Dark Places

by Mrs. Crocodile

After the failure of the plan to erase Sylar and turn him into Nathan Petrelli, Parkman tries to neutralize the Sylar threat in a different way. AU-ish, Sylar/Elle-ish.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the situations or characters of Heroes. No money is being made off this story. Please do not sue me.

A/N: Full disclosure, I never actually finished Heroes. I got to about three episodes from the end and just . . . never watched them. Then it came back as Heroes: Reborn, and I thought, "Okay, I'm going to get caught up with this show that was so important to me all those years ago," and then I didn't. So I don't really know whatever happened to Sylar. Even if I did though, I'm sure this would have to be AU, that there would be no easy adaptation to make it work within the canon. Unless this first section is literally how it went down. I didn't even bother to Google it.

This is a reimagining of my fic "Happy Place," because I've always been unsatisfied with how that turned out. I rushed it, and it could have been better. Or maybe you'll like the original better. To each their own. They start almost identically, but diverge dramatically very early on.

–

Title: Dark Places

Summary: After the failure of the plan to erase Sylar and turn him into Nathan Petrelli, Parkman tries to neutralize the Sylar threat in a different way.

Circa: AU (see above), but I picture it toward the end of Season 4.

–

This was it for Parkman. He knew this was the last shot he would ever get at taking Sylar out. Either he succeeded right here, right now, or he and everyone he cared about died. Maybe it wasn't really that life or death, but it was how he had to think. Because it could be exactly that dire, especially now that he was put himself back on Sylar's radar.

He hadn't prepared. He wasn't expecting to see Sylar in that moment. But it was now or never. And in a way, he was better prepared this time. He knew Sylar now; he had spent months wrestling with Sylar inside his own mind. He knew, if he just concentrated, he could find the right buttons to lock Sylar up in the deepest recesses of his own psyche.

There was no time for second guessing, no time to plot things out. Sylar could kill him in an instant. There was only time to act.

–

It was a white room. No, not a room because there were no walls and no door. It was just a clean, white space, and in the middle of this nothingness, there was her.

Elle was sitting on a chair, watching him. She gave a sad smile. "Hello."

Sylar approached her slowly. He understood what this was, some last ditch effort by Parkman to save his own neck. He just didn't understand why she was there. "I don't miss you. I've never missed you. Where is Parkman getting this from?" Elle shrugged. Sylar looked around some more, not that there was anything to see. "This isn't real. This isn't even trying to look real." Was that the point? To distract him with the mystery?

"It's as real as you want it to be."

He turned back to Elle. "What does that mean?"

She did not really answer him. "You really don't know why it's me? I mean at the very least, I must have been memorable."

He was not doing this with her. With it. With himself. Even if he wanted to have this conversation, that was not really Elle. He needed to wake up. That was real, that was important. In this moment, waking up was the only thing that actually mattered, so he concentrated on that.

"What were we?"

Sylar ignored her. Or he tried. But while he was supposed to be thinking about waking up, he was really just thinking about her. After several seconds of silence, he sighed. "We were a mistake. A failed experiment that got you killed"

Elle snorted at that. "Do you want to know what I think we were?"

There was no point. "You'll just say what I want you to say." He started walking, hoping maybe he could find a way out, some crack he could use to get back to reality.

Elle got up from her chair and followed him. "Which is what?"

He kept walking, feeling her presence behind him. He turned back and saw that the chair was in the exact same place, relative to him. So there were no cracks.

Elle decided to tell him what she thought without him asking. "I think we could have been something great." Sylar rolled his eyes and walked away on principle. "I could have loved you. Completely, unconditionally, never asking you to change. I'm the only woman who ever could have loved you like that, but you killed me. Hiro Nakamura was right; you're going to die alone." She paused for a second. "That's what you wanted me to say? God, that's dark."

Sylar stopped walking, but he did not look at her.

"You can wake up," she said in an encouraging tone. "You're stronger than Parkman."

He wanted to ask her if she had any insight on how he could do that, but that wasn't what came out of his mouth. "It's too late."

Elle came around to face him. "What do you mean?"

