She had always liked Peter Petrelli. She had only met him a few times, but he was kind enough to her. Always seemed a little surprised to see her there, and he would study her with a subdued silence. Petrelli was one of the few who didn't address Gabriel as…that other name. The 'S' word that she had never even uttered. Though for a long time he didn't explain why, Gabriel had expressly forbidden it, and she wouldn't have wanted to anyway. It was chilling and dark, like the stranger she saw in her nightmares. The stranger haunted her with night terrors which never changed yet never lost the ability to terrify her profoundly. She always believed she had woken up, and standing at the foot of her bed was Gabriel, watching her sleep. But it wasn't Gabriel. He had slicked back hair and a denim jacket, with eyes that were always