Bricks in the Wall, Chapter 80: Brainstorming
Title: Brainstorming
Characters: Peter, Sylar
Words: 1,600
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Setting: The Wall
Summary: Peter asks Sylar to be a sounding board for Peter's various crazy ideas about how to save Nathan.
"Just hear me out," Peter asked. "I could go back in time and get Jeremy's ability. Then-" He made an exasperated noise. "But then I'd have his power, not time traveling. I couldn't get back." Sylar, listening, raised his brows slightly in a 'really?' expression. Peter ignored him, although he had the nagging feeling he was missing something there. "Okay, wait - instead of me getting time traveling, I get Hiro … but Hiro has a brain tumor." He paused to wonder how that had turned out and if it had any effect on his ability. Peter had been able to borrow his power, after all, so that argued it was intact. From Sylar's surprised look, he gathered Sylar hadn't been up to date on Hiro's health. He wondered if Sylar knew anything about brain tumors and abilities … but that was beside the point. "Okay, well, it doesn't matter who. Maybe I can find someone else with time traveling. This is just a thought experiment, after all."
"Gedankenexperiment," Sylar said.
Peter blinked at the unintelligible word. It seemed random. "Okay." When Sylar only nodded, Peter blew it off and went on, "I find someone with time traveling and we both go back to meet Jeremy. You know, if that meeting wasn't friendly, then it might explain a lot about how upset Jeremy was with Noah and I. And that whole shotgun thing. Of course, the stuff about his parents explained that, too." Peter's nose wrinkled in memory. "Anyway, I get Jeremy's ability somehow, then we time travel back to the plane, right after Noah and I - that's past-me - parachute out of it. Then I'd try to heal him - Nathan. I hope he hasn't been dead too long." He waited a moment to ponder that. "But if I could heal him, then … Oh. Then we'd crash. That's no good." He frowned. "No, wait! Whoever teleported me in there could teleport us out again! That's right." Sylar gave him another long-suffering look. Peter ignored him again. "And if it didn't work, then we could go back earlier … like right after you'd killed Nathan. You didn't stay in the hotel room for long. There had to be a while between you leaving and whoever found him, finding him. He definitely wouldn't be dead too long then!" Peter thought through the process - teleporting in, healing Nathan's fatal wound before it even bled out, then the three of them teleporting out like they'd never even been there. "What do you think?" he asked Sylar hopefully.
Sylar blinked at him slowly. "I can't believe that you ever beat me at anything."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Sylar shook his head. "It means the next time I tell myself I'm better than other people, I'm going to think of this conversation and remember that this is the tactical genius who thwarted me twice."
Peter frowned heavily at him. "Well, what should I do?"
"For starters, why not go back to when Nathan was alive, and skip the crap about getting Jeremy's healing ability? Or are you too obsessed with saving the day to see that as a possibility?"
"Oh!" Peter stared off into the distance, thinking that through. "Yeah! But wait … what would that do to you?" He gave Sylar a puzzled look. "I'd still inject you, so you'd be caught ..."
"What would have happened to me if you healed Nathan in the hotel room and teleported out with him?"
Peter's face fell. One of the rules of Sylar listening to him talk through his ideas about how to save Nathan included not entertaining options that involved Sylar's death or loss of identity. "Oh. I didn't think of that."
"Obviously," Sylar said dryly. "So obviously, in fact, that I believe you. But if you teleported into the elevator or the end of the hall, you could intercept yourself and dearest Nathan, and you could explain things to both. Nathan would not have to die and your past self would not have to carry through with the injection."
"Oh." Peter nodded. He supposed that worked. "Okay, but what about you? You were in the hotel room with Claire."
Sylar sighed. "Despite your feelings about the matter, I can be reasoned with. That was … not the best time to attempt it, but I can hardly think of a worse method of dealing with me than a head-on assault. I've been ambushed by better teams than you two and won."
"But then you'd be facing not just past-me and Nathan, but me and the time-traveler, too," Peter pointed out, thinking the match might go very differently.
