter mumbled, letting sleep claim him once more.