More Between Us, Chapter 6/? "Empty Chamber"
Title: More Between Us Than A Wall part 6/?
Characters: Peter Petrelli and Sylar/Gabriel Gray (Matt and Nathan if you squint?)
Rating: PG-13/T to eventual NC-17/M
Warnings: Language, mind fuckery (no pun intended), violence, angst (?), dirty language/thoughts/actions but nothing explicit.
Setting: Inside the Wall, S4.
Words: 9, 577
Summary: Peter has hacked into Sylar's mind on a rescue mission. Everything goes to Hell. Welcome to Sylar's mind!
Notes (Must Read): In collaboration with the wonderful Game_byrd (Gamebird- FFN) who writes for Peter (I write for Sylar). This is everything that goes on 'behind the scenes' of the episode. The story begins after Peter telepathically joins Sylar in his Matt-induced nightmare (The Wall) in the episode. Based on CANON with fanon and intellect, imagination and a thing called common sense filling in all those nasty plot-holes, but we won't point fingers.
One deviation from canon: In The Fifth Stage when Peter wipes Sylar's memory after the fight, he gained all of Sylar's memories via Rene/The Haitian's ability that allows the user to remember the person's memories in addition to erasing them from the person. AKA Peter has every single one of Sylar's memories stored in his subconscious. They appear from time to time when Peter sleeps or becomes distracted or experiences one of Sylar's deja vu's. Sylar has since recovered his memories with a combination of IA and regeneration. Sylar still has Nathan's memories from Matt Parkman's previous mind-fuck in Invisible Thread. The boys are powerless inside the Wall.
Things you'll need: // // denotes a Nathan Petrelli memory from Sylar's head. Sylar/Gabriel's memories are within singular lines / /. Peter's are \ \ and Peter’s recollection of a Sylar memory (via Rene/the Haitian's ability) is \\ \\. 'Posts' are separated between the boys by XXX (no, that's nothing naughty).
A/N: Gun warnings for gun threat, some possible suicidal themes.
Day 5
The paramedic wandered back into the lobby, looking at the display over the elevator door: “2” in friendly green diodes. Peter looked around. If there was anything else to see on the ground floor, he was missing it. He went to the door to the stairs, just to be contrary, and…paused just inside the ground floor landing. He let the door close very gently and quietly, then walked slowly and stealthily up the stairs. As he’d hoped, there was a window in the door.
The hall was empty. Peter made a greater effort now to close the door soundlessly behind him. It still made a distressingly loud click. Peter crept down the hall, looking at the few doors. One was open, the first to the left of the elevators. He could hear sounds from within. He looked around the doorframe.
Sylar was standing next to a desk, sorting through the contents as though looking for office supplies he might wish to stock up on. He looked up at Peter without the least bit of surprise. The Italian was a little offended by his own apparent lack of success, not that he’d been trying to get the drop on the killer. I was just…paranoid, I guess. There hadn’t been anything he really expected Sylar to be doing, after all. He’d just…thought Sylar would be…doing something…something nefarious.
Peter turned and went to the apartment across the hall, suppressing his urge to knock because he didn’t want to look stupid in front of Sylar. So instead he barged right in, leaving the door hanging open behind him much as the other man had. He sighed and looked around the place, trying to figure out what it was he was looking for here.
XXX
The room was fairly basic, the person had been clean and organized, clearly someone who worked most of the time and didn’t spend their time at ‘home’. A light blue paint covered the walls with off-white curtains that Sylar was pretty sure was from JC Penny due to the tacky, faux expensive taste of them. The wood of the furniture was primarily, okay, all of it was a matching cherry.
By the time he heard the obnoxiously loud cla-ap of the stairway door (he’d always hated those damn things), Sylar had already snooped on the mechanized, battery operated clock on the wall; and was currently shuffling carelessly through the desk’s drawers, having left his possessions near the door. Post-its….black Bics….receipts…paper clips, god, how useless….Pencils but no sharpener….Stapler, labeler, white out….He only turned around to let Peter know he wasn’t going to allow the medic to pull any funny business with the majority of his back turned.
He managed to hold back his chuckle at Peter’s put-out expression; clearly Hero Breath thought he was cleverer than he really was. Of course, watching his companion from the corner of his eye as he went across the hall; he sniggered and covered it with a cough as Peter paused at the door, looking rather puzzled as how to handle it. Sylar honestly almost walked across and opened the door for the poor boy, just to show him how to do it. Hell, Sylar’s own door had suffered worse. Should have made the brat fix it. Ha. Not like he knows what manual labor is. Sir Petrelli.
XXX
Peter had been in a lot of people’s homes. His job as a paramedic called for it, giving him a rich and varied background in the subject of how people really lived, rather than mere speculation. He’d grown up in rich, but he’d seen plenty of poor, middle class and the dwellings of a few families as well off as his own. Whoever lived in this apartment had been a little wealthier than average for the floor space. They’d lived here a long time, he suspected.
Later middle-aged, in addition to upper middle class, by money and lifestyle if not square footage. They had ornate shelves covered with figurines and bric-a-brac. Several displayed a collection of bells, one for each state and notable tourist attraction they’d been to. He picked one up and rang it. It had a pleasant tone and he smiled, thinking about the souvenir of happy times. Is this here because I’ve seen so many of them in other people’s homes? Or has Sylar seen something like this - a collection of things from every state? Or is it here just because I think there should be something here, and my imagination is filling in the gaps, like a real dream? Ha. ‘Real dream’ - what would that make this? A fake dream?
XXX
Leaving the desk none-too clean as when he’d found it, his interest was for the bedroom next and he homed in on it, padding in like he owned the place, which he kind of did. Modern and put-together, the place screamed of a working woman; men weren’t this organized unless they were severe Type A and OCD along with some serious other disorders. Pushing the door in without fear, he moved in to stand beside one of the two bedside tables; he opened the drawers quickly and began to paw through them.
He was picturing a brunette, about five-ten, wore heels twenty-four-seven, the impossible pencil skirts and tight hair buns, maybe some stylish glasses…. Focus, he told himself as his thoughts were straying far from the contents of the drawer, even the apartment itself. It served no one any good to dwell on long-gone occupants.
So, sighing, he went back to sorting through the drawer. Hair clips and elastic…things, pony tails? Some cough drops, light reading glasses, Tylenol, nail polish, sleeping pills and…. Sylar’s eyebrows rose slightly at the next ‘medication’ of sorts. While he didn’t find any other ‘incriminating’ evidence, his previous Irish Catholic upbringing made an unauthorized appearance before he squashed it, shoving the container to the back of the drawer.
His attention was drawn away from it to the tissue and radio-clock atop the table. Finger nail clippers, pen and paper pad….meh, nothing of interest. Slapping the drawer shut, he picked up the clock (of course it didn’t keep the damn time, how could it? It was an analog) Muttering to himself as he didn’t bother to prize the back apart since all he would see would be wires and a fucking battery inside. Sylar set it back to the table’s surface and stood abruptly.
The bathroom was next on his hit list, as it were, but it only got a brief perusal because, really, what interest could a woman’s bathroom hold for him (especially with no woman in it)? The only thing he could think of that would shock him was a chainsaw or a butcher knife….maybe a corpse. Perhaps Peter was having more luck…
XXX
He moved on, letting his fingers trail the edge of a narrow table set against the wall. It wasn’t even dusty. There was a small aquarium on it, burbling along. He bent, face to the glass, looking for whatever was supposed to be inside. The water was crystal clear and although there were actual plants in it, there weren’t very many places for fish to hide. He studied it for a very long time, but it was empty - not even one of those sucker fish. Nothing dead either - just empty, just like these apartments. Unsettled, Peter straightened and looked for something more pleasing to examine.
He spotted a turntable and perked up. His mind reaffirmed the age-bracket of his imaginary former occupants - 50, maybe 60 years old. It was interesting to explore even knowing it wasn’t real. He was finding out little things about how the world worked just by looking around (today’s lesson: No point in trying to go fishing). He wondered if this gave him an insight, however oblique, into Sylar’s mind. Now that was something he was actually curious about, although he as of yet refused to admit it.
He found a record, “The Best of Simon and Garfunkel,” and put it on. He chewed at his lip as he squatted to place the needle. He checked the settings on the machine, having only used one of these a few times in his life, while over at Brian’s house. He scratched at his cheek. He was pretty sure it was right. He flipped the switch. There was a muted pop and the speakers hummed. The record rotated. A faint scratchy noise emanated. He waited. Obviously, this was that blank part around the outside of the record. The needle gradually circled inward. The scratchy sound continued.
Eventually Peter began examining the controls again. He changed settings. He turned it on and off. He moved the needle further in. He tried a few other records. Nothing but a scratchy noise, because in this hell, even the sound of another human voice was forbidden - at least, insomuch as it might come from the world around them. He could communicate with Sylar, at least. He wondered if the man could sing. He flipped the machine off and wandered across the hall to look in on him.
He found him coming out of the bathroom, looking supremely bored. For some reason that made Peter smile. Sylar was not here, on the second floor of the apartment building across the street from where Peter had slept last night, because this was his idea of a good time. He was here because Peter was and Peter found that warmly amusing. It wasn’t that far amiss for why Peter was back in the same room with Sylar. Every time he got away from the man something drew him back and he wasn’t so ignorant of himself as to not notice it. So he gave Sylar a wry smile and said, “Want to go check the ones down the hall?”
XXX
“Yes,” Sylar telegraphed firmly, relieved and showing it. Swiping his apple and book again, this time he set them by the elevator, knowing he wouldn’t leave them behind that way. He followed behind Peter as they walked down the hall to enter a random room (hard to be random or decided here, really), turning the knob to go inside it.
Oh, boy. A smaller apartment, clearly the byproduct of a bachelor, that’s all Sylar could describe it as. While the place wasn’t filled with garbage, per se; chip bags and pizza cartons or beer bottles, it wasn’t clean in the best sense of the word. A game console and connecting wires to the controls were strewn over the worn rust-colored couch with a single Pepsi can on the glass coffee table, the condensation long gone.
XXX
Peter looked around the place with a sort of pleased surprise. Not that he approved of the mess - far from it - but it was the first really messy place he’d seen. Sylar’s had been cluttered, not messy, but most of the other places he’d been in so far had been sterile, antiseptic even. This was…well, it looked a lot more lived in than most, he supposed.
He left the living room to Sylar and went further in, finding the one bedroom in the place residing behind door number one. Door number two was probably the bathroom, he assumed. The bedroom was equally a mess, but in addition to the food boxes there were clothes strewn across the floor. He looked at the battered dresser immediately to his right. Not wanting to walk in further right away, he opened the top drawer - socks, and ratty-looking ones at that. He shut it.
XXX
Sylar was immediately put off by the perceived ‘mess’ and he stood near the door way, hesitant to go in further. Ugh; it reminded him somehow of Zane’s place all those years ago; subconsciously he peered around as if waiting for Mohinder to pop out with a tuning fork and large syringe.
Taking a few steps in after Peter (who didn’t appear to mind so much), he shrugged to himself and plunged in, wondering if he should fear for his life. “If we find a corpse keeled over the Halo set, man, I’m done,” he muttered mostly to himself. Honestly, he didn’t want to look in the bedroom, kitchen or bathroom.
Sylar dared to peer into the kitchen and didn’t find anything of note there besides a suspicious lack of culinary tools….well, not suspicious if he considered the fact that this was the pizza-and-beer type who probably couldn’t cook to, ha, save his life. He glanced in Peter’s direction briefly. He’s clean, though; spartan, actually. Meanwhile, Sylar feared the mold-monster.