Sylar stared at him for several seconds, then started laughing. "That's your answer? Just keep sending back more reinforcements from the future?"
"Well, okay, that's probably not going to work." And, also, it was against the rules of their current conversation. "Yeah, we could talk to you," he conceded. "But what happens if that works? I mean, it would change the whole future!"
"So?"
"You can't do that! I mean, I can't do that."
"Why not? Hiro does it all the time."
"No, he doesn't."
"He came back in time once to prevent me from taking the ability of his girlfriend. And he managed to talk me into curing her aneurism at the same time. See? I can be reasoned with!"
"Okay, fine, yeah." Peter's lips pursed. "But what happened to reality?"
"Nothing. I didn't have her ability any more."
"But you'd had it before?"
"In the past of the Hiro who came back to prevent me from taking it, clearly."
Now Peter was blinking, trying to follow that. "Okay. I guess that sort of makes sense. I mean, it was a Hiro from the future who came back and told me to save the cheerleader, so I guess in that Hiro's past, I didn't do it." He frowned. "Doesn't that mean there's a whole bunch of different realities?"
"No."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I know how time works."
Peter frowned even more mightily at Sylar. "I don't get it."
"And if your previous mental gymnastics were any indication of your intellectual ability, you will continue to not 'get it' even if I explain it. So I'm not going to," Sylar said in a superior tone.
"People who can't explain things don't understand them themselves," Peter said in a similar tone.
"I never said I couldn't explain it," Sylar said testily. "I said you wouldn't understand it."
"I'm trying to solve my problems here, Sylar!" he snapped. "That's better than just sitting around for three years stewing over them!" He gestured sharply at the world around them, the world Sylar had moped in for the relative time span of years, doing nothing to better himself or his situation as far as Peter could tell. Sylar's face froze and he leaned back. Peter knew he'd gone too far. He shut his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and said, "I'm sorry. You insulted me. I got hot. I insulted back. It was low. I shouldn't have. I'm sorry."
After several beats, Sylar allowed, "You apologize well."
Peter noted the lack of acceptance of said apology, but he'd gotten the impression Sylar didn't understand how apologies worked. Or maybe he would simply never forgive anyone for anything - that seemed like a really lousy way to live. "I've had more practice than I wanted."
Sylar swallowed, nodded, and after an awkward pause, said, "Go on with your brainstorming. I'll listen. If nothing else, I want to hear what I need to protect myself against."
After a beat, Peter said, "So you're saying I wouldn't change time … well, I would change time, but you're saying I would just … I don't know. Would it work?"
"Yes, maybe. Assuming past-me could be talked down from my plan, which might take more persuasion than you have." He shrugged at Peter's darkening look. "I'm trying to be realistic. I didn't get to the point I was at then without being desperate and desperately determined. You would also have to succeed in getting your past self and Nathan to stand down, which might be just as difficult, especially with Claire there goading you on."
Peter rolled his eyes - not at Claire's role, but at how accurate Sylar was that the whole thing would be impossibly difficult, now that he considered the personalities involved. "Even if I could get there, to the right moment, I still couldn't stop it. I wouldn't listen to me." He shook his head. "I've tried that before and I didn't listen then, either."
Sylar gave him a puzzled look.
Peter shrugged it off. "You know who you would listen to? It's the same person that if I walked up with them next to me, working with me, then past-me and Nathan both would shut up and listen."
"Who's that?"
"You."
"Me?"
"You know about time. You can get Hiro's ability and cure his brain tumor, because you'd have to be in his brain to do it. And then you could take me back to Jeremy's place. I'd get his ability and we'd come right back to where Hiro was and I'd heal him." Sylar's mouth had fallen open slightly. "We'd go back to the Stanton Hotel. You'd show Nathan and past-me that you could be trusted. And you - you'd be the one who understood what Sylar in that room was going through, and what you'd need to say to get through to him. That would do it."
Sylar shut his mouth, an unexpected and newfound respect on his face.