Written for T/D's Fairytale Challenge, though relevance to the prompt is a bit questionable. xD; Also, I like criticism. -armwave-
Being bricked up in a mad man's basement was the stuff of nightmares, not fairytales, but Sylar could not help but think that somewhere along the way, someone had forgotten that he was supposed to be suffering. Three years along the way, to be more precise.
Of course, there were the brief blurry-edged memories of two boys, the younger with an eternal pout and the older with a jaw made for the silver screen. When he was smaller than the Peter in the memories, he had stolen candy from a candy store in Brooklyn. The feeling of seeing the Petrelli boys play baseball in his dreams was worse than the slowly melting butterscotch in his pocket, because—
"They're not yours," Peter gritted between his teeth.
But overall, being stuck in a meta-world where nothing moved, where echoes came back to haunt you, where even the dust motes they struck from the wall every morning floated to the ground at an unnaturally fast pace…it was not bad.
There was a prickle that worked its way from his spine down to his fingertips and back when he dwelled on his predicament too long—why, oh why, had Matt Parkman had mortar and bricks in his basement?—but life wasn't bad, at least, not as bad as it could have been. The situation rang familiar, but he didn't think the memory was from the Petrelli archives; he might've read about a man with a similar fate once.
A short story, maybe? On the periphery of the past that was definitely his, he saw the huge bookshelf in the old apartment. An old volume that had to be pried out, one that he'd eyed for a while before giving into boredom. Poe, maybe it had been Poe. But the man had died at the end of the story, or was going to in the very near future, and he was already immune to that fate.
There was also the slight problem of Peter hating him. Irrevocably, absolutely, and in his every assault against the wall Sylar could see how much the other man wished it was his face under the sledgehammer. Peter hated him for getting them stuck here in the first place. Peter hated him because, despite all that the both of them had been able to do, neither could bring a person back from the dead. Peter hated him for the mannerisms he had picked up, as if from the passing breeze. But there was no wind in their godforsaken city; the quirks were all Nathan's. He'd never put on a tie with that degree of slick ease before; he'd barely worn them at all.
But the acid hate comforted him, ate away at the burden of guilt he had to bear. If Peter had softened, if he had gone to pieces when some bit of his dead brother surfaced in Sylar—that was something he wouldn't be able to take. He could sleep at night, comforted by the knowledge that Peter dreamt of drawing blood with his fists.
Still, despite the noticeable lack of misery, he found himself looking for methods of atonement, for Nathan and Elle and all the others. For Peter, who was not nearly as whole as he would have liked Sylar to think, who had made the nightmare more bearable without meaning to at all. And in a city of no one, not even ghosts, where the buildings stood for years against logic, without anyone running turbines or fixing broken water manes, he only had himself to offer.
He found Peter on the rooftop amidst the ages-old graffiti, reading a comic book that he must have gone out and found for himself. He never read the ones that Sylar brought back. He'd eat from the plethora of canned foods in the kitchen, on occasion, but on extraneous things like reading he wouldn't budge.
"You're nothing like him," Peter had snapped, over and over again, but this time Sylar was going to prove him wrong. He'd never been a hero and he didn't know how; he was going to try anyway.
"I'll get him out of me," he said, abruptly, as Peter sensed his presence and turned around. He was unshaven, clad in the same tight black thermal as the day before. The sun here didn't tan skin, so he looked paler than Sylar remembered.
"You can't." The reply was terse, but he couldn't miss the emotion that flashed hot across Peter's face. He wanted to ask—was it the hope that such a thing might be possible? Or was it the fear that excising Nathan would be not a gift, but one more nail in a coffin that he'd seen far too many times already? He knew it wasn't sympathy for Sylar's mind.
"I could try. I—I know a guy. Met him once, in…" He gestured towards the sky, vaguely indicating the world they had known. "He'd done it before, for…well, for people who had voices, or people who had multiple personalities. I think we could figure out how to do it."
Peter's eyes widened, then narrowed. "And what happens to the people when he's done?"
He swallowed hard, feeling the skin on his arms prickle from one conversation in particular he'd had with the guy who could split the psyche. You can always see the cracks in 'em afterwards… "It varies, but—"
"Don't," Peter said, low in his throat, and Sylar knew why, even before he said it, pausing for a moment to steel himself and blink away the shine in his eyes. "Every time I turn around, I'm forgetting something about him. The way he ties his tie, the way he holds a butter knife. Most people don't know when they forget this stuff, I guess…but now I always will. And if you give him up, I'll always wonder what part of him I'm getting wrong." A pause and another blink. And there's nothing you can do to make this right anyway, so stop."
Sylar gazed out over the yawning skyline, modern architecture mingling with an occasional old soul. He couldn't look directly into Peter's face. He reeled, wondering at the obsession that would make a man rely on an object of hatred to recall something beloved. He'd never known that depth. Maybe this was his screwed-up fairytale, to live forever with the younger Petrelli in a world where the sparse trees didn't sway in the wind, the sun didn't burn, and the pavement never cracked with age. Even Parkman wasn't this creative. "But you hate me for it," he said, less than half a question.
Peter lifted his chin to look him straight in the eyes, letting a humorless, crooked smile graze his face. It was the look of a man resigned to impossible contradiction, and despite himself, despite the inevitable response, Sylar wanted to smile back. They could make something of this.
"Every fucking day."