XXX
He opened the second drawer, a deeper one. It was heavy and came out reluctantly to reveal two out-of-fashion sweaters. Peter frowned. One did not have to be a sleuth to deduce that a drawer full of sweaters should not be that heavy. He lifted one, to discover an image of mammaries of massive proportions staring up at him. He dropped the sweater immediately and looked guiltily at the open doorway. No, Sylar wasn’t there. He could hear him noising around, but Peter didn’t know what he was doing. Regardless, he wasn’t in the doorway.
Peter picked up the sweater again and felt around in the drawer. There was a good four inches of magazines in there, in a double stack. He lifted sweater two to find more epic endowments of the female variety. It was very much not Peter’s kink and never had been. Not even remotely. He was pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum, if he had to pick based on physical form alone, which had never mattered much to him anyway. He folded the sweaters back and closed the drawer.
XXX
He decided to go skeleton hunting and went to the closet between the dead TV and the kitchen, opening the small door. One of his eyebrows crept upwards as he saw various amateur and high school trophies, a bowling ball (oh, the cliché), several jackets, a cardboard box that revealed a whole plethora of Transformer action figures. Admittedly, Sylar sniggered a little. Expecting the little cousins over much? At least that was this guy’s excuse.
For the hell of it, Sylar decided to see what games and movies (that wouldn’t work) the former occupant had stashed. He crouched at the TV, opening the stand’s cupboard to peer inside at the contents; Nintendo, Playstation and X-box? Overkill. What was this guy, a ‘professional’ gamer? Grand Theft Auto, the obligatory Halo, some Tom Clancy, Call of Duty, Kill Zone, baseball, basketball and football, Marvel vs. Capcom, Final Fantasy, Mario and Pac-man?
Opening one of the cases at random, he discovered all was not as it seemed. “One of those things you don’t want Mom finding, huh?” he mused aloud, tossing the pack back in and shutting the cupboard as he stood. He would have leaned against the wall as he waited, but he frankly suspected the dull tan paint was toxic as well. So he stood and waited for Peter to leave any minute because this apartment clearly had nothing of interest.
XXX
Watching his step, he walked around the corner of the bed, looking at a pair of crossed swords hanging on the wall. They were very shiny. He leaned closer and examined them, then touched the blade on one. As it had appeared - dull. Props. He looked across the room at the poster of a dragon on one wall. There was another sword, much shorter, near the headboard of the bed. He cocked his head at that. It was situated so someone on the bed could reach it. He went to it. The blade here wasn’t as glossy as the others, but a careful touch revealed that it was much sharper. He wasn’t sure how sharp, not seeing any reason to press and cut himself, but it was certainly serviceable.
Huh. He didn’t know what to think about that, so he opened the nightstand that was directly in front of him. Inside there was a single object: a pistol. He stared at it for a very long moment and finally picked it up. Heavy. He turned it over and examined it. Safety’s off. He clicked that over, then looked at it again. It was a good fit for his hand, but he wasn’t familiar with it. He released the magazine, which looked full. He turned the gun and looked inside. He was pretty sure there was a bullet in the chamber. He racked the slide, ejecting it. It made a loud, characteristic sound.
XXX
Out of nowhere, Sylar heard the familiar sound of a gun slide being pulled and released, next the sound of the magazine being ejected and reinserted. He stiffened instantly, turning slowly, expecting to see his companion with the gun pointed at Sylar’s pupil.
Gun. Of course there’s guns here. Why did he have to be the one to find it? While Sylar’s first reaction was to grab a knife from the kitchen, hell, the wire from the game controller would work to strangle Peter; he forced himself to calm down and find his control. Taking a breath, feeling incredibly mortal, he padded softly to the bedroom door and peered in.
XXX
Peter bent and retrieved the ejected bullet. Hollow point. He was entirely absorbed by the gun. He tried to fit the bullet into the magazine, but it wouldn’t go. He frowned. Whoever had had the gun had wanted to have every bullet available when they reached for this, much as there was nothing else in the drawer to possibly distract the hand if it was dark and one was in a hurry. He put the magazine back in and chambered another bullet, then released the magazine and put the extra he’d ejected earlier into it. He reinserted the magazine, returning the gun to the state he’d found it in. Except that the safety was on.
XXX
Peter was fiddling rather intently with the gun; a pistol, he noticed. It was no Company-issue, the Kimber SIS; he’d arrived in time to see Peter pop out a single, additional hollow point, designed to expand on impact. With the firearm, with the bullet, Peter could do more than just kill Sylar; he could shred off a limb or blow his genius brains out to cover a wall.
Sylar waited quiet and invisible for the moment in the doorway, unsure of what to do. Redemption could be death, he realized. Not just having one’s powers removed and becoming mortal, hoping to rejoin the general populace (unlikely), but extermination.
Would Peter be the one to pull the final trigger? As much as he longed to run or better still, grab up his own protective object in the form of a weapon, he knew that it might fatally escalate things and ruin his chances at more than just survival.
The normal adrenaline rush, the surge of fear he knew academically he should be having was rather muted and dispassionate. He’d done his own considerations around year two and a half here. One of them had been suicide. Sylar didn’t really fear for his life, not like he should, like he used to. In the past, he’d fought tooth and nail to climb out of graves and break out of prison cells; all for his evolutionary drive. Life didn’t mean much here because there was none.
Peter had gotten plenty of chances to off Sylar before now, but was that because he preferred his kills with a cold heavy firearm and the impersonality of the shot when he did the deed? Then again, Peter could get plenty dirty with a nail gun and his fists, too. He certainly hadn’t hesitated when it came to brain washing. The seemingly innocent medic knew his way around guns; Sylar knew that much from Nathan and personal experience.
The other man proceeded to weigh the gun and test the sights before staring at it too long for Sylar’s comfort (but it wasn’t about his damn comfort now was it?). Peter pulled it close to get a closer look, at what, he didn’t know, but Sylar gazed at him from the door frame, careful to keep his body out of sight, not presenting Peter with any kind of target for a fast shot.
XXX
He held it out in his hand, testing the grip, looking down the sights. It’s good enough. He blinked, confusion marring his features. Wait … good enough for what? He pulled the gun closer, turning it sideways and looking at it intently. What the hell am I going to do with this? Shoot Sylar? What good would that do?
Realizing he’d been standing there focused on nothing outside himself, he jerked his head up and looked to the doorway.
XXX
Suddenly, Peter looked up at him and their eyes met; neither moved for a long moment and Sylar didn’t say anything about what he’d obviously observed. There wasn’t anything for him to say to it. Under suspicion and under an abundance of death penalties, two of them from Peter’s immediate family, Sylar didn’t expect any other treatment.
He’d hoped for it, but he didn’t expect it; that Peter considered the gun told Sylar enough. Had it been anything else in Peter’s hand, no matter how dangerous, Sylar would have turned and walked away; but he was not about to turn his back on a gun, not when he knew what he had coming and what he was up against. He couldn’t combat something like that with logic.
/Die Alone. Die Alone./ Maybe this is it. Your cards ran out a long time ago. You picked a bum hand at Stanton. He’s loaded, he’s got reasons and he figures he’ll save more lives than I will in his “dream” doing this now. Sylar stared, not at the firearm, but into Peter’s eyes with his own rather dull, dark ones; because the eyes would give away his decision before his hand and finger ever did.
XXX
Peter looked at the other man fixedly, but after the first second he hardly saw him. Nathan’s body, in the storage unit; the weight as he moved the corpse with Noah Bennet’s help, lifting it out of the trunk; the strange empty sensation as Noah finally had to shove Peter out of the plane as it began its gradual course down - Nathan’s last flight. Peter blinked rapidly, breathing harder. He looked down at the gun.
Killing Sylar would be a murder-suicide, of that he was fairly sure. But what did he really have to go back to? An empty apartment; an empty life; saving people one person at a time - it seemed so noble, but then why did he feel so defeated by it? He turned the gun slightly, the barrel pointing generally at himself. If it fired at that particular moment and angle, it would merely hit the wall next to him. Another twitch and it would hit home.
He remembered that desperate man, Malamut, in the office building who’d shot him only a few weeks before. It had hurt, not as much as that huge sniper round Danko had gotten him with, but it had hurt anyway. More from the surprise, probably. He’d thought he’d had the man.
\“You want to punish the people who have hurt you. I know what that feels like. I want to torture the guy who murdered my brother. I want to make him scream. That’s all I can think about. … Look, I promised my brother I’d be a hero. Don’t make me a liar. Not today.”
Punish the people who have hurt you … be a hero.
“Don’t make me a liar. Not today.” BANG!\
He took a long, deep breath. \I want to torture … make him scream\. He looked over at Sylar again, noting how the man carefully hid his body; the caution and edge of fear on his face; waiting, rather calmly given the situation, for Peter to do something decisive. He’d felt Sylar under his hand, next to his body, flesh and blood, heard him scream: Do it! Kill me! His eyes narrowed, remembering putting his hand to the man’s forehead and trying to snuff him out, letting Rene’s power wash through him and every memory Sylar might call his own pouring out of the man. He’d tried to exterminate him. He looked back at the gun, taking it more firmly in his hand, pointing it ahead at the mattress of the bed before him.
\“Do you really think Matt could purge every sick thought from that head?”
“What are you gonna do? Beat him out of me?”
“That’s all I can think about.”\
Was there anything else to think about? Emma, the carnival, the dream - it all faded to unimportance. He was here. Sylar was here. There was a gun in his hand. Surely at least one of these bullets would hit the bastard. A sour smile flitted across his face. Sylar was pretty hard to kill under the best of circumstances. Kill him here and maybe he’d be a vegetable forever. It seemed possible. Sylar dead - Peter ejected from his mind. Really, it was the obvious solution and Peter could find another way to solve Emma’s dilemma - time travel, shape-shifting - any number of solutions were out there. And if it killed Peter with Sylar, that wasn’t really a problem either.
\“Running into danger, going off after Sylar - you’re not going to do anything but get yourself in trouble. You’ve got to stop.” “No.” “You’ve got to stop!” “I can’t. … if I keep moving, if I just act on instinct, then I don’t have time to think.”
“That’s all I can think about.” “I don’t have time to think.” “…just act on instinct.”
“I promised my brother I’d be a hero.”
“…just act on instinct.”
“Not today.”\
He put the weapon back in the nightstand, shutting the drawer.
He turned back to Sylar and said quietly, “There’s nothing in here I need. Let’s check the one across the hall.”
XXX
He stood watching as Peter tilted the gun about; towards himself, towards the bed, finally away completely. This took over the course of about a minute or so but it was Peter’s face that held his attention. Grief; the kind that made Peter look older, the kind that drew lines in his face and made him appear haggard. The unfocused look of someone recalling a memory, the helpless and hopeless look of someone who’d fought too long and too hard with so little gain; the temptation raging in his soul, the spirit-draining drive for vengeance and more so for justice. All the emotions Sylar knew well and assumed of Peter.
How easy would it be for him? What could possibly be holding him back? If the medic spoke true about Matt and this being a dream…then Peter would lose nothing. Hell, the kid would get a goddamn medal for murdering Sylar’s mind when so many others had failed. It would be easy enough to destroy his body without fear after that.
If Peter was wrong…. He would lose nothing but the company; that may or may not drive him crazy, depending just how badly he wanted to dance on Sylar’s grave and for how long. If Peter guessed wrong….Peter could die, too. If this was Sylar’s ‘mind’ and he was killed….wouldn’t Peter get stuck inside, too?
