The Breath Of Our Fear
THE BREATH OF YOUR FEAR
Ficfest Prompt: "'You aren't afraid of anything, are you?' she said.
'I'm afraid of you,' I said.
'Oh no, I do not think so.'" - Akasha & Lestat, Queen of the Damned
Summary: Eleven years after her supposed death, Peter forces Sylar and Elle together again.
Rating: G
Ships: Sylar/Elle
Characters: Sylar, Elle, Ezra Gray, Peter
WORDS: 1836
AN: Beataed by the awesome Emmy/martinigirl, as always.
--
In the end, Gabriel is man enough to recognize that killing her might be the stupidest thing he has ever done. Not so much because she deserved to live more than the others he has killed with far less fanfare and more of a rational cause, but because they could have had a chance to build…something. At the very least, she had understood him in a way everyone else had been unable to.
And he used to care about her, to look at her in a way he still has not quite looked at any other woman.
Eleven years after he cut Elle open, he has made his peace with that. He has this strange antagonistic, semi-friendly connection to Peter Petrelli and Claire Bennett and he has accepted that that is all the human connection he will ever have.
Not because they want it, but because they have accepted that the three of them will probably be forced to be around each other forever, since the last eclipse has reactivated Peter’s natural ability. Well, that and because their lives have became entwined too often to not forge a tentative understanding.
Gabriel has been so many things -a weakling of a watchmaker, a remorseful son, a mindless killer, a monster, a fool, a seeker- that nowadays it’s a relief to just let the past go.
We are what we are, and he has been content enough to retire in a secluded warehouse, with his collection of antique clocks and two old cats, focusing of developing those abilities he has spent so long collecting.
He is not as surprised as he should be when Peter knocks on his door on a chilly November morning. After all, Peter is always fighting the good fight and thus always looking for the occasional ally.
“Hey,” Peter greets, simply, and Gabriel has the chance of wondering for a moment why the other man looks that uneasy before the latter stands aside, no longer covering his company.
A young woman and a little boy not older than 10 years old are standing behind him, and they are good enough reason.
The woman is young and beautiful, her blonde hair caught in a tight bun, and she wears a pale blue dress that is both conservative and curve-hugging. She doesn’t look happy to be there, but she answers to his flabbergasted silence with a smugly eloquent arching of her pale eyebrows. She looks like Elle would if Sylar had not murdered her and set her corpse on fire, 11 years ago.
“You know Elle,” Peter adds unnecessarily, his right hand laying on her shoulder in a protective, reassuring sort of gesture that Gabriel instinctively resents, and then the latent overdramatic Petrelli genes kick in and it’s “This is Ezra, your son”
Gabriel blinks blankly at the boy, suddenly remembering his presence, and the boy frowns but stays quiet, subconsciously angling his body closer to his mother’s. The kid is scrawny and blonde, the resemblance to Elle evident in the shape of his chin and jaw. But those eyes, liquid brown and inquisitive, are much like his.
Ezra is Hebraic for ‘he who comes back from death’, it occurs to Gabriel as he steps aside to let his guests in.
Fitting.
--
Peter explains the whole situation in an annoyingly accurate manner: Elle was dead for assumedly few hours after he set her on fire, but the child they had conceived in that one act of pent-up passion couldn’t be killed along with her. Already then, it could regenerate and it had inherited the ability to transfer abilities from one recipient to another. Thus Elle had found herself alive and well soon enough, utterly unable to understand how or why until Ezra begun manifesting all of the abilities absorbed by Sylar in his mad hunt. Ezra had had a fairly normal life so far, but now -with puberty hovering -his powers were going all awry.
“I can’t protect him alone anymore”- Elle interjects for the first time, perfectly composed and all the more distant for it- “and I don’t know how to train him to control all those abilities. Peter says you are quite good at holding yourself in check so, perhaps... ”
It ticks him off that she went to Peter first, when it’s his child they are talking about but he supposes he has no right to expect otherwise.
Gabriel nods like he understands, shaking off the dread and the guilt, the awareness that his son looks even less pleased at being there than his mother.
--
Ezra and Elle move in and life is suddenly so…full.
Gabriel feels like he had forgotten that living with someone else could be incredibly pleasant, not only disturbing. The sense of domesticity that builds up between the three of them is a hard-won victory, but as months pass them by, it begins to feel natural.
Ezra is smart and curious and teaching him is not easy, since his powers often twist out of control in the most violent and erratic ways. Elle manages to make light of their situation with an unwavering flippancy Gabriel can’t help but admire.
