(no subject)
Hey there. Been out of fandom for a while, so I pop back in with this. Very fragmented, not much like my usual style, but what the hey, my wonderful friend recommended I post.
Title: When Your Life is Chaos.
Characters/Pairing: Peter/Sylar, Claire pops up once.
Set: AU, set sometime vaguely in the future...
Rating/Warnings: A little bit of "splatter" genre. That's semi-graphic images of injury.
Summary: Forever's a long time to hold a grudge, but it's a long time to love too.
A/N: Um..."Inspired By; Master Plots; Forbidden Love." So yeah...kind of...
An eternity is a long time.
Immortality is fleeting in comparison.
In all of space and time, in all possible outcomes of all possible futures, stretching on beyond the human imagination’s comprehensibility…there’s one certainty.
Two certainties.
One is Peter Petrelli.
The other is Sylar.
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At first, it’s the most indulgent pain it could ever be possible to feel. The rawness of Claire’s insides ripped out, softly dripping blood onto a tiled floor, spongy tissue torn apart, splatters of gore surrounding her; Peter’s reflex is to vomit.
But worse, always and forever worse, is the scar on her arm.
A pinprick.
A needle.
A vaccine.
Peter had rushed to her, cradled her, had to touch the indent of an injection. Swollen under his fingers- still fresh.
If he’d been faster-
If he’d been faster, he could have stopped the injection, the suppressant, and Claire would be as invulnerable as him, would have had a right to take that shot for him, would be healing before his eyes instead of…instead of….
Instead of dying.
It’s unpleasant. She doesn’t have last words. She moans, and gurgles as the blood swills in her throat. She looses control, convulses, twitches, flickers. She bleeds out, slowly, for a minute or two, until, until-
He puts a bullet through her brain without looking into her sky-blue eyes, beginning to cloud.
She’s his first kill.
--------~~~~~--------
Eternity is a long time to remember Claire dying. To smell the iron on her flesh, and watch red glitter on her gold. To feel her skin soaked in sweat, and to hear a choking wheeze that lasted a lifetime.
Eternity is also a long time to feel.
He likes the idea of caressing space and time, to imagine running his fingers through the hair of infinity, or brushing a kiss along it. Sometimes, just as appealing is the idea to rip it apart, to cripple it with agony and destroy…everything. Forever.
He settles for destroying every last vial of vaccine. Blasting them to hell, with fire and ash and eternal damnation for the people who held down a crying, screaming girl, and pierced her. They restrained her and injected her and they killed her, really, they killed her, they killed her, they killed her.
It’s his mantra as he stops himself from tearing them apart.
But he allows a little telekinesis to come into play as he throws them like ragdolls out of his path.
As he saves them from himself.
There's a scream in his head saying you won’t be this noble forever.
-----------~~~~-------
He remains that noble for a long, long time.
He knows what he’s facing is the end of the Earth, floating in a vacuum of eternal space forever, dying and being reborn and watching galaxies pass in the blink of an eye. Having each cell stretched and crushed beyond physical understanding, and living through it. Always healing himself on the outside, and he feels he’s already starting to rot on the inside.
Festering and dying and rotting and decaying.
He can taste it in his mouth.
He’s only got until humanity ends to maximise his potential. He stands taller, he walks faster, his face hardens and so does his heart. He loves himself, he hates himself, he’s empathy, he’s apathy, he tries to emulate his past self, his future self, he’s dissatisfied in such a complete way it’s almost sickeningly, sweetly, satisfying.
Only one constant remains.
Sylar.
Of course.
-----------~~~~~-------
Sylar.
He’s immortal, but a constant. He doesn’t change who he is. He is so completely enveloped in his ego that if there’s a chink in his armour, Peter never sees it. He doesn’t know Sylar’s past, he can’t predict his future.
Sylar meets him, from time to time, and usually they fight on opposing morality. But he’s saved Sylar’s life more times than he can count, all the same, and Sylar’s saved his a few times as well.
It’s only because it benefits him to ensure protection in that situation - it’s only because it’s better to save Sylar than Ed - it’s only because of instinct to stop a speeding bullet before looking at it’s target.
Eternity is a long time to live with things, and he has to live with Sylar forever.
When all your life is chaos, it’s easy to fall for controlled insanity.
----------~~~~~~--------
This is the only reason Peter Petrelli has never kissed Sylar.
Because they’ve got forever.
He’s even allowed it to pass into his conscious mind, when they’re staring down from a hundred metres away or close enough to share every intimidating breath. Even considered Sylar’s musky scent, or murky eyes, and he’s acknowledged the urge to explore.
Sylar’s urge to understand, to probe, to test, to the intuitive aptitude- if empathy’s his second power, then the aptitude must be Peter’s second, and he’s starting to feel the effects. His brand of intuition is softer, no violence, just a nagging urge to understand in the most intimate way he knows.
He wants Sylar. Not to destroy him, or change him, but to at least understand. And as ever, he won’t give in to the temptation.
Consideration was brief; a one-off moment that flashed through his mind of wondering. Imagining. But then he remembered…if the kiss was only a second, it would still be forever.
It would always be between them. Knowing that they’d shared a moment, in everything else they’d been through, there had been a moment- just one. Where Peter had lost control of every rational though, every ounce of logic, every moral superiority. Where he’d given in and kissed Sylar. An admittance of a moral flaw, an exploitable weakness, a human, hedonistic, primal sexual attraction.
Peter knows he won’t feel this way forever. Attractions fade, and he and Sylar hardly have a lifestyle that matches. But if he gave in, they’d always know. They’d always have to live with I kissed you, once. That they had touched their lips, no matter how caring or rough, that something had passed between them. Forever. It wouldn't matter how the felt at present moment; they'd always be their past.
And Peter may live forever, but he’ll be damned for eternity if he’s the one to kiss first.