Surely the temptation would win; Peter may have been the better man of the two, righteous and wholesome, a real hero. But Sylar had robbed him and robbed him blind. Claire, attempts at Angela, succeeding with Arthur and more deeply felt with Nathan. Isaac, Ted, Elle and the others.
Sylar had been ready to die many times; expected by others (and himself) to die and stay dead. He always kept trying to test his limits in life; how else was he supposed to bring himself up? He never expected to pay for his….sins in this way. Nor did he devote time to his dramatic, thematic death scene (unlike Hiro, who would probably suggest falling on his katana; but Sylar had already done that). Not a thought was given to the ‘after’ part, his body or his soul; that just wasn’t his style.
Actually…he didn’t even have a final thought prepared, not a prayer or a wish to be had; no apology or plea. For someone who’d died far more times than Peter had, plenty of them before being immortal, Sylar knew how death went. A tiny sting, a bare second of shock before blackness and loss of gravity; no white light, no heavenly choir, and there sure as hell weren’t seventy-four virgins waiting for him. Serial killers didn’t get those.
/No One Will Mourn Your Death./
He watched as Peter took a deep breath, his body shaking a little, gripping the handle, smiling bitterly again; this time in a self-deprecating way. Sylar himself didn’t move; preparing himself not to stir if Peter turned and came closer for the shot. Redemption was the only thing on his mind.
He wasn’t surprised when Peter did turn, but his eyes did widen when the drawer was opened. What, more ammo? And the gun placed inside it. Standing still, Sylar’s expression loosened unconsciously, brown eyes softening. All he could do was nod, unable to trust his voice and unsure how to take the unintended gift of Peter’s enduring empathy. A little wobbly around his knees as he finally shifted his weight, he backed away from the doorway.
Mercy from Peter? That was going to take some getting used to…
XXX
Peter walked out of the room on autopilot, coming as close to Sylar as he ever had and without even bothering to look at him as he went. No wariness, none of the caution and vigilance of their previous interactions here. He felt shell-shocked. He walked out of the apartment and rapped twice, perfunctorily, on the door across the hall, suddenly not caring if Sylar thought he looked stupid.
He didn’t wait long, though, opening and walking inside. He looked around the place with dull eyes. It was another small apartment, symmetrical with the bachelor pad they’d just been in. This one might have also belonged to a single male, but it was neater, if still quite full of things. The living room was crowded with books and entertainment paraphernalia - television, computer screen, various peripheral gadgets. He gave the bedroom and bath a quick glance each - no bodies, no occupant - of course not. That was all that mattered at the moment.
XXX
Sylar frowned a little on instinct as Peter passed; the kid looked worn down and numb. Apparently Sylar was no threat to Peter, at least at the moment. The medic would most likely change his mind and decide otherwise at a later time. Dutifully, he followed back into the hall to the next apartment of choice. Sylar himself was a little…off balance from the discoveries, the change and he failed to so much as raise a considerable brow or make a comment at the knocking. He didn’t even clear his throat.
Entering much more casually into the next apartment, Sylar check the rooms opposite of Peter, bathroom then bedroom on seeing where the other man went. The pair weren’t friends, they weren’t really anything….How much did he really know about Peter? The idea was to keep close but not go near each other, hence the switched routine to avoid contact.
XXX
Peter wandered into the kitchen and opened the fridge. He looked around at its interior and pulled out a can of soda from the door. He walked back out into the living room and flopped down on the couch after giving it a brief inspection. He wouldn’t stick to anything and there was nothing to move out of the way. He vaguely wanted to continue searching, but for the moment he just wanted to recover. Process. Stop feeling numb.
The soda was cold as he took a deep drink. Not his favorite brand - it was a Pepsi and honestly he didn’t care much for either of the big name products, Coca-Cola or Pepsi - but honestly he would have taken a beer at the moment and he disliked that even more. Caffeine, alcohol, whatever legal drug of choice he could find. Given his companion here, caffeine was probably the safer choice. He didn’t want to get impaired around Sylar.
\‘Do it. Kill me!’\ Sylar’s request haunted Peter’s thoughts. What bothered him even more was that he’d tried to do just that. He’d tried to murder someone.
He looked up at Sylar and then away, feeling a little of the homicidal impulse fade. He’d felt it almost continuously since coming here. Every time he picked up anything remotely like a weapon, it was there, tickling at the back of his mind or even flagrant in the forefront. It isn’t me. It isn’t what I want to be. He sighed and took another draught, feeling the drink cold and sweet and bitter in his mouth, the faint burning of carbonation fizzing in his throat. He rolled the can against his forehead.
XXX
When he returned to the living room, he saw Peter sit down with a can of pop in his hand, the gesture one of defeated unfeeling. Suddenly Peter was looking exhausted and he had no physical reason to be, but he could understand the emotional drain that was obviously the culprit. To give the man his moment (surely he needed one), Sylar slunk to the kitchen himself.
He didn’t need anything; he had his apple still, but he made a show of looking around the kitchen, opening all the cupboards and drawers. Once he’d finished with that, not finding anything vaguely of interest, he leaned against the kitchen’s door frame, profile to Peter so as not to appear to stare. But that’s just what he felt the need to do; check on him. He did notice the EMT seemed to have a headache or….maybe it was one of those perceived mental aches.
Sylar was surprising himself left and right with this whole ‘help and guide and appeal to Peter’ business.
XXX
Peter looked at a magazine on the TV tray serving as an end table next to him. He reached over and picked it up: BMX Plus! He frowned at the titles of the articles advertised on the cover: How to make your race bike even faster! Check out what Ross is rockin’! Installing locking grips. He tossed it back down. That was so far outside the range of experience he’d had lately that it was like a foreign language. It gave him culture shock just to contemplate it.
His life since he’d gotten his ability had been anything but normal. He’d wanted that - what his ability had brought him. He’d sought it out. He’d embraced it even. But doing so had separated him from the people he wanted to save. He had so little in common with them anymore. He had become like a ball in a pinball machine, constantly reeling from one disaster to another, trying to stay ahead of the repercussions to his actions, trying to live a moral life when a making a mistake could level a city, or wipe out 93% of the world’s population. He no longer lived the sort of life where ‘How to make your race bike even faster!’ made any sense.
Peter mused aloud, “Sometimes I wonder what’s going on with everyone else out there in the real world, what kind of life they have, how they get by and if they enjoy it. There isn’t any other way to be for them. But those of us with abilities don’t have that option. Not usually. I guess a few do. Or try to, like Matt and Claire and … hell, I guess my mom. She at least managed to raise Nathan and I without us knowing.”
\‘That’s crazy talk.’\ - Nathan telling him that having abilities was ridiculous. Later his brother had called his own ability “freakish.”
\‘Now that’s as strange as it gets.’\ - When Peter had tried to share with Simone, heady with the importance of his power, she’d shut him down. It was like a bucket of cold water. Every time he’d thought about telling someone else about it, he remembered her reaction. Hers, and Mohinder’s. They had made him feel stupid and neglected, small and insignificant. He knew he wasn’t.
Which brought to his mind asking Mohinder, \‘You ever get the feeling you were meant to do something extraordinary?’\ And he did. Even now. Even here. Peter still felt there was a meaning to his life beyond just being a normal paramedic or whatever. It was why when he’d had the dream, he’d dropped everything to live that life again, diving headfirst into the situation. And here he was.
\‘When I’m by myself, I’m not much of anything.’\ He was defined by who he was with - his ability had always worked that way. He looked over at Sylar and smirked. Well, I’m not by myself…but I’m not real sure what I am when he’s around. I suppose… He thought about when he had put the gun back in the drawer. I suppose I’m not a murderer. That’s nice to know. He started chuckling to himself and muttered, “At least it’s not contagious.” He started laughing harder, because it seemed incredibly funny to imagine a world where people’s defining characteristics: plumber, student, paramedic, serial killer - might be contagious and easily transferable, like Peter’s ability. Sylar the plumber. Peter set his soda to the side before he spilled it on himself. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands on his face, and laughed.
XXX
Randomly, his companion spoke and he turned to face him as he did and what he said made little sense and meant everything at the same time. Surely Peter wasn’t just NOW coming to terms with that fact?
“For you and I….there’s never going to be a happy middle ground; we’re never going to blend in if that’s what you’re as-“ His companion erupted into insane chuckles; a sound that had no business coming from Peter. Why did he have to have his breakdown now, here, with Sylar? Guess that’s maybe what he feels like with you…. Had Peter been….aware and thought about things (possibly before ‘leaping’ as it were), he’d have seen years ago that the idea of ‘being normal’ was impossible.
It was a kind of all or nothing situation. It sucked. Peter had at least had family, friends, coworkers and people to talk to; people to be human with so Sylar didn’t pity him very much at all. Peter may have always felt that he stuck out somehow, but he’d had people. He’d had a brother, for god’s sake. If he’d had his abilities he would have laughed at Peter and shook his head in amused disgust that it had taken him this long to figure that out.
His eyes widened in stunned horror as Peter took a turn for the hysterics and he was left to…what? Comfort? Ignore? Give him space? Oh, it was like every one of those awkward romance movies where the woman started bawling over the corny pick up line the guy made (start bawling for no reason actually…) and every time Sylar was left to pity the poor man who had to bear it. Sylar squirmed in the doorway, completely uncomfortable and he settled for looking comforting. 'Um, Peter….?' He wanted to ask, but didn’t interrupt the flow of unrestrained laughter.
The laughter was nice, he realized next. Mirth from another human throat; unabashed and (somewhat) wholesome. He relaxed once he knew nothing would be expected of him and he just listened to the sound. Such a beautiful sound; made even more so from the fact that it came from a man who laughed so rarely now. In a way, Peter's laughter was a gift. Damn, he’s…he’s real stressed. Again, Sylar had very little pity to spare for him. Silver spoon.
Poor Peter. He'd learn though, wouldn't he? Learn of despair and neglect and abandonment. Of hopelessness, crushed dreams, mind-shredding loneliness and of utter helplessness. Plenty of tears and tantrums and all-out screams pleading for a sign or for mercy, maybe damaged phalanges, knees, knuckles and fingernails. Sleepless nights filled with nightmares when he would manage to sleep, the burn in his eyes the next day, the ache in his back and neck....Yet again, Peter had something Sylar hadn't had when he'd learned all this. Peter had Sylar.
For someone who'd received so little pity in his life, so little plain-and-simple help, it was difficult for Sylar, as a labeled psychopath, to empathize. “Just take it easy, man. You don’t….have to worry about that anymore,” he murmured; idea of helpful and comforting. Sylar leaned in and swiped the magazine Peter had picked up, leafing rapidly through it, trying to take his time and appear interested. Motorcycles? Of course, it was as unfamiliar to him as it had been to Peter.
XXX
Peter wound down from his fit of laughter, taking note of Sylar having come within arm’s length of him. Maybe that was what snapped him out of it - or maybe it just came to a natural conclusion. He leaned back, putting the heels of his hands to his eyes. I wanted to kill you, ran through his head and he very nearly blurted it out. He chuckled again, because in his current frame of mind that would be a funny thing to say. He had enough sense left to control his tongue though and so he said nothing. It had been perfectly clear, after all, from Sylar’s face that he knew what Peter might have done with that gun and just as clearly that he’d put it aside.
He put his hands down, sighing and letting the last of it pass out of him. Too much tension. I’m walking around carrying too much tension. I keep expecting him to do something. I keep expecting me to do something - to him. There’s nothing else here for me to do! The frustration of being stuck here was wearing on him.
XXX
Peter clammed up the instant Sylar moved for the magazine. Really? He had to ask himself. I’m fucking powerless and I didn’t even move all that fast. Of course he knew he’d done a fantastic, probably unrivaled job of making it easy for others to hate him, what did he expect? While he knew it wasn’t Peter’s fault, he still glared at the damn worthless sports magazine.