She is a better mother than anyone could have credited her for, affectionate but not suffocating, judgment-free but firm in her decisions, bluntly honest but not cruelly so.
Gabriel envies the closeness between mother and son, often spying it and aching to be part of it. He is slowly gaining Ezra’s respect and sympathy, but the more their relationship progresses, the more Gabriel realizes it’s not enough. He is greedy, he wants more than Elle’s forced cordiality and sarcastic comments. More than her suspicious, hard eyes following every move of his, more than glimpses of her rail-thin body clad in a towel when she stalks proudly out of his bathroom and toward her bedroom.
He just is not sure he could or should have it.
“You never asked me why,” he provokes her one night, to break a silence that is growing increasingly uncomfortable. They are alone in the kitchen and Elle is pretending to memorize the fridge’s many contents while he waits for the water for his tea to boil. Ezra is upstairs, probably already asleep considering how worn out he was.
“Why what?” She plays dumb, tone airy, her back unmoving and turned on him.
“Why I killed you.”
She faces him then, lips thinning in a wolfish, careless imitation of a smirk.
“It doesn’t matter why. You won’t kill me again.”
'You aren't afraid of anything, are you?' He is surprised that a snit of affection has slipped into his voice. He just meant to mock her cockiness.
'Oh, I'm afraid of you.' She reassures him, her ponytail swinging as she nods, almost taunting him but not quite.
The affirmation rings in his mind as a lie, anyway, and he smiles patronizingly just to irritate her some more.
'Oh no, I don’t think so.' He echoes her, irony dripping off every word.
Elle regards him almost seriously for a fistful of seconds, then shakes her beautiful head once more, looks away from him for a moment and then back to the fridge again, snickering in annoyance.
“Maybe I lost the capacity to be afraid for myself a long time ago. I had given up completely and then that kid upstairs just…gave everything back .All I never had. And he has all of my heart now and I don’t think anything could really hurt me anymore, unless it hurt him first. And I don’t think you want to hurt him, because without him, what else do you have? ”
Her honesty, the uncaring brutality she used to toss it in his face, stings more than it should.
Elle slams the fridge closed, a yogurt in her hand and leans, silently gloating over his inability to form a proper response. Yet, as he watches with resentful interest her lips closing around the spoon, he can feel her mood turn from bemused to awkward. He can see her shrugging her unease off and deciding to abruptly change the subject.
“Are you afraid of him?” She asks, a sardonic grin tugging at her lips rebelliously, despite her stubborn intention to not cultivate any kind of real camaraderie with her once-killer. “He is going to be nearly a god among our kind, as soon he gets it all under control.”
There are many ways Gabriel could answer that question sincerely. He might say that he is afraid he is not going able to help as much as is needed, that he is afraid his son will repeat his own mistakes, that he fears not managing to bond with Ezra enough. He might say he is afraid that they will leave his life as soon they don’t need him.
He might lie, and say only ‘no’.
Gabriel does neither. Masochistic, illogical course of action as it is. “I’m more afraid of you,” he confesses, voice soft and semi-serious, leaning slightly toward her.
“Sure” Elle chuckles, her head tipping back like he is pulling a joke on her.
She doesn’t see he means it, and he is sort of glad of that. It might be why he said it in such a tone that made it unlikely to be taken at face value.
But the truth is, he is afraid of Elle Bishop in every way he knows how to be. He is afraid that it indeed was love between them, all those years ago, and that he has ruined that forever in a moment of bitterness and confusion and stupidity.
He fears all implications of their common and relative immortality: there’s a permanency there he can no longer escape from,
He is afraid of how the history between him and Elle keeps repeating itself under different guises throughout the years. They reinvent themselves and play new roles, but it somehow always ends the same: with him desiring something out of his reach.
When it comes to it, he may have hurt her but still she won every time, hollowing him a bit more with her absence alone.
And it’s dangerous, but he has not set aside his obsessions only so he could be a slave to his fears.
So he dares, more than Sylar did, more than the bumbling first version of Gabriel Gray, and takes a step in the right direction. He tucks a lock of her gold-spun hair behind her ear, pretending to not notice her stiffening posture.
He goes so far as to bend his head down to kiss the exposed, warm curve of her neck when she turns her head nervously away from his lips. Her whole body shudders involuntarily in response, her soft skin suddenly crackling with static, and that’s all the encouragement he needs. She has jolted him back a bit, but the pain was worth the intimacy of that contact.
He decides he can fight to deserve the right of brushing his lips over her flesh again.
Fear can be useful too, if it shows how to keep yourself alive.
END