Sylar looked over her head. "When I wake up, you'll be gone. And I'll miss you. I don't want that."

"Which part?"

There was only one part he had any control over. There may have been a window when he could have brought her back, but that time was long gone. "I don't want to miss you."

She nodded. "Good, because the only way for me not to be gone would be time travel. But Hiro can freeze time. You've never even gotten close. You know, if he wasn't such a ridiculous little man, he would probably be quite formidable."

He did not know what she was trying to get at. "I'm not going to acquire a time travel ability just to bring you back."

"No, you'd get it because you want it. Because you've always wanted it. The thought of it right now is setting that crazy brain of yours spinning. You've killed for much less. Literally. But if you could get it, you would have it by now." She tipped his head down and forced him to look at her. "That wasn't the point. The point was to make you think about what you would change, even though it's futile."

"I wouldn't-" Sylar stopped himself. That was a defensive reflex.

"Wouldn't change a thing?" she finished for him. "Not one second? You don't even want to think about it first?"

There were seconds; he knew there must be. Seconds that would have kept him away from Petrelli parents and their manipulations, away from finding Elle at Pinehurst to begin with. But those weren't the changes that his mind was considering. "We should have gotten the hell out of Canfield's house when we had chance, not waited around for Bennet to shoot you."

Elle looked at him with steely blue eyes. "I didn't die because Bennet shot me."

She was right, of course, but maybe if she hadn't gotten shot. . . She shook her head. "When our powers came back, we would have gone back for Claire, no matter what we promised in the haze of the eclipse. That doesn't change anything."

It was dark, they were on a beach, Elle was limping. "Was Bennet lying?"

"Of course he was; he's Bennet," she gritted out.

Sylar shook himself out of this. "No, I don't want to watch this play out again."

She smiled, no trace of the pain from her leg. "I know. You want to change it."

"This isn't real. I can't change it." Somehow, it was difficult for him to remember that. If he didn't focus on it, it started slipping. "This is a waste of time. Parkman could be getting ready to kill me right now."

"Very true, but the only way out is through."

"No, you said I could wake up. You said I was stronger than Parkman."

Elle shrugged. "Then wake up."

He would if he knew how. He looked around at the beach, at the gunshot wound on her thigh, at the blood on his shirt from having his throat slit. Fine, but he wasn't going to play her game. Or Parkman's game. Maybe it was his own game. Either way, he was not going to rewrite this scene.

"So this is some kind of wish fulfillment thing, right?" She shrugged in response. Sylar continued, "But this isn't the version of you I'd want. I want that nice girl who came to my shop."

Elle smirked. "That girl never existed."

Sylar was momentarily blinded as the beach scene suddenly changed. It took him a second to adjust to the light. It was his apartment in Queens. What's-his-name with the shooting things ability was dead on the floor, Sylar up to his elbows in blood. Elle, or the normal, innocent version of her that never existed, was curled up in the corner screaming and crying. "Oh god, you're a monster!" She started to hyperventilate as she repeated "Oh god," over and over again.

He went over to her, crouched down, and placed his hands on her shoulders. She recoiled back from him like she was trying to push herself through the wall. He was getting blood on her pretty floral shirt. "Calm down. Deep breaths."

She followed his advice, taking deep breaths, never breaking eye contact with him. When she was calmer, she whispered, "Please just let me go. Let me go. I promise I won't tell anyone. I'll just go, and I won't tell. Please, Gabriel." She was crying again. "Please let me go," she sobbed.

And then they were back in the white nothingness, but Elle was still wearing the bloodstained outfit. "Are you sure that's what you want? Because I think you were about to kill her."

He wanted to deny that, but of course he was. If she left there, she was going to tell people what he had done, and there was no way he could let that happen. "That Elle wouldn't have pushed. That guy wouldn't have even been at the apartment that night." He remembered something else. "I threw the list away."

"Ah, so all you needed was a good woman. It was my wickedness that drove us here." They were on the beach again. She didn't sound angry or defensive, just amused. "Is that why I'm here? So you can blame everything on the dead girl?"