When the man chuckled again, seemingly unable to stop his round of maddening laughter, Sylar was about ready to snap at him. ‘What the fuck is your problem? Just get over it already! It doesn’t hurt so bad once you let it all go….’ Maybe even ‘you need some serious Zen (might I suggest yoga?)’. But he managed to keep his mouth shut, pursing his lips to help with the act as he tried to pull a Cyclops move on the publication in his hand.
XXX
He gave Sylar a very assessing look, up and down. It was a rude look and he knew it. He looked at him anyway. This is the guy I get to be trapped with for the next however-long? He reached over for his soda and got to his feet. He rubbed at his still-sore back and moseyed over towards the side of the room opposite Sylar, turning his back on him. He looked at the contents of a shelf set, silently reading over the titles of books, looking at a handful of odd curios - tiny metal figurines of tanks and jeeps, brightly painted. He took a deep drink and scratched at his forehead, glancing behind himself to status-check on Sylar.
XXX
Somehow he felt a pair eyes on him, the quality of the look was different, he knew. Slowly he turned his head to eye Peter right back, brown eyes widening as he noted the direction and type of gaze Peter was raking over his whole body. Did he just….No, no way. Is he….? He shifted his weight, standing up straighter. That type of look usually spoke of disgust and danger, followed up with a biting comment or question.
And what did Peter do? Look him over, as if he were something to be inspected, found him wanting or of disinterest, pick up his pop and walk off. That fucker. You….bastard, don’t you dare ignore me! Sylar was busy snarling mentally, Emo Petrelli bastard spawn; don’t you dare treat me like that.
Once Peter had turned his back, Sylar glared holy and self-righteous murder at him, trying to mentally rip the man’s spine out from his jacket-clad back. No such luck. He had the urge to strangle his companion just for being too annoying to crack open. Bash his head in, make the medic stare at him and force the man to see him. He barely restrained a step in Peter’s direction.
The nurse would be the perfect fodder for his latent desires. They even had a gun. But while it may have been a clear message to his psyche, he knew it would be the wrong decision to make. A challenge. I like a challenge. He’s a challenge. Maybe if he kept telling himself that Peter would live another day. He wants to play a game, does he? I’m very good at games. You’re on, Petrelli.
XXX
His mind was blank. He tried, with an effort, to pull thoughts into it. Peter didn’t have a constant internal monologue, not most of the time. He felt things, he responded to those feelings; he wanted to express things, his mind found the words to do so. Sometimes he thought things ‘out loud’ in his head and sometimes he did not. This was one of those ‘not’ times.
He shrugged to himself. This was emotional processing. It didn’t always make sense. It didn’t have to. In the meanwhile, he turned to one of his standard coping mechanisms and buried himself in ‘work’ - that of the moment being to examine the contents of the room in more detail. He was sure he’d had a good reason to do so at some point. He pulled down books at random and checked the interiors - they all had text in them. He didn’t bother to read them. He didn’t care. He was just checking.
He tried to flip on the computer - it did not activate. He looked over at Sylar, almost asking a question. Does anything electronic work? He looked back at the computer, imagining Sylar’s cutting response (not that he could think of what he’d say specifically, but Peter knew it would be biting), putting him firmly in his place as someone who didn’t understand the world they were in and needed his help. He looked at Sylar once more, now wary. He moved on, looking through the drawers of the computer desk and examining the contents.
He finished his soda as he headed to the bathroom, tossing the can in the wastebasket. He found a very good electric razor plugged in and sitting on the counter. He flipped it on. It worked. He turned it off and unplugged it, putting it in his pocket. Most electronic devices did function here, he considered. There were just some strange anomalies that did not, like television, radio and apparently computers. Even the turntable had worked, it just hadn’t played.
He opened a drawer. Toothbrush, toothpaste, clippers…hm. He regarded his nails. I wonder if they grow here? If so, I wonder who cuts Sylar’s hair? He snorted and continued looking. Shaving cream - why would he have that and an electric razor? Huh. Band-aids. Condoms. His hand paused in the process of sorting through things. Condoms. Don’t need those. Is Sylar even gay? He swallowed and shut the drawer, suddenly uninterested in whatever else was in there.
He stood there staring blankly at the sink for a while. He wanted very much to leave suddenly, to go back to his apartment and stay there. But Sylar was here and he’d want to know why and telling him he was going to carry back this electric razor almost certainly would not fly. He wasn’t all that sure why he wanted to leave himself, except that it had something to do with that box of condoms and the rude look he’d given Sylar earlier. He turned mechanically to the combination bath/shower and reviewed the products there - completely uninterested in them, but keeping his mind off anything else.
He left the bathroom, intent on continuing his methodical, pointless search of the rest of the place. He went in the bedroom next.
XXX
Sylar turned the glossy page roughly, tearing it a little as he saw the other man pass from bathroom to bedroom out of the corner of his eye. Just tack him down like a butterfly on a board. /I wanted to crucify you in Times Square./ Stop him from moving, fix his brain, own him, shut him up, get inside his head, get the answer.
The next action he wished to perform was shredding the magazine for being present, being in the way, being so damn useless. A hindrance. Angry at a magazine? That’s a new low. If Peter looked, he’d see Sylar’s face probably get pale with anger. The other had man merely poked around the room with faux interest. Honestly, he’d just lost interest in ‘exploring’ the way Peter felt the need to.
Because, seriously, what the hell are we gonna find that’s so damn important? New shoelaces in this year’s colors? Sure as hell isn’t BMX magazine or the fucking Kimber. Oh, no, I know. A secret door somewhere, a dead body, no, maybe a skeleton. Maybe Hiro or Claire hiding out somewhere; what the fuck is he ‘looking’ for?!
Sylar growled at the man once he was in the bedroom, already sick of his presence. Just to show his disproval, he threw down the magazine, pages fluttering wildly and stalked out the door; closing it loudly enough to make a statement as he entered the hallway. Clenching and releasing his fists as he started to pace while he waited, simultaneously debating whether or not to move up to the next floor.
Then he thought on it; why was Peter looking at me like that in the first place?
XXX
Peter combed quickly but thoroughly through the bedroom, interrupted by the sound of the front door slamming. He jerked, startled, and moved to look out the bedroom door, which he’d left open. He listened. Hearing nothing of note, he looked into the living room. No Sylar, front door shut. Well, he can’t have locked me in here.
He’d noticed Sylar was angry. He didn’t care all that much. He supposed he should. He looked at the front door for a few moments, then wandered into the kitchen thoughtfully. He started looking through drawers on autopilot. What might an angry Sylar do? Any of those things Peter had already contemplated seemed more likely - murder, torture, whatever inventive cruelty he might come up with.
Maybe he left to get the gun? For some reason, that seemed entirely implausible. Peter could trot out reasons why it was unlikely - Sylar’s loneliness, his desperation, his lurking around him and repeated approaches, trying to find the right distance to be at - but none of those rang quite true. He tried to pin it down. His constant paranoia of Sylar had to have some basis, after all.
\‘You’re not a killer, Peter. I am.’\
Was I even alive in that future where he saved Emma? He wasn’t sure he was. Sylar was - or at least what looked like Sylar. Peter pulled out a can opener that looked good. The apartment he’d picked didn’t have one. He stuffed this one in his back pocket for the moment. I should have brought down that backpack this morning when I left, or the messenger bag.
He looked in the refrigerator again and snagged a cheese stick. There was nothing else in there of note, though his mind absently catalogued that perishables didn’t go bad here. He moved on to the mostly bare pantry. Cheese puffs, pretzels, beef stew, canned soup, mac and cheese - I like that stuff, already have some in my apartment - hey, some of those cracker and cheese sandwiches. I have lunch. He picked those up too, putting them in the same hand as the cheese stick. Didn’t I see a bag around here somewhere?
He looked around in the living room, trying to recall where the bag was, because he thought he’d seen it in there or the bedroom. His eyes fell on the torn magazine and his mind diverted from the materials issue to the human one. The why of Sylar’s anger was straightforward enough - Peter had dismissed him and disrespected him. Could he kill over that provocation? Certainly. Peter had provoked him precisely because he feared him and refused to back down.
Peter had put aside the gun and decided, very consciously, that vengeance wasn’t his goal. If Sylar hadn’t witnessed that, then that would have been the end of it. But Sylar had, and he’d given no affirming response to it. There were several opportunities there for a connection, but Sylar had not made one, for a host of possible reasons. Lacking that, Peter had felt an instinctive need to prove that simply because he wasn’t going to carry a weapon didn’t mean he was afraid of Sylar or happy with the situation. Cue rude dominance display. Cue angry Sylar.
He huffed. Okay, Sylar’s had long enough to cool off a little. Time to go let him chew on me a bit, then maybe we can get back to … normal, I guess. He went to the front door and opened it, walking out without any wary first glance, trusting his instincts that he wasn’t stepping into an ambush. He had a slightly wary expression on his face, and held in his left hand a cheese stick and two cracker sandwich packs.
XXX
Wear a hole in the carpet, do it, just don’t…..fuck this up. More. Wasn’t ‘leaving the room’ the therapeutic, typical cut-and-dried psychiatric advice for an argument or the thing to do when angry? (Granted, ‘communicate’ was before you slammed the door…). Sylar wished for one gut-twisting moment to have his Hunger back; having it as an excuse this one time…. It would feel like heaven, as close as he would get anyway.
Heaven in blood, murder and destruction. Guess it makes up for those seventy-two virgins no one is getting, he mused, nearly to the point of hysteria himself. /”All this talk about souls and spirits has my head spinning. I am not a religious man. But there is one thing I do believe in: Blood.”/
That could bring me back….I am Sylar. He felt his short nails digging into his palm. This is nothing new. He’ll be just more miserable if you don’t kill him. If he thinks he’s getting off easy for that…. Here for a reason, here for a reason… Sylar sagged against the wall. There was no Hunger. Did Peter know that? He would have no excuse, not that he ever needed one, but he’d….grown used to it. Was it really an excuse if no one attributed his sins to his ability?
Of course Peter was right; right about everything. The glaring, the violence, the nail gun, the sneering attitude…You deserve this, remember? You get Hell because you screwed people. Sylar found himself sitting on the floor of the hall, only partly defeated, full-on insane. Wasn’t that one of the last things Matt had said before…before all this Hell? /”Wow, you really are insane. And what? Be normal? Nah, I’m sorry, that ship sailed, what, fifty murders ago?”/
That didn’t soothe his nerves or calm his desire to flay Peter alive, but it sent some…weird emotion wiggling down inside him. Of course, he ignored it. He was still angry. Peter exited the latest apartment and Sylar scrambled to his feet before the man could see him sitting in a heap. Once he stood, hands in pockets, he glanced quickly at the objects Peter held, his eyes catching on a foreign….’object’ in Peter’s pants. Was that a cord hanging from his pocket?
After the loving look Peter had given not moments before, it was beyond a doubt that whatever was in Peter’s pants, it wasn’t something that would prompt ‘Is that something in your pocket or are you happy to see me?’ What really sent Sylar over the edge of annoyance, amusement, sanity and violence was the cheese stick. He raised doubtful eyes to Peter’s as if asking if this was really happening.
This is a joke; it has got to be a joke. There’s no way I am stuck in Hell with….Lunchables and a cheese stick. His face was left blank until he could make up his mind. Making a low growl under his breath and turned towards the stairs, not even bothering to wait for some kind of answer. Sylar was behaving himself, Peter….god only knew. Someone help me….
