I have no chill and am physically unable to ship anything that will not cause me emotional distress. I call Sylar "Gabriel" pretty much consistently (aside from canon dialog where other characters call him Sylar) because I think by this point, he's already starting to come back to himself as Gabriel Gray and is slowly taking off the Sylar persona.

My notes will always start with (some of) the applicable lyrics from the respective songs.

"We are the greatest pretenders in the cold morning light.
This is just another night, and we've had many of them...
How am I gonna get myself back home?"

The last thing he remembered was Parkman trying, one last time, to purge the hunger from him.

Then he wasn't in California anymore—somehow, he'd been transported back to New York, but it wasn't New York like he ever remembered. He wandered the streets, blocks and blocks of skyscrapers and cafes and storefronts and apartments, and everywhere he turned, he saw not a single face. There were no people, no cars or taxis, no sign of life aside from his own footfalls echoing through the eerily quiet streets.

He found himself in front of his own apartment building. A cold weight settled into his chest as he stared up into the vacant windows. A baby lived in the unit beneath him and he could usually hear her crying through the walls as he approached the entrance, but today, he heard nothing. There was nothing.

The front door of his apartment swung open without his key. Inside, all was as he'd left it—a single light burning in the kitchen, a cold welcome home. In his makeshift study, all the watches and clocks sat undisturbed, not even a layer of dust to mark the passage of time. Their ceaseless ticking was the only sound to be heard aside from his shallow breathing.

A feeling of dread washed over him, a feeling he had grown unfamiliar with. He whipped around and dashed out of his apartment, charging down the stairs to the apartment with the baby and her family. He tried the knob, and when that failed, he hammered on the door, kicking and hitting. "Lila! Jeremy! Are you in there?! Open up!" With no response, he shouted, "It's Gabriel! Gabriel Gray from upstairs! Let me in!"

Still no answer. He stepped back and sized up the door. It wasn't that thick. He could probably break it down. He kicked with his heel at the door, but when his foot came down, there wasn't so much as a dent.

He ran through the whole building, trying every single door. They were all locked, all but his. Where the hell was he?

Maybe he'd been transported into some strange, distant future where everyone else was dead. But there wasn't any sign of destruction, no hint that something cataclysmic had taken place, aside from the utter lack of people. What was going on? Was everyone dead?

He walked back out to the street, drumming his fingers against his thigh. Still deserted—still silent. Was he having a nightmare? He had no idea where he was. He was lost and confused.

And hungry. He'd been walking these streets for hours, and the sun, which had been shining brightly when he first regained awareness, was starting to grow dim. Streetlights flickered on overhead and he quickened his pace as he made his way to a grocery store near his apartment.

The sliding doors admitted him readily, but the aisles were vacant. It was like walking through a dream world. Venturing through the store was eerie—it was exactly like every other time he'd come through, right down to the bland music playing over the loudspeakers, except there wasn't a single person to be found.

He grabbed a shopping cart and began pulling food off the shelves. Noodles, butter, milk, cheese, ground beef, coffee—everything he could think of that he needed. At one point he doubled back to pick up a few more bags of coffee beans, only to discover that the gap left from before had been mysteriously filled in. His coffee beans were still in the shopping cart, though, so he just tossed a few more packages in and dismissed it.

He had no compunction about wheeling the cart right past the check-out line and out the door. After all, there was no one there—how was he supposed to pay for anything? He rolled his food right to his building and grabbed the cold stuff first, absently noting that despite the several-block walk, the food seemed to be retaining its temperature admirably. After three trips, he had all of his food put away, and he settled in to make some pasta.

Trying to sleep that night was fruitless. He was so used to the ambient New York noise seeping into the cracks in his walls that is absence was deafening. There were no neighbors shouting above him, no music thumping heavy bass lines down the hall, no baby crying below him. He hadn't even seen a bird or an insect since he'd arrived here, much less a neighbor's cat or a stray dog. No people. No animals. Just him and the concrete.

The last thing he remembered was something about wanting to change his life. Maybe Parkman would know—if he was still around. Could he go there now? But how would he get there? There were no cars anywhere out there, at least that he'd seen. He hadn't even noticed a bicycle chained to a bike rack. Presumably, he could walk. It would take months, but then again, if a city as densely-populated as New York was entirely empty, there was no guarantee he'd find anything else out there. Maybe everyone else on the planet was dead.