"I don't know why you're here. Because you're not here; there is no here." He needed to keep reminding himself of that.

Elle took a few leisurely steps in his direction. "It wouldn't have mattered anyway, you know. If it wasn't Trevor, it would have been some other person, some other night. You can't help yourself; you'd kill again, and the nice girl would have ended up having a breakdown in the corner. You need someone accepts you for who you really are. A woman who has seen the darkest parts and loves you anyway. Someone who could maybe handle the whole serial killer thing." She stopped and pointed at herself. "The only woman who could ever love you, we've been through this."

He stared at her. He didn't know how much time passed, here or in the real world. At some point, he couldn't even stop himself, he asked, "Was Bennet lying?"

Elle limped on her bullet wounded leg. "Of course he was, he's Bennet."

She lied again. She was always going to lie. It was up to him to change it. Even though he knew that he could never change what came next. The futility of it made his chest ache. What good would it do to save her now, when it was too late? He remembered what she said, the only way out was through.

He was supposed to say that Bennet seemed to think she knew something about it. Instead, he helped Elle into a seated position on the sand and began the changes. "So you don't think there's any chance Bennet was right about all of that?"

She looked up at him, thinking. Really thinking about it. Finally she said, "You can't trust a word that comes out of Bennet's mouth, but . . . I don't think Angela and Arthur Petrelli are the most trustworthy people either."

Sylar sat down next to her. She wasn't real; there was no way of knowing if that was how it would have gone. She would only say what he wanted her to say because all of this was in his head. "We should've just run away together." What was it he had said? Free from parents and powers. He remembered that was how he felt during the eclipse, free. He'd wanted these powers for so long, coveted them, ripped them away from their owners, acquired powers at any cost. But when they were gone, the only time he missed them was when he realized that he couldn't protect her. He died in that storeroom, and he didn't know he would come back. It was the hunger that ruined everything; it was always the hunger. He chuckled and shook his head. "Oh god, I'm damaged goods."

Elle laid her head on his shoulder. "We both are."

This was what he meant back then, this was why he killed her. There were no happy endings for them. "Is that what Parkman wanted me to remember?"

She both ignored his question and answered it. "You should find a way to get rid of your powers. You were happier without them."

Sylar laughed. That made sense. Parkman couldn't kill him; all Parkman could do was neutralize him. "Right up until I died."

Suddenly, in contradiction to every epiphany he just had, he remembered another time without powers, a time when he was far less content. And then they were there, in a shack in the middle of nowhere, Mexico. Michelle, or whoever she really was, was lying on the ground with her skull ripped open to the best of his ability at the time.

Elle walked around the body, examining it from a few different angles. "So what went wrong here?"

Sylar sighed. "I want to wake up."

"You're on a journey of self-discovery, and you just want to give up now?" She sounded indignant.

"This is never going to end, is it?"

Elle shook her head. "Not if Parkman has his way." She pointed at Michelle. "So really, what happened here?"

There were much more important things going on. Sylar had a feeling that the longer he was here, the harder it would be to leave. "I lost my abilities, and I still wasn't happy. So your theory fails."

Elle was unfazed. "Why did you kill her?"

As Sylar remembered it, there was a lot going on there. She was basically keeping him prisoner, or at least maintaining control over his life. He wanted her ability; he wanted to be the one in control of the situation. "So I could begin rebuilding my store of abilities."

"Which means you still had the hunger. My theory stands."

"So, lose the hunger but keep the rest of them?" Sylar could be okay with that. But if he knew how to get rid of the hunger, he would have shook that long ago. "I doubt that's what Parkman wants."

"Parkman wants you to kill yourself," she said simply. She held up a noose for him. "But I don't think there's much chance of that happening."

No, there was no chance. It did not really surprise him that Parkman hated him that much. Their time together had not been very friendly. They were in Brooklyn, at his shop. Elle was in new clothes, or rather the first clothes he ever saw her in, still holding up the noose.