XXX
Continued...
Characters: Peter Petrelli and Sylar/Gabriel Gray (Matt and Nathan if you squint?)
Rating: PG-13/T to eventual NC-17/M
Warnings: Language, mind fuckery (no pun intended), violence, angst (?), dirty language/thoughts/actions but nothing explicit.
Setting: Inside the Wall, S4.
Words: 9, 577
Summary: Peter has hacked into Sylar's mind on a rescue mission. Everything goes to Hell. Welcome to Sylar's mind!
Notes (Must Read): In collaboration with the wonderful Game_byrd (Gamebird- FFN) who writes for Peter (I write for Sylar). This is everything that goes on 'behind the scenes' of the episode. The story begins after Peter telepathically joins Sylar in his Matt-induced nightmare (The Wall) in the episode. Based on CANON with fanon and intellect, imagination and a thing called common sense filling in all those nasty plot-holes, but we won't point fingers.
One deviation from canon: In The Fifth Stage when Peter wipes Sylar's memory after the fight, he gained all of Sylar's memories via Rene/The Haitian's ability that allows the user to remember the person's memories in addition to erasing them from the person. AKA Peter has every single one of Sylar's memories stored in his subconscious. They appear from time to time when Peter sleeps or becomes distracted or experiences one of Sylar's deja vu's. Sylar has since recovered his memories with a combination of IA and regeneration. Sylar still has Nathan's memories from Matt Parkman's previous mind-fuck in Invisible Thread. The boys are powerless inside the Wall.
Things you'll need: // // denotes a Nathan Petrelli memory from Sylar's head. Sylar/Gabriel's memories are within singular lines / /. Peter's are \ \ and Peter’s recollection of a Sylar memory (via Rene/the Haitian's ability) is \\ \\. 'Posts' are separated between the boys by XXX (no, that's nothing naughty).
A/N: Gun warnings for gun threat, some possible suicidal themes.
Day 5
The paramedic wandered back into the lobby, looking at the display over the elevator door: “2” in friendly green diodes. Peter looked around. If there was anything else to see on the ground floor, he was missing it. He went to the door to the stairs, just to be contrary, and…paused just inside the ground floor landing. He let the door close very gently and quietly, then walked slowly and stealthily up the stairs. As he’d hoped, there was a window in the door.
The hall was empty. Peter made a greater effort now to close the door soundlessly behind him. It still made a distressingly loud click. Peter crept down the hall, looking at the few doors. One was open, the first to the left of the elevators. He could hear sounds from within. He looked around the doorframe.
Sylar was standing next to a desk, sorting through the contents as though looking for office supplies he might wish to stock up on. He looked up at Peter without the least bit of surprise. The Italian was a little offended by his own apparent lack of success, not that he’d been trying to get the drop on the killer. I was just…paranoid, I guess. There hadn’t been anything he really expected Sylar to be doing, after all. He’d just…thought Sylar would be…doing something…something nefarious.
Peter turned and went to the apartment across the hall, suppressing his urge to knock because he didn’t want to look stupid in front of Sylar. So instead he barged right in, leaving the door hanging open behind him much as the other man had. He sighed and looked around the place, trying to figure out what it was he was looking for here.
XXX
The room was fairly basic, the person had been clean and organized, clearly someone who worked most of the time and didn’t spend their time at ‘home’. A light blue paint covered the walls with off-white curtains that Sylar was pretty sure was from JC Penny due to the tacky, faux expensive taste of them. The wood of the furniture was primarily, okay, all of it was a matching cherry.
By the time he heard the obnoxiously loud cla-ap of the stairway door (he’d always hated those damn things), Sylar had already snooped on the mechanized, battery operated clock on the wall; and was currently shuffling carelessly through the desk’s drawers, having left his possessions near the door. Post-its….black Bics….receipts…paper clips, god, how useless….Pencils but no sharpener….Stapler, labeler, white out….He only turned around to let Peter know he wasn’t going to allow the medic to pull any funny business with the majority of his back turned.
He managed to hold back his chuckle at Peter’s put-out expression; clearly Hero Breath thought he was cleverer than he really was. Of course, watching his companion from the corner of his eye as he went across the hall; he sniggered and covered it with a cough as Peter paused at the door, looking rather puzzled as how to handle it. Sylar honestly almost walked across and opened the door for the poor boy, just to show him how to do it. Hell, Sylar’s own door had suffered worse. Should have made the brat fix it. Ha. Not like he knows what manual labor is. Sir Petrelli.
XXX
Peter had been in a lot of people’s homes. His job as a paramedic called for it, giving him a rich and varied background in the subject of how people really lived, rather than mere speculation. He’d grown up in rich, but he’d seen plenty of poor, middle class and the dwellings of a few families as well off as his own. Whoever lived in this apartment had been a little wealthier than average for the floor space. They’d lived here a long time, he suspected.
Later middle-aged, in addition to upper middle class, by money and lifestyle if not square footage. They had ornate shelves covered with figurines and bric-a-brac. Several displayed a collection of bells, one for each state and notable tourist attraction they’d been to. He picked one up and rang it. It had a pleasant tone and he smiled, thinking about the souvenir of happy times. Is this here because I’ve seen so many of them in other people’s homes? Or has Sylar seen something like this - a collection of things from every state? Or is it here just because I think there should be something here, and my imagination is filling in the gaps, like a real dream? Ha. ‘Real dream’ - what would that make this? A fake dream?
XXX
Leaving the desk none-too clean as when he’d found it, his interest was for the bedroom next and he homed in on it, padding in like he owned the place, which he kind of did. Modern and put-together, the place screamed of a working woman; men weren’t this organized unless they were severe Type A and OCD along with some serious other disorders. Pushing the door in without fear, he moved in to stand beside one of the two bedside tables; he opened the drawers quickly and began to paw through them.
He was picturing a brunette, about five-ten, wore heels twenty-four-seven, the impossible pencil skirts and tight hair buns, maybe some stylish glasses…. Focus, he told himself as his thoughts were straying far from the contents of the drawer, even the apartment itself. It served no one any good to dwell on long-gone occupants.
So, sighing, he went back to sorting through the drawer. Hair clips and elastic…things, pony tails? Some cough drops, light reading glasses, Tylenol, nail polish, sleeping pills and…. Sylar’s eyebrows rose slightly at the next ‘medication’ of sorts. While he didn’t find any other ‘incriminating’ evidence, his previous Irish Catholic upbringing made an unauthorized appearance before he squashed it, shoving the container to the back of the drawer.
His attention was drawn away from it to the tissue and radio-clock atop the table. Finger nail clippers, pen and paper pad….meh, nothing of interest. Slapping the drawer shut, he picked up the clock (of course it didn’t keep the damn time, how could it? It was an analog) Muttering to himself as he didn’t bother to prize the back apart since all he would see would be wires and a fucking battery inside. Sylar set it back to the table’s surface and stood abruptly.
The bathroom was next on his hit list, as it were, but it only got a brief perusal because, really, what interest could a woman’s bathroom hold for him (especially with no woman in it)? The only thing he could think of that would shock him was a chainsaw or a butcher knife….maybe a corpse. Perhaps Peter was having more luck…
XXX
He moved on, letting his fingers trail the edge of a narrow table set against the wall. It wasn’t even dusty. There was a small aquarium on it, burbling along. He bent, face to the glass, looking for whatever was supposed to be inside. The water was crystal clear and although there were actual plants in it, there weren’t very many places for fish to hide. He studied it for a very long time, but it was empty - not even one of those sucker fish. Nothing dead either - just empty, just like these apartments. Unsettled, Peter straightened and looked for something more pleasing to examine.
He spotted a turntable and perked up. His mind reaffirmed the age-bracket of his imaginary former occupants - 50, maybe 60 years old. It was interesting to explore even knowing it wasn’t real. He was finding out little things about how the world worked just by looking around (today’s lesson: No point in trying to go fishing). He wondered if this gave him an insight, however oblique, into Sylar’s mind. Now that was something he was actually curious about, although he as of yet refused to admit it.
He found a record, “The Best of Simon and Garfunkel,” and put it on. He chewed at his lip as he squatted to place the needle. He checked the settings on the machine, having only used one of these a few times in his life, while over at Brian’s house. He scratched at his cheek. He was pretty sure it was right. He flipped the switch. There was a muted pop and the speakers hummed. The record rotated. A faint scratchy noise emanated. He waited. Obviously, this was that blank part around the outside of the record. The needle gradually circled inward. The scratchy sound continued.
Eventually Peter began examining the controls again. He changed settings. He turned it on and off. He moved the needle further in. He tried a few other records. Nothing but a scratchy noise, because in this hell, even the sound of another human voice was forbidden - at least, insomuch as it might come from the world around them. He could communicate with Sylar, at least. He wondered if the man could sing. He flipped the machine off and wandered across the hall to look in on him.
He found him coming out of the bathroom, looking supremely bored. For some reason that made Peter smile. Sylar was not here, on the second floor of the apartment building across the street from where Peter had slept last night, because this was his idea of a good time. He was here because Peter was and Peter found that warmly amusing. It wasn’t that far amiss for why Peter was back in the same room with Sylar. Every time he got away from the man something drew him back and he wasn’t so ignorant of himself as to not notice it. So he gave Sylar a wry smile and said, “Want to go check the ones down the hall?”
XXX
“Yes,” Sylar telegraphed firmly, relieved and showing it. Swiping his apple and book again, this time he set them by the elevator, knowing he wouldn’t leave them behind that way. He followed behind Peter as they walked down the hall to enter a random room (hard to be random or decided here, really), turning the knob to go inside it.
Oh, boy. A smaller apartment, clearly the byproduct of a bachelor, that’s all Sylar could describe it as. While the place wasn’t filled with garbage, per se; chip bags and pizza cartons or beer bottles, it wasn’t clean in the best sense of the word. A game console and connecting wires to the controls were strewn over the worn rust-colored couch with a single Pepsi can on the glass coffee table, the condensation long gone.
XXX
Peter looked around the place with a sort of pleased surprise. Not that he approved of the mess - far from it - but it was the first really messy place he’d seen. Sylar’s had been cluttered, not messy, but most of the other places he’d been in so far had been sterile, antiseptic even. This was…well, it looked a lot more lived in than most, he supposed.
He left the living room to Sylar and went further in, finding the one bedroom in the place residing behind door number one. Door number two was probably the bathroom, he assumed. The bedroom was equally a mess, but in addition to the food boxes there were clothes strewn across the floor. He looked at the battered dresser immediately to his right. Not wanting to walk in further right away, he opened the top drawer - socks, and ratty-looking ones at that. He shut it.
XXX
Sylar was immediately put off by the perceived ‘mess’ and he stood near the door way, hesitant to go in further. Ugh; it reminded him somehow of Zane’s place all those years ago; subconsciously he peered around as if waiting for Mohinder to pop out with a tuning fork and large syringe.
Taking a few steps in after Peter (who didn’t appear to mind so much), he shrugged to himself and plunged in, wondering if he should fear for his life. “If we find a corpse keeled over the Halo set, man, I’m done,” he muttered mostly to himself. Honestly, he didn’t want to look in the bedroom, kitchen or bathroom.
Sylar dared to peer into the kitchen and didn’t find anything of note there besides a suspicious lack of culinary tools….well, not suspicious if he considered the fact that this was the pizza-and-beer type who probably couldn’t cook to, ha, save his life. He glanced in Peter’s direction briefly. He’s clean, though; spartan, actually. Meanwhile, Sylar feared the mold-monster.