Maybe he'd killed them all himself.

I am utterly alone.

The realization sank in with a crushing force, and he found himself doubled over on his bed, gasping. It was true—he could feel it even without the built-in lie detector. He was alone. Completely and totally. He clutched the sides of his head and tried to beat back the overwhelming and sudden sense of despair, but the isolation just pressed in on him.

I am alone, and it's all my fault.

He'd killed dozens of people, pushing everyone away in his quest for power while desperately trying to outrun his own fears of abandonment. Those fears had caught up to him in a big way now, cutting him off from everything.

I deserve this, don't I? This is my punishment. I deserve this.

No amount of running could save him anymore.

It wasn't so bad once he got used to it—and surprisingly, he actually did. Little by little, he adjusted to the extreme isolation. Still, sometimes the loneliness got so bad that he would turn on the TV and hope for something to watch to get his mind off things.

It was always static, though. The TV stations and radio all only had static over the airwaves. Not a hint of a voice, no music. Nothing but white noise.

Every day, as soon as he woke up, he would carve a notch in the wall outside his apartment. Then he would eat breakfast and go out exploring the New York wasteland, throwing some food for lunch into a backpack he'd scrounged up from an OfficeMax twenty blocks away. He would wander the streets until nearly nightfall, half-trying to find a way off the island. Sometimes, without realizing it, he would wander right back to his apartment with no memory of actually turning around.

Sometimes he'd scavenge in department stores for new clothes. Other times, he'd hunt for books. Only a few, ones that he'd already read, interested him, but he had a tendency to be a little careless now—there was no one else around, so who would care if he came back a few times for the same book?

After his explorations, he would head back home and make dinner. He would sit in his study for hours, assembling and disassembling and reassembling his watches and clocks. Sometimes, he would find a watch or a clock in the city and bring it back to take it apart. After six months, his study was filled with clocks. He kept tweaking them to make them run more accurately—it seemed the only ability that didn't go away in his own head was the only ability that was truly his. He couldn't get away from the ticking, but at least it didn't infuriate him when they ran properly. As long as they weren't gaining or losing whole seconds or even half-seconds every hour, he was satisfied. It kept him in his head.

The months rolled into a year, and dragged into a second. The slew of notches in the wall kept growing. As the second year creeped up on the third, he stopped going out as often—and when he went out, it was only to find more food and clocks. He stopped trying to find a way out. Somehow, he just knew there wasn't a way. There was nothing out there. He was stuck forever.

It was strange that he could somehow always find a clock somewhere—sometimes on accident, and sometimes he had to dig for them. It kept him arguably sane, but he somehow knew, deep down, it couldn't last forever. This was a punishment, and the punishment was bound to get worse at some point. Now that he had nowhere to run, it was only a matter of time before the walls closed in and crushed him.

One day, after more than three years alone, that's just what happened.

He was so focused on the ticking that he almost didn't notice the distant pounding. But he did hear it, and he felt his eyes widen—his heart pounded in uncertainty and fear. It was something he hadn't felt in years. But in this land, this wasteland of what New York had been, there were no sounds that he didn't make himself.

Slowly, he rose to his feet, and, for the first time in a long time, he teleported. Every action up to this point had been to take as much time on tasks as possible. He never teleported, never flew, not when walking would kill so much more time. But he teleported now, out into the street, to find out what was happening.

He looked around, took a few steps forward, waiting for the sound again. "Hello?" he called, his voice hoarse from disuse. He wasn't one for talking to himself. He could handle silence—but not when there was sound he should have been hearing. "HELLO?" he shouted, louder now.

He began walking further down the street, hands buried in his pockets, when from behind him, he heard that pounding sound again, what sounded like a metal pipe slamming against pavement. He turned slowly, unsure of what—or who—he'd see.

Even from fifty yards away, down a double yellow line, and even after three years, he recognized the man standing there. "Peter," he breathed.

Peter started walking toward him, and Gabriel found himself approaching him as well. "Is that really you?" he asked, unsure if the other man could hear him. Then again, they were walking through a veritable echo chamber without any noise pollution, so he probably could.

Peter cast the pipe aside, his pace quickening. "I came to get you out of here," he said once they were close enough.

It felt like he couldn't catch his breath. He had to be imagining this. He wasn't sure he'd blinked—he hadn't seen another face in so long that he'd almost forgotten what it was like. Hesitantly, he extended his arm. He wanted to grab Peter, wanted to know once and for all if he was imagining all this, but he was also terrified of having the illusion shattered.