"Do you remember this?" It was a rhetorical question; of course he remembered. "Do you remember being so horrified by what you were capable of? Remember when you actually felt something after you murdered a person in cold blood? When their lives actually mattered to you?" She shook the noose a little. "When you knew that killing yourself was the only way to stop it?"

He remembered trying to hang himself in his shop. But then she walked in, and things moved on. He realized now that he had forgotten the rest of what she was saying. He had forgotten how that first kill had felt. He used telekinesis every day, and rarely even thought about Brian Davis. His current lack of remorse could also be traced back to the hunger. As far as he was concerned, that was a positive side effect of the hunger. He did not want to feel that.

She dropped her hand like the weight of the noose was too much for her and held it limply by her side. "Oh, well, it doesn't matter anymore. You're not going to kill yourself, and you're not going to lose the hunger. So Parkman's real plan is to trap you in here. Obviously."

He supposed that was obvious. As she said it, Sylar began to feel trapped, like the walls were closing in on him, although the room was clearly the same dimensions it had always been. He couldn't look away from the noose. He was suffocating in here. He needed to be anywhere else, and he thought about where he had been immediately before this. Mexico and Michelle.

Michelle, or the illusionist in the form she called Michelle, was sitting on the table in their shack. She was leaning back on her palms, her legs crossed. "It's really not that bad here. It doesn't have to be all nooses and guilt trips."

Behind her, Elle rolled her eyes.

Michelle couldn't see Elle, but she jerked her head in her direction. "She's wrong, by the way. She's not the only woman who could love you. In here, every woman would love you."

Sylar didn't care about any of that. He was trying to get out of here, not dig in further. "I thought about you, and now we're here. Did I make that happen?"

Michelle smiled, slowly, seductively. "This is all you, sweetheart."

Elle sighed. "Yeah, all you." She stepped forward and placed her hands on the table. "You could have me right here on this table. You could have both of us. Hell, throw Parkman's wife into the mix and whoever else you want. But it's not going to help you get out of here."

"I know." Something came back to him now, one of the first things Elle told him in here. This place was as real as he wanted it to be. He tried to remember when they left the white space.

Elle answered for him. "I asked you what you would change, and it led us to the beach."

"Where she made you wallow in regret," Michelle commented.

Michelle was an interesting addition. Because she wasn't real either. His guide through the deep recesses of his mind had effectively split into two parts, an angel and a devil on opposite shoulders. That of course cast Elle as the angel, and Sylar did not miss the irony of that. He did not even know that much about Michelle, but he couldn't imagine her being more morally bankrupt than the unrepentant liar in front of him. He wasn't sure if Michelle had ever even lied to him. She freely admitted to the illusions.

A bikini-clad Michelle reclined on her beach chair, fruity drink in her hand. "God, isn't my beach scene so much better than hers?"

He was next to her on his own chair. Elle was standing on his other side, wearing in clothing she died in, dried blood streaked down her leg. She squinted up at the sun. "Is it? Is there a single second of this that's worth revisiting?"

Michelle leaned forward. "That's what makes this better. There's nothing here you have to fix or feel bad about."

"Oh." Elle nodded like she finally understood. "It's better because you didn't kill the love of your life here."

Michelle had a different take. "She wasn't the love of your life. She's the person who ruined your life."

Elle scoffed. "If you want to stay trapped in your mind, this is as good a place as any. So I guess you don't need me anymore."

Sylar was surprised when she actually disappeared, leaving him alone with Michelle, a giant blank slate that he knew nothing about. After a few seconds, he asked her, "How do I wake up?"

Michelle shrugged behind her sunglasses. "Why would you want to leave?"

He had not really expected her to be helpful. "Because this isn't real."

She considered this for a moment. "Most of the things in my life weren't real. I was still pretty happy with it." She paused for a second, and then she shook it off. "Not that I'm complaining. The whole point of me is to not be a Debbie Downer like Blondie. All I'm saying is that if you just let go, the fantasy can be as good as reality. You don't even have to know the difference. You want something, it's yours. That's power."

She was wrong. What she was describing was some kind of delusional psychosis. "I want to wake up, and I can't. That's the opposite of power."

Michelle gave him a knowing smile. "Try to wake up."