XXX
He opened the second drawer, a deeper one. It was heavy and came out reluctantly to reveal two out-of-fashion sweaters. Peter frowned. One did not have to be a sleuth to deduce that a drawer full of sweaters should not be that heavy. He lifted one, to discover an image of mammaries of massive proportions staring up at him. He dropped the sweater immediately and looked guiltily at the open doorway. No, Sylar wasn’t there. He could hear him noising around, but Peter didn’t know what he was doing. Regardless, he wasn’t in the doorway.
Peter picked up the sweater again and felt around in the drawer. There was a good four inches of magazines in there, in a double stack. He lifted sweater two to find more epic endowments of the female variety. It was very much not Peter’s kink and never had been. Not even remotely. He was pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum, if he had to pick based on physical form alone, which had never mattered much to him anyway. He folded the sweaters back and closed the drawer.
XXX
He decided to go skeleton hunting and went to the closet between the dead TV and the kitchen, opening the small door. One of his eyebrows crept upwards as he saw various amateur and high school trophies, a bowling ball (oh, the cliché), several jackets, a cardboard box that revealed a whole plethora of Transformer action figures. Admittedly, Sylar sniggered a little. Expecting the little cousins over much? At least that was this guy’s excuse.
For the hell of it, Sylar decided to see what games and movies (that wouldn’t work) the former occupant had stashed. He crouched at the TV, opening the stand’s cupboard to peer inside at the contents; Nintendo, Playstation and X-box? Overkill. What was this guy, a ‘professional’ gamer? Grand Theft Auto, the obligatory Halo, some Tom Clancy, Call of Duty, Kill Zone, baseball, basketball and football, Marvel vs. Capcom, Final Fantasy, Mario and Pac-man?
Opening one of the cases at random, he discovered all was not as it seemed. “One of those things you don’t want Mom finding, huh?” he mused aloud, tossing the pack back in and shutting the cupboard as he stood. He would have leaned against the wall as he waited, but he frankly suspected the dull tan paint was toxic as well. So he stood and waited for Peter to leave any minute because this apartment clearly had nothing of interest.
XXX
Watching his step, he walked around the corner of the bed, looking at a pair of crossed swords hanging on the wall. They were very shiny. He leaned closer and examined them, then touched the blade on one. As it had appeared - dull. Props. He looked across the room at the poster of a dragon on one wall. There was another sword, much shorter, near the headboard of the bed. He cocked his head at that. It was situated so someone on the bed could reach it. He went to it. The blade here wasn’t as glossy as the others, but a careful touch revealed that it was much sharper. He wasn’t sure how sharp, not seeing any reason to press and cut himself, but it was certainly serviceable.
Huh. He didn’t know what to think about that, so he opened the nightstand that was directly in front of him. Inside there was a single object: a pistol. He stared at it for a very long moment and finally picked it up. Heavy. He turned it over and examined it. Safety’s off. He clicked that over, then looked at it again. It was a good fit for his hand, but he wasn’t familiar with it. He released the magazine, which looked full. He turned the gun and looked inside. He was pretty sure there was a bullet in the chamber. He racked the slide, ejecting it. It made a loud, characteristic sound.
XXX
Out of nowhere, Sylar heard the familiar sound of a gun slide being pulled and released, next the sound of the magazine being ejected and reinserted. He stiffened instantly, turning slowly, expecting to see his companion with the gun pointed at Sylar’s pupil.
Gun. Of course there’s guns here. Why did he have to be the one to find it? While Sylar’s first reaction was to grab a knife from the kitchen, hell, the wire from the game controller would work to strangle Peter; he forced himself to calm down and find his control. Taking a breath, feeling incredibly mortal, he padded softly to the bedroom door and peered in.
XXX
Peter bent and retrieved the ejected bullet. Hollow point. He was entirely absorbed by the gun. He tried to fit the bullet into the magazine, but it wouldn’t go. He frowned. Whoever had had the gun had wanted to have every bullet available when they reached for this, much as there was nothing else in the drawer to possibly distract the hand if it was dark and one was in a hurry. He put the magazine back in and chambered another bullet, then released the magazine and put the extra he’d ejected earlier into it. He reinserted the magazine, returning the gun to the state he’d found it in. Except that the safety was on.
XXX
Peter was fiddling rather intently with the gun; a pistol, he noticed. It was no Company-issue, the Kimber SIS; he’d arrived in time to see Peter pop out a single, additional hollow point, designed to expand on impact. With the firearm, with the bullet, Peter could do more than just kill Sylar; he could shred off a limb or blow his genius brains out to cover a wall.
Sylar waited quiet and invisible for the moment in the doorway, unsure of what to do. Redemption could be death, he realized. Not just having one’s powers removed and becoming mortal, hoping to rejoin the general populace (unlikely), but extermination.
Would Peter be the one to pull the final trigger? As much as he longed to run or better still, grab up his own protective object in the form of a weapon, he knew that it might fatally escalate things and ruin his chances at more than just survival.
The normal adrenaline rush, the surge of fear he knew academically he should be having was rather muted and dispassionate. He’d done his own considerations around year two and a half here. One of them had been suicide. Sylar didn’t really fear for his life, not like he should, like he used to. In the past, he’d fought tooth and nail to climb out of graves and break out of prison cells; all for his evolutionary drive. Life didn’t mean much here because there was none.
Peter had gotten plenty of chances to off Sylar before now, but was that because he preferred his kills with a cold heavy firearm and the impersonality of the shot when he did the deed? Then again, Peter could get plenty dirty with a nail gun and his fists, too. He certainly hadn’t hesitated when it came to brain washing. The seemingly innocent medic knew his way around guns; Sylar knew that much from Nathan and personal experience.
The other man proceeded to weigh the gun and test the sights before staring at it too long for Sylar’s comfort (but it wasn’t about his damn comfort now was it?). Peter pulled it close to get a closer look, at what, he didn’t know, but Sylar gazed at him from the door frame, careful to keep his body out of sight, not presenting Peter with any kind of target for a fast shot.
XXX
He held it out in his hand, testing the grip, looking down the sights. It’s good enough. He blinked, confusion marring his features. Wait … good enough for what? He pulled the gun closer, turning it sideways and looking at it intently. What the hell am I going to do with this? Shoot Sylar? What good would that do?
Realizing he’d been standing there focused on nothing outside himself, he jerked his head up and looked to the doorway.
XXX
Suddenly, Peter looked up at him and their eyes met; neither moved for a long moment and Sylar didn’t say anything about what he’d obviously observed. There wasn’t anything for him to say to it. Under suspicion and under an abundance of death penalties, two of them from Peter’s immediate family, Sylar didn’t expect any other treatment.
He’d hoped for it, but he didn’t expect it; that Peter considered the gun told Sylar enough. Had it been anything else in Peter’s hand, no matter how dangerous, Sylar would have turned and walked away; but he was not about to turn his back on a gun, not when he knew what he had coming and what he was up against. He couldn’t combat something like that with logic.
/Die Alone. Die Alone./ Maybe this is it. Your cards ran out a long time ago. You picked a bum hand at Stanton. He’s loaded, he’s got reasons and he figures he’ll save more lives than I will in his “dream” doing this now. Sylar stared, not at the firearm, but into Peter’s eyes with his own rather dull, dark ones; because the eyes would give away his decision before his hand and finger ever did.
XXX
Peter looked at the other man fixedly, but after the first second he hardly saw him. Nathan’s body, in the storage unit; the weight as he moved the corpse with Noah Bennet’s help, lifting it out of the trunk; the strange empty sensation as Noah finally had to shove Peter out of the plane as it began its gradual course down - Nathan’s last flight. Peter blinked rapidly, breathing harder. He looked down at the gun.
Killing Sylar would be a murder-suicide, of that he was fairly sure. But what did he really have to go back to? An empty apartment; an empty life; saving people one person at a time - it seemed so noble, but then why did he feel so defeated by it? He turned the gun slightly, the barrel pointing generally at himself. If it fired at that particular moment and angle, it would merely hit the wall next to him. Another twitch and it would hit home.
He remembered that desperate man, Malamut, in the office building who’d shot him only a few weeks before. It had hurt, not as much as that huge sniper round Danko had gotten him with, but it had hurt anyway. More from the surprise, probably. He’d thought he’d had the man.
\“You want to punish the people who have hurt you. I know what that feels like. I want to torture the guy who murdered my brother. I want to make him scream. That’s all I can think about. … Look, I promised my brother I’d be a hero. Don’t make me a liar. Not today.”
Punish the people who have hurt you … be a hero.
“Don’t make me a liar. Not today.” BANG!\
He took a long, deep breath. \I want to torture … make him scream\. He looked over at Sylar again, noting how the man carefully hid his body; the caution and edge of fear on his face; waiting, rather calmly given the situation, for Peter to do something decisive. He’d felt Sylar under his hand, next to his body, flesh and blood, heard him scream: Do it! Kill me! His eyes narrowed, remembering putting his hand to the man’s forehead and trying to snuff him out, letting Rene’s power wash through him and every memory Sylar might call his own pouring out of the man. He’d tried to exterminate him. He looked back at the gun, taking it more firmly in his hand, pointing it ahead at the mattress of the bed before him.
\“Do you really think Matt could purge every sick thought from that head?”
“What are you gonna do? Beat him out of me?”
“That’s all I can think about.”\
Was there anything else to think about? Emma, the carnival, the dream - it all faded to unimportance. He was here. Sylar was here. There was a gun in his hand. Surely at least one of these bullets would hit the bastard. A sour smile flitted across his face. Sylar was pretty hard to kill under the best of circumstances. Kill him here and maybe he’d be a vegetable forever. It seemed possible. Sylar dead - Peter ejected from his mind. Really, it was the obvious solution and Peter could find another way to solve Emma’s dilemma - time travel, shape-shifting - any number of solutions were out there. And if it killed Peter with Sylar, that wasn’t really a problem either.
\“Running into danger, going off after Sylar - you’re not going to do anything but get yourself in trouble. You’ve got to stop.” “No.” “You’ve got to stop!” “I can’t. … if I keep moving, if I just act on instinct, then I don’t have time to think.”
“That’s all I can think about.” “I don’t have time to think.” “…just act on instinct.”
“I promised my brother I’d be a hero.”
“…just act on instinct.”
“Not today.”\
He put the weapon back in the nightstand, shutting the drawer.
He turned back to Sylar and said quietly, “There’s nothing in here I need. Let’s check the one across the hall.”
XXX
He stood watching as Peter tilted the gun about; towards himself, towards the bed, finally away completely. This took over the course of about a minute or so but it was Peter’s face that held his attention. Grief; the kind that made Peter look older, the kind that drew lines in his face and made him appear haggard. The unfocused look of someone recalling a memory, the helpless and hopeless look of someone who’d fought too long and too hard with so little gain; the temptation raging in his soul, the spirit-draining drive for vengeance and more so for justice. All the emotions Sylar knew well and assumed of Peter.
How easy would it be for him? What could possibly be holding him back? If the medic spoke true about Matt and this being a dream…then Peter would lose nothing. Hell, the kid would get a goddamn medal for murdering Sylar’s mind when so many others had failed. It would be easy enough to destroy his body without fear after that.
If Peter was wrong…. He would lose nothing but the company; that may or may not drive him crazy, depending just how badly he wanted to dance on Sylar’s grave and for how long. If Peter guessed wrong….Peter could die, too. If this was Sylar’s ‘mind’ and he was killed….wouldn’t Peter get stuck inside, too?
Surely the temptation would win; Peter may have been the better man of the two, righteous and wholesome, a real hero. But Sylar had robbed him and robbed him blind. Claire, attempts at Angela, succeeding with Arthur and more deeply felt with Nathan. Isaac, Ted, Elle and the others.