Peter just looked at him like he was crazy—which he probably was, but that wasn't the point. Summoning all his courage, he put his hand on Peter's shoulder and squeezed.

Solid. Not an illusion. He could feel muscle and bone beneath Peter's jacket, the slight give of his flesh as his fingers dug in. He had to fight the urge to throw his arms around Peter—any excuse for human contact. How was he alive? Had Peter somehow survived whatever apocalypse he'd rained down? Had he been looking for him all this time? "It is you, isn't it?"

He dropped his arm and took a step back. Peter's expression had shifted to a worried sort of confusion.

"I thought I was alone here, that everyone was dead," he said by way of explanation. "What are you doing here?"

Peter looked like he couldn't tell if he was joking or not. "I came to drag your sorry ass out of here. Now let's go."

Go? Go where? "There is no getting out of here, Peter. I've tried..." He could barely say the words. "For three years."

"Three years?" The incredulity on Peter's face was almost insulting. "What are you talking about? It's been three hours."

Something isn't right here. "Wait a minute. You're not..." The joy, the giddiness at seeing another human fled him in a rush, leaving him feeling like a deflated balloon. This was just a trick his mind was playing on him. He'd finally gone off the deep end. "...really here," he finished, taking another step back. "You're not real." He turned and stared at the skyscrapers. Just my mind. "This is my mind, isn't it? This is my mind playing tricks on me as part of my punishment, isn't it?" Anger built up in his chest as he turned back to face this illusion of Peter Petrelli. "You think I'm gonna let you taunt me? You stay away." He backed up, moving faster away from him. "If you follow me, I will kill you!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Do you understand me?!" He broke into a run.

"SYLAR!" Peter called from behind him, and even though his own footsteps pounded through his body, he could hear the idiot's own footsteps following him as he started sprinting to keep pace.

He made it to his apartment first, but he knew that, despite his warnings, there was no way he could keep Phantom-Peter out. Peter was part of his mind, part of the setting. He couldn't keep him out. Even so, he grabbed a hammer and waited for the front door to fly open.

And it did, only a few moments later. "I swear I'll kill you! Get out of my head!" he growled, brandishing the hammer in Peter's direction.

Peter's hands were up in a placating gesture. "Calm down," he said, sounding only slightly winded. "I'm telling you the truth. I came to take you out of here."

Something in his posture, in his expression, was begging Gabriel to believe him, but he wasn't ready to. "Why do you keep saying that?"

"I went to Parkman's house to look for you. He put you here. This is a dream."

"No, it's not a dream! This is real." It was his punishment. Why couldn't he understand that?

"You really don't understand that this is all just a nightmare?"

"Hell, yes, it's a nightmare—three years, completely alone."

"Not years. Hours. Alright? Parkman trapped you here."

"Parkman? That's impossible."

"Is it? What's the last thing you remember? Before coming here?"

Slowly lowering his arm, his gaze fell to the floor. "I remember... Wanting my life to change, thinking I was gonna spend all of eternity alone."

"Exactly. And here you are. Look, I've got Parkman's ability. I can take you out of here."

This wasn't the Peter that he remembered. "Why would you want to do that? The brother of the man I murdered coming to my aid?"

Peter looked reluctant. "Because I need you to help me. Look, I could leave you here to rot, but I need you to save her—my friend, Emma. In the dream, you save her before she kills thousands of people."

That was probably the craziest part of the situation so far. He didn't save people. He only killed. "No. You got the wrong guy. I'm not the savior kind, and you should know that better than anybody."

"It's gonna happen, and you're gonna save her." Peter sounded so sure of it that he almost wanted to believe it, too. He couldn't, not yet, but if Peter really was here and wanted to break him out of this prison, he could work with that.

He dropped the hammer onto the desk. "Fine. You really think you can get us out of here? Let me see you try. Go ahead."

Peter gave him a look somewhere between anger and frustration, and put his hand on Gabriel's shoulder. He closed his eyes, apparently concentrating hard, and for a moment, he felt a frisson, like maybe it was working. But then it was gone, and Peter opened his eyes.

He looked confused and lost and maybe just a little bit afraid.

"See?" Gabriel said. "We're not going anywhere. We're trapped here, forever."