So he did, more as an exercise in futility than anything else. He had the sensation of lying down with his eyes closed. He'd been lounging on the beach chair, but this was different. It was a bed with scratchy sheets and a lumpy pillow. He was aware of beeping and discomfort. He opened his eyes to a hospital room. Finally. He pulled the heartbeat monitor off his finger and went to work on his IV while the machine flatlined next to him. He could hear footsteps running down the hall. He was standing by the time medical staff came through the door, feeling weak but steady. He sat down again when her saw her.

Behind the doctors and nurses and their crash cart, Elle ran in looking worried. When they saw that he was not in any cardiac distress, everyone else filed out of the room without a word. This left him with Elle. He supposed Michelle had a point before; he didn't have to know the difference. He could still feel the sting from where he ripped out the IV needle. She was the only clue. He waited to see what she would say.

She approached him slowly. "It's been six months," she said in a calming tone, like she was scared he would lash out at her. "I got you out after the fire, and everything else healed, but they said you were brain dead."

Sylar had no idea what she was talking about. "What fire?"

"At Primatech. You were there to kill Angela, but Meredith Gordon took the whole place down."

That didn't add up. "No. No, I killed you before that."

"No," she sounded confused, or like he was confused. She was standing right in front of him now. "You never killed me. Obviously."

"Yes. On the beach, right before I went to kill the Petrellis."

Her eyes got so sad. She reached up and put one hand against the side of his head. "I don't know what's been happening in your head for the last six months, but you didn't kill me then." She dropped her hand and took hold of his. "You just said that you should because you couldn't trust me. You asked how to fix that, and I told you about Sue Landers. After you killed her, you told me that if I ever lied to you again, you would kill me. You gave me a chance to walk away, but I didn't. You killed Arthur, and you went to kill Angela, and that's . . . That was six months ago."

So many details of that rang true to him, but he knew what this was. He pulled his hands away. "That's not what happened. I killed you, and I moved on from there."

"I'm not lying!" She sounded exasperated. "You would know if I was lying. Especially because I would be dead."

She was dead, and none of this was going to change that. "So I wake up after six months of being brain dead, and the doctors don't want to examine me at all?"

Elle sighed. "Yeah, that was a weird detail." She shook her head and sat next to him on the bed. "You're still not buying in."

"Into being trapped inside my own head for the rest of my life? No, I'm not going to buy into that."

She laid her head on his shoulder. "Still, it was a beautiful lie, wasn't it? Is that how you would have changed it?"

He didn't push her away. He liked having her head there. He liked feeling her again. "I wouldn't have changed it."

"We've already established that's not true." She sat up straight. "I didn't have to be here, you know. You could have just woken up to the same crappy, pointless, lonely life you left, and you never would have even known. This is as good as it gets, Gabriel."

This was death. "No, before you left me with Michelle, you were trying to help me get out. You told me I could-" Have her right there on that table were the words she used. Somehow he couldn't bring himself to say it out loud. He didn't even want to think about it; he needed to push it to the periphery of his mind to be able to move forward. "That I could buy into Michelle's fantasy, but it wouldn't help me get out. How is this any different than that?"

"Because that was Michelle. Because she represented giving up. She was death, not this."

"That's the difference? That it was her and not you? It's only giving up if I stay with the bikini-clad bimbo who can fulfill all my fantasies." Elle scowled at him, which was bizarre. "You don't get to be mad at me for that; you're not real. What do you represent?"

She looked him directly in the eye. "All your fantasies."

Sylar tried to look away, but he couldn't. She was right. Michelle represented something generic, the notion of fantasy in the abstract. But if he dug down to specifics, it was all Elle. He wondered how much of that was Parkman's influence, pushing him to nostalgia over lost loves and away from the powers. Sylar wanted to push back, ask to see someone who only represented the powers, like Bennet, but that would be giving into this. He wasn't going to fill up his mind with a cast of characters. He wasn't going to make this any more real.