Sylar had been ready to die many times; expected by others (and himself) to die and stay dead. He always kept trying to test his limits in life; how else was he supposed to bring himself up? He never expected to pay for his….sins in this way. Nor did he devote time to his dramatic, thematic death scene (unlike Hiro, who would probably suggest falling on his katana; but Sylar had already done that). Not a thought was given to the ‘after’ part, his body or his soul; that just wasn’t his style.
Actually…he didn’t even have a final thought prepared, not a prayer or a wish to be had; no apology or plea. For someone who’d died far more times than Peter had, plenty of them before being immortal, Sylar knew how death went. A tiny sting, a bare second of shock before blackness and loss of gravity; no white light, no heavenly choir, and there sure as hell weren’t seventy-four virgins waiting for him. Serial killers didn’t get those.
/No One Will Mourn Your Death./
He watched as Peter took a deep breath, his body shaking a little, gripping the handle, smiling bitterly again; this time in a self-deprecating way. Sylar himself didn’t move; preparing himself not to stir if Peter turned and came closer for the shot. Redemption was the only thing on his mind.
He wasn’t surprised when Peter did turn, but his eyes did widen when the drawer was opened. What, more ammo? And the gun placed inside it. Standing still, Sylar’s expression loosened unconsciously, brown eyes softening. All he could do was nod, unable to trust his voice and unsure how to take the unintended gift of Peter’s enduring empathy. A little wobbly around his knees as he finally shifted his weight, he backed away from the doorway.
Mercy from Peter? That was going to take some getting used to…
XXX
Peter walked out of the room on autopilot, coming as close to Sylar as he ever had and without even bothering to look at him as he went. No wariness, none of the caution and vigilance of their previous interactions here. He felt shell-shocked. He walked out of the apartment and rapped twice, perfunctorily, on the door across the hall, suddenly not caring if Sylar thought he looked stupid.
He didn’t wait long, though, opening and walking inside. He looked around the place with dull eyes. It was another small apartment, symmetrical with the bachelor pad they’d just been in. This one might have also belonged to a single male, but it was neater, if still quite full of things. The living room was crowded with books and entertainment paraphernalia - television, computer screen, various peripheral gadgets. He gave the bedroom and bath a quick glance each - no bodies, no occupant - of course not. That was all that mattered at the moment.
XXX
Sylar frowned a little on instinct as Peter passed; the kid looked worn down and numb. Apparently Sylar was no threat to Peter, at least at the moment. The medic would most likely change his mind and decide otherwise at a later time. Dutifully, he followed back into the hall to the next apartment of choice. Sylar himself was a little…off balance from the discoveries, the change and he failed to so much as raise a considerable brow or make a comment at the knocking. He didn’t even clear his throat.
Entering much more casually into the next apartment, Sylar check the rooms opposite of Peter, bathroom then bedroom on seeing where the other man went. The pair weren’t friends, they weren’t really anything….How much did he really know about Peter? The idea was to keep close but not go near each other, hence the switched routine to avoid contact.
XXX
Peter wandered into the kitchen and opened the fridge. He looked around at its interior and pulled out a can of soda from the door. He walked back out into the living room and flopped down on the couch after giving it a brief inspection. He wouldn’t stick to anything and there was nothing to move out of the way. He vaguely wanted to continue searching, but for the moment he just wanted to recover. Process. Stop feeling numb.
The soda was cold as he took a deep drink. Not his favorite brand - it was a Pepsi and honestly he didn’t care much for either of the big name products, Coca-Cola or Pepsi - but honestly he would have taken a beer at the moment and he disliked that even more. Caffeine, alcohol, whatever legal drug of choice he could find. Given his companion here, caffeine was probably the safer choice. He didn’t want to get impaired around Sylar.
\‘Do it. Kill me!’\ Sylar’s request haunted Peter’s thoughts. What bothered him even more was that he’d tried to do just that. He’d tried to murder someone.
He looked up at Sylar and then away, feeling a little of the homicidal impulse fade. He’d felt it almost continuously since coming here. Every time he picked up anything remotely like a weapon, it was there, tickling at the back of his mind or even flagrant in the forefront. It isn’t me. It isn’t what I want to be. He sighed and took another draught, feeling the drink cold and sweet and bitter in his mouth, the faint burning of carbonation fizzing in his throat. He rolled the can against his forehead.
XXX
When he returned to the living room, he saw Peter sit down with a can of pop in his hand, the gesture one of defeated unfeeling. Suddenly Peter was looking exhausted and he had no physical reason to be, but he could understand the emotional drain that was obviously the culprit. To give the man his moment (surely he needed one), Sylar slunk to the kitchen himself.
He didn’t need anything; he had his apple still, but he made a show of looking around the kitchen, opening all the cupboards and drawers. Once he’d finished with that, not finding anything vaguely of interest, he leaned against the kitchen’s door frame, profile to Peter so as not to appear to stare. But that’s just what he felt the need to do; check on him. He did notice the EMT seemed to have a headache or….maybe it was one of those perceived mental aches.
Sylar was surprising himself left and right with this whole ‘help and guide and appeal to Peter’ business.
XXX
Peter looked at a magazine on the TV tray serving as an end table next to him. He reached over and picked it up: BMX Plus! He frowned at the titles of the articles advertised on the cover: How to make your race bike even faster! Check out what Ross is rockin’! Installing locking grips. He tossed it back down. That was so far outside the range of experience he’d had lately that it was like a foreign language. It gave him culture shock just to contemplate it.
His life since he’d gotten his ability had been anything but normal. He’d wanted that - what his ability had brought him. He’d sought it out. He’d embraced it even. But doing so had separated him from the people he wanted to save. He had so little in common with them anymore. He had become like a ball in a pinball machine, constantly reeling from one disaster to another, trying to stay ahead of the repercussions to his actions, trying to live a moral life when a making a mistake could level a city, or wipe out 93% of the world’s population. He no longer lived the sort of life where ‘How to make your race bike even faster!’ made any sense.
Peter mused aloud, “Sometimes I wonder what’s going on with everyone else out there in the real world, what kind of life they have, how they get by and if they enjoy it. There isn’t any other way to be for them. But those of us with abilities don’t have that option. Not usually. I guess a few do. Or try to, like Matt and Claire and … hell, I guess my mom. She at least managed to raise Nathan and I without us knowing.”
\‘That’s crazy talk.’\ - Nathan telling him that having abilities was ridiculous. Later his brother had called his own ability “freakish.”
\‘Now that’s as strange as it gets.’\ - When Peter had tried to share with Simone, heady with the importance of his power, she’d shut him down. It was like a bucket of cold water. Every time he’d thought about telling someone else about it, he remembered her reaction. Hers, and Mohinder’s. They had made him feel stupid and neglected, small and insignificant. He knew he wasn’t.
Which brought to his mind asking Mohinder, \‘You ever get the feeling you were meant to do something extraordinary?’\ And he did. Even now. Even here. Peter still felt there was a meaning to his life beyond just being a normal paramedic or whatever. It was why when he’d had the dream, he’d dropped everything to live that life again, diving headfirst into the situation. And here he was.
\‘When I’m by myself, I’m not much of anything.’\ He was defined by who he was with - his ability had always worked that way. He looked over at Sylar and smirked. Well, I’m not by myself…but I’m not real sure what I am when he’s around. I suppose… He thought about when he had put the gun back in the drawer. I suppose I’m not a murderer. That’s nice to know. He started chuckling to himself and muttered, “At least it’s not contagious.” He started laughing harder, because it seemed incredibly funny to imagine a world where people’s defining characteristics: plumber, student, paramedic, serial killer - might be contagious and easily transferable, like Peter’s ability. Sylar the plumber. Peter set his soda to the side before he spilled it on himself. He leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands on his face, and laughed.
XXX
Randomly, his companion spoke and he turned to face him as he did and what he said made little sense and meant everything at the same time. Surely Peter wasn’t just NOW coming to terms with that fact?
“For you and I….there’s never going to be a happy middle ground; we’re never going to blend in if that’s what you’re as-“ His companion erupted into insane chuckles; a sound that had no business coming from Peter. Why did he have to have his breakdown now, here, with Sylar? Guess that’s maybe what he feels like with you…. Had Peter been….aware and thought about things (possibly before ‘leaping’ as it were), he’d have seen years ago that the idea of ‘being normal’ was impossible.
It was a kind of all or nothing situation. It sucked. Peter had at least had family, friends, coworkers and people to talk to; people to be human with so Sylar didn’t pity him very much at all. Peter may have always felt that he stuck out somehow, but he’d had people. He’d had a brother, for god’s sake. If he’d had his abilities he would have laughed at Peter and shook his head in amused disgust that it had taken him this long to figure that out.
His eyes widened in stunned horror as Peter took a turn for the hysterics and he was left to…what? Comfort? Ignore? Give him space? Oh, it was like every one of those awkward romance movies where the woman started bawling over the corny pick up line the guy made (start bawling for no reason actually…) and every time Sylar was left to pity the poor man who had to bear it. Sylar squirmed in the doorway, completely uncomfortable and he settled for looking comforting. 'Um, Peter….?' He wanted to ask, but didn’t interrupt the flow of unrestrained laughter.
The laughter was nice, he realized next. Mirth from another human throat; unabashed and (somewhat) wholesome. He relaxed once he knew nothing would be expected of him and he just listened to the sound. Such a beautiful sound; made even more so from the fact that it came from a man who laughed so rarely now. In a way, Peter's laughter was a gift. Damn, he’s…he’s real stressed. Again, Sylar had very little pity to spare for him. Silver spoon.
Poor Peter. He'd learn though, wouldn't he? Learn of despair and neglect and abandonment. Of hopelessness, crushed dreams, mind-shredding loneliness and of utter helplessness. Plenty of tears and tantrums and all-out screams pleading for a sign or for mercy, maybe damaged phalanges, knees, knuckles and fingernails. Sleepless nights filled with nightmares when he would manage to sleep, the burn in his eyes the next day, the ache in his back and neck....Yet again, Peter had something Sylar hadn't had when he'd learned all this. Peter had Sylar.
For someone who'd received so little pity in his life, so little plain-and-simple help, it was difficult for Sylar, as a labeled psychopath, to empathize. “Just take it easy, man. You don’t….have to worry about that anymore,” he murmured; idea of helpful and comforting. Sylar leaned in and swiped the magazine Peter had picked up, leafing rapidly through it, trying to take his time and appear interested. Motorcycles? Of course, it was as unfamiliar to him as it had been to Peter.
XXX
Peter wound down from his fit of laughter, taking note of Sylar having come within arm’s length of him. Maybe that was what snapped him out of it - or maybe it just came to a natural conclusion. He leaned back, putting the heels of his hands to his eyes. I wanted to kill you, ran through his head and he very nearly blurted it out. He chuckled again, because in his current frame of mind that would be a funny thing to say. He had enough sense left to control his tongue though and so he said nothing. It had been perfectly clear, after all, from Sylar’s face that he knew what Peter might have done with that gun and just as clearly that he’d put it aside.
He put his hands down, sighing and letting the last of it pass out of him. Too much tension. I’m walking around carrying too much tension. I keep expecting him to do something. I keep expecting me to do something - to him. There’s nothing else here for me to do! The frustration of being stuck here was wearing on him.
XXX
Peter clammed up the instant Sylar moved for the magazine. Really? He had to ask himself. I’m fucking powerless and I didn’t even move all that fast. Of course he knew he’d done a fantastic, probably unrivaled job of making it easy for others to hate him, what did he expect? While he knew it wasn’t Peter’s fault, he still glared at the damn worthless sports magazine.
When the man chuckled again, seemingly unable to stop his round of maddening laughter, Sylar was about ready to snap at him. ‘What the fuck is your problem? Just get over it already! It doesn’t hurt so bad once you let it all go….’ Maybe even ‘you need some serious Zen (might I suggest yoga?)’. But he managed to keep his mouth shut, pursing his lips to help with the act as he tried to pull a Cyclops move on the publication in his hand.
XXX
He gave Sylar a very assessing look, up and down. It was a rude look and he knew it. He looked at him anyway. This is the guy I get to be trapped with for the next however-long? He reached over for his soda and got to his feet. He rubbed at his still-sore back and moseyed over towards the side of the room opposite Sylar, turning his back on him. He looked at the contents of a shelf set, silently reading over the titles of books, looking at a handful of odd curios - tiny metal figurines of tanks and jeeps, brightly painted. He took a deep drink and scratched at his forehead, glancing behind himself to status-check on Sylar.
XXX
Somehow he felt a pair eyes on him, the quality of the look was different, he knew. Slowly he turned his head to eye Peter right back, brown eyes widening as he noted the direction and type of gaze Peter was raking over his whole body. Did he just….No, no way. Is he….? He shifted his weight, standing up straighter. That type of look usually spoke of disgust and danger, followed up with a biting comment or question.
And what did Peter do? Look him over, as if he were something to be inspected, found him wanting or of disinterest, pick up his pop and walk off. That fucker. You….bastard, don’t you dare ignore me! Sylar was busy snarling mentally, Emo Petrelli bastard spawn; don’t you dare treat me like that.
Once Peter had turned his back, Sylar glared holy and self-righteous murder at him, trying to mentally rip the man’s spine out from his jacket-clad back. No such luck. He had the urge to strangle his companion just for being too annoying to crack open. Bash his head in, make the medic stare at him and force the man to see him. He barely restrained a step in Peter’s direction.
The nurse would be the perfect fodder for his latent desires. They even had a gun. But while it may have been a clear message to his psyche, he knew it would be the wrong decision to make. A challenge. I like a challenge. He’s a challenge. Maybe if he kept telling himself that Peter would live another day. He wants to play a game, does he? I’m very good at games. You’re on, Petrelli.
XXX
His mind was blank. He tried, with an effort, to pull thoughts into it. Peter didn’t have a constant internal monologue, not most of the time. He felt things, he responded to those feelings; he wanted to express things, his mind found the words to do so. Sometimes he thought things ‘out loud’ in his head and sometimes he did not. This was one of those ‘not’ times.
He shrugged to himself. This was emotional processing. It didn’t always make sense. It didn’t have to. In the meanwhile, he turned to one of his standard coping mechanisms and buried himself in ‘work’ - that of the moment being to examine the contents of the room in more detail. He was sure he’d had a good reason to do so at some point. He pulled down books at random and checked the interiors - they all had text in them. He didn’t bother to read them. He didn’t care. He was just checking.
He tried to flip on the computer - it did not activate. He looked over at Sylar, almost asking a question. Does anything electronic work? He looked back at the computer, imagining Sylar’s cutting response (not that he could think of what he’d say specifically, but Peter knew it would be biting), putting him firmly in his place as someone who didn’t understand the world they were in and needed his help. He looked at Sylar once more, now wary. He moved on, looking through the drawers of the computer desk and examining the contents.
He finished his soda as he headed to the bathroom, tossing the can in the wastebasket. He found a very good electric razor plugged in and sitting on the counter. He flipped it on. It worked. He turned it off and unplugged it, putting it in his pocket. Most electronic devices did function here, he considered. There were just some strange anomalies that did not, like television, radio and apparently computers. Even the turntable had worked, it just hadn’t played.
He opened a drawer. Toothbrush, toothpaste, clippers…hm. He regarded his nails. I wonder if they grow here? If so, I wonder who cuts Sylar’s hair? He snorted and continued looking. Shaving cream - why would he have that and an electric razor? Huh. Band-aids. Condoms. His hand paused in the process of sorting through things. Condoms. Don’t need those. Is Sylar even gay? He swallowed and shut the drawer, suddenly uninterested in whatever else was in there.
He stood there staring blankly at the sink for a while. He wanted very much to leave suddenly, to go back to his apartment and stay there. But Sylar was here and he’d want to know why and telling him he was going to carry back this electric razor almost certainly would not fly. He wasn’t all that sure why he wanted to leave himself, except that it had something to do with that box of condoms and the rude look he’d given Sylar earlier. He turned mechanically to the combination bath/shower and reviewed the products there - completely uninterested in them, but keeping his mind off anything else.
He left the bathroom, intent on continuing his methodical, pointless search of the rest of the place. He went in the bedroom next.
XXX
Sylar turned the glossy page roughly, tearing it a little as he saw the other man pass from bathroom to bedroom out of the corner of his eye. Just tack him down like a butterfly on a board. /I wanted to crucify you in Times Square./ Stop him from moving, fix his brain, own him, shut him up, get inside his head, get the answer.
The next action he wished to perform was shredding the magazine for being present, being in the way, being so damn useless. A hindrance. Angry at a magazine? That’s a new low. If Peter looked, he’d see Sylar’s face probably get pale with anger. The other had man merely poked around the room with faux interest. Honestly, he’d just lost interest in ‘exploring’ the way Peter felt the need to.
Because, seriously, what the hell are we gonna find that’s so damn important? New shoelaces in this year’s colors? Sure as hell isn’t BMX magazine or the fucking Kimber. Oh, no, I know. A secret door somewhere, a dead body, no, maybe a skeleton. Maybe Hiro or Claire hiding out somewhere; what the fuck is he ‘looking’ for?!
Sylar growled at the man once he was in the bedroom, already sick of his presence. Just to show his disproval, he threw down the magazine, pages fluttering wildly and stalked out the door; closing it loudly enough to make a statement as he entered the hallway. Clenching and releasing his fists as he started to pace while he waited, simultaneously debating whether or not to move up to the next floor.
Then he thought on it; why was Peter looking at me like that in the first place?
XXX
Peter combed quickly but thoroughly through the bedroom, interrupted by the sound of the front door slamming. He jerked, startled, and moved to look out the bedroom door, which he’d left open. He listened. Hearing nothing of note, he looked into the living room. No Sylar, front door shut. Well, he can’t have locked me in here.
He’d noticed Sylar was angry. He didn’t care all that much. He supposed he should. He looked at the front door for a few moments, then wandered into the kitchen thoughtfully. He started looking through drawers on autopilot. What might an angry Sylar do? Any of those things Peter had already contemplated seemed more likely - murder, torture, whatever inventive cruelty he might come up with.
Maybe he left to get the gun? For some reason, that seemed entirely implausible. Peter could trot out reasons why it was unlikely - Sylar’s loneliness, his desperation, his lurking around him and repeated approaches, trying to find the right distance to be at - but none of those rang quite true. He tried to pin it down. His constant paranoia of Sylar had to have some basis, after all.
\‘You’re not a killer, Peter. I am.’\
Was I even alive in that future where he saved Emma? He wasn’t sure he was. Sylar was - or at least what looked like Sylar. Peter pulled out a can opener that looked good. The apartment he’d picked didn’t have one. He stuffed this one in his back pocket for the moment. I should have brought down that backpack this morning when I left, or the messenger bag.
He looked in the refrigerator again and snagged a cheese stick. There was nothing else in there of note, though his mind absently catalogued that perishables didn’t go bad here. He moved on to the mostly bare pantry. Cheese puffs, pretzels, beef stew, canned soup, mac and cheese - I like that stuff, already have some in my apartment - hey, some of those cracker and cheese sandwiches. I have lunch. He picked those up too, putting them in the same hand as the cheese stick. Didn’t I see a bag around here somewhere?
He looked around in the living room, trying to recall where the bag was, because he thought he’d seen it in there or the bedroom. His eyes fell on the torn magazine and his mind diverted from the materials issue to the human one. The why of Sylar’s anger was straightforward enough - Peter had dismissed him and disrespected him. Could he kill over that provocation? Certainly. Peter had provoked him precisely because he feared him and refused to back down.
Peter had put aside the gun and decided, very consciously, that vengeance wasn’t his goal. If Sylar hadn’t witnessed that, then that would have been the end of it. But Sylar had, and he’d given no affirming response to it. There were several opportunities there for a connection, but Sylar had not made one, for a host of possible reasons. Lacking that, Peter had felt an instinctive need to prove that simply because he wasn’t going to carry a weapon didn’t mean he was afraid of Sylar or happy with the situation. Cue rude dominance display. Cue angry Sylar.
He huffed. Okay, Sylar’s had long enough to cool off a little. Time to go let him chew on me a bit, then maybe we can get back to … normal, I guess. He went to the front door and opened it, walking out without any wary first glance, trusting his instincts that he wasn’t stepping into an ambush. He had a slightly wary expression on his face, and held in his left hand a cheese stick and two cracker sandwich packs.
XXX
Wear a hole in the carpet, do it, just don’t…..fuck this up. More. Wasn’t ‘leaving the room’ the therapeutic, typical cut-and-dried psychiatric advice for an argument or the thing to do when angry? (Granted, ‘communicate’ was before you slammed the door…). Sylar wished for one gut-twisting moment to have his Hunger back; having it as an excuse this one time…. It would feel like heaven, as close as he would get anyway.
Heaven in blood, murder and destruction. Guess it makes up for those seventy-two virgins no one is getting, he mused, nearly to the point of hysteria himself. /”All this talk about souls and spirits has my head spinning. I am not a religious man. But there is one thing I do believe in: Blood.”/
That could bring me back….I am Sylar. He felt his short nails digging into his palm. This is nothing new. He’ll be just more miserable if you don’t kill him. If he thinks he’s getting off easy for that…. Here for a reason, here for a reason… Sylar sagged against the wall. There was no Hunger. Did Peter know that? He would have no excuse, not that he ever needed one, but he’d….grown used to it. Was it really an excuse if no one attributed his sins to his ability?
Of course Peter was right; right about everything. The glaring, the violence, the nail gun, the sneering attitude…You deserve this, remember? You get Hell because you screwed people. Sylar found himself sitting on the floor of the hall, only partly defeated, full-on insane. Wasn’t that one of the last things Matt had said before…before all this Hell? /”Wow, you really are insane. And what? Be normal? Nah, I’m sorry, that ship sailed, what, fifty murders ago?”/
That didn’t soothe his nerves or calm his desire to flay Peter alive, but it sent some…weird emotion wiggling down inside him. Of course, he ignored it. He was still angry. Peter exited the latest apartment and Sylar scrambled to his feet before the man could see him sitting in a heap. Once he stood, hands in pockets, he glanced quickly at the objects Peter held, his eyes catching on a foreign….’object’ in Peter’s pants. Was that a cord hanging from his pocket?
After the loving look Peter had given not moments before, it was beyond a doubt that whatever was in Peter’s pants, it wasn’t something that would prompt ‘Is that something in your pocket or are you happy to see me?’ What really sent Sylar over the edge of annoyance, amusement, sanity and violence was the cheese stick. He raised doubtful eyes to Peter’s as if asking if this was really happening.
This is a joke; it has got to be a joke. There’s no way I am stuck in Hell with….Lunchables and a cheese stick. His face was left blank until he could make up his mind. Making a low growl under his breath and turned towards the stairs, not even bothering to wait for some kind of answer. Sylar was behaving himself, Peter….god only knew. Someone help me….
XXX
Continued...