He was getting lost in his head again, and he needed to fix that. It was as real as he wanted it to be. Everything fell away into the white space. All that was left was the hospital bed they were sitting on. Elle looked around. "Well, this is either progress or a setback depending whose side I'm on."

"Definitely progress." So he knew how to take back control of his brain in here, but that last step was still plaguing him.

"Michelle would have said setback without hesitation, that's the difference." She took his hand in hers, lacing their fingers together. "You're going to miss me when I'm gone." There was a heartbreaking sorrow in her tone. "That's the difference."

Sylar was pretty sure he had it figured out. "You're the last step. So what do I have to do?"

She shrugged. "Kill me probably. It's like you were thinking on the beach, no happy endings, not for people like us. At least, not in the real world."

Sylar nodded. "But in here . . ."

"Anything you want." She flashed him a melancholy smile. "It's okay. I know you're not going to choose me." She squeezed his hand. "But before you do it, have you gotten everything you needed out of this?"

Sylar had not gotten anything he needed out of this. This had only made things worse for him. He hadn't missed her; he hadn't even thought about her that much. But now she was a lost love, the only woman who could ever love him. Now she was important in a way he never wanted her to be. Or at least not since he killed her.

It should have been easier this time. He could snap her neck without even moving; all he had to do was think it and he would theoretically wake up. It wasn't even a real person he would be killing, and it was so easy when she was real.

Maybe it was because he hesitated or maybe it was to contradict his belief that it had been easy the first time, but Sylar found himself once again on the beach. He was lying on top of Elle pinning her down. He knew he was hurting her. This did not feel like a setback though; it felt like the endgame. There was no pressure or desire to repeat the lines of his betrayal. Elle did not look at him with that mixture of confusion and fear. This wasn't a rehashing of the past; this was just the way he needed to kill her.

A couple thoughts came to him in that moment. The first was that this was the specific part he hadn't wanted to watch play out again. He might have been able to save himself a lot of grief by just playing the scene the way it was written the first time. The other thought was that they had skipped right past his and Elle's last kiss.

He could feel the entire length of her body pressed beneath his. For the first time, it struck him how real she felt. He could feel the warmth of her skin, the rise and fall of her chest, the heat of her breath contrasting with the cool breeze. He remembered again her saying that it was as real as he wanted it to be. He wondered how much that applied to Elle. Was this how real he wanted her to be?

She seemed to think he was taking too long. "It's okay. I'm not going to scream or cry or beg. You can do what you have to do."

She hadn't done any of that the first time either. That wasn't what was giving him pause. "Whose side are you on?"

Elle looked confused. "What?"

Sylar considered moving off to her side or sitting up. He didn't need to hold her down this time; she wasn't going anywhere. Now that their time was short though, he did not want to stop feeling her. "Parkman created you. You know what he wants. You speak for him."

"I speak for you too," she pointed out. "I've voiced your own thoughts more than his. I just say what you want me to say."

That might have been true. He really did not know how much of this was Parkman, and that was his real question. "Do you have insight into Parkman's mind too? Is he directing you? Did he know you?"

Elle laughed. One of her hands was not pinned down, and she used it to push on his shoulder. Sylar obliged and finally pushed himself up onto his knees. Elle sat up. "I don't know. I only have access to what you-" She paused, thoughtful. "He didn't know me, except through your memories." She seemed surprised that she knew this. "He didn't create me. He pulled me, all of this, from your mind, from what he remembers from carrying your consciousness in his head."

"So you're saying-"

She anticipated his next question. "No, it's subconscious. He can't access your memories on command, but on an instinctual level, things still linger. Somewhere deep down, he understands what makes you tick." She narrowed her eyes like she was concentrating hard. "But I don't have a connection to him; I come from you. And you already know what Parkman's weaknesses are anyway. You don't need me for that."

Sylar looked around at Elle's beach scene. "This is what makes me tick?"

She shrugged. "It's kept you here this long. And Parkman knew that this was—that I was his best shot. He knew that if anyone could convince you to stay, it was me. You were right that the longer you stay here, the harder it will be to wake up. Because of me, because you're already conflicted in a way that you weren't when this started."

Sylar started to contradict her. He was going to kill her. He was always going to choose the real world. He just wanted to make sure he got everything out of this that he could. Meaning, he assured himself, insight into Parkman.

Elle wasn't done though. "I don't think you understand who I am. I'm not Elle as you knew her. I'm the perfect Elle, the idealized version, the one who would have stopped lying to you on this beach if you gave me the chance. If I was even lying, because you never actually confirmed that I knew anything about your parents. I'm the Elle you wonder if I could have been.

"There's another Elle. The unrepentant liar who did nothing but manipulate you, the one who ruined your life. That's how you like to remember me because it makes tonight easier. But I'm the Elle you think about when you wonder if you acted too hastily that night." She laughed. "I shouldn't even be telling you that, but your perfect Elle has to show that she's more loyal to you than the people who sent her." She took his hand and brought it up to her forehead. "It's time to kill me."

Now that they were sitting up, they were no longer skipping over their last kiss. He remembered making the decision to kiss her back then. He'd already knew that he was going to kill her, but he had not kissed her to subdue her or keep her off guard. He had wanted that last kiss then, and after all this time, he wanted it even more now.

Sylar turned his hand around in hers and laced their fingers together. He reminded himself for the last time that she wasn't real. She was a figment of his and Parkman's combined imaginations. They already had a last kiss. What was the point of reliving it now? She was right; this fantasy world had infected him. He kept telling himself there was no question, that of course he would kill her, but he just kept stalling. He leaned in to kiss her, finally pushing forward the narrative.

They kissed. Sylar laid Elle down. He pinned her with his body. It all felt so right and so wrong at the same time. He didn't really mean to, but as he raised his hand to cut her open, he said, "I'm sorry." She looked up at him calmly and gave a small nod. And then it was done. Sylar looked down on her lifeless body for a few seconds before everything went to black.

–

Gabriel woke up with a start. He was sweating and tangled in the sheets. Next to him, his wife stirred. "What's wrong?" she mumbled in a sleepy voice.

He tried to shake it off. "Nothing. Just a nightmare."

She responded with "Mm 'kay."

The dream had been so vivid. More than what actually happened in it, the feeling of it left him unsettled. He knew that she wanted to go to sleep, but he was afraid of dropping back into that world. "We were trapped somewhere, and I had to kill you."

Elle yawned and stretched. "What, like for food?"

"No, it was a-like a metaphysical place, and the only way out was-" That was still an oversimplification. "I had superpowers, but I couldn't use them."

"So there was a supervillain trying to get you to kill me, and you were valiantly resisting? Something like that?"

He wasn't explaining it right, because there was nothing valiant about his efforts. "I think I was the villain. He trapped me there so I couldn't hurt anyone. Because I had-I'd already done terrible things." What stuck with him the most was the frequent pronouncement that he would always choose power first. Some of the context was starting to slip away, but he could remember that there was something about her being dead all along. Something where right from the beginning it was too late to save her; he had already sacrificed her in his pursuit of powers. He couldn't think of anything specific that could represent in his waking life, but the idea of it rang uncomfortably true. At some point in the dream she had told him he was on a journey of self-discovery, and he felt like he had discovered things he'd rather not know about himself. There was something about taking on the role of a villain that felt too easy, effortless. He had an impulse to ask Elle if he was a good man, but she spoke again before he could.

"It'd be pretty cool if you did have superpowers though." Elle settled against his shoulder. She was already falling asleep. "If you could fly, shoot lasers from your eyes, be from Krypton."

Gabriel laughed, but he still felt uneasy. He looked around the bedroom, partially lit by the streetlight outside. He let the normalcy wash over him. He didn't need to ask if he was a good person; he already knew who he was. Not a Kryptonian supervillian, just a mid-level executive at the Sylar Timepiece Company in Hartsdale, New York. Maybe a little ambitious, but definitely not evil. He had a flash of memory that Sylar was part of his dream somehow, but then it was gone. The dream was fading the way dreams always did.

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FIN

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A/N: That's right, Parkman wins! Didn't see that coming, did you? (Neither did I, to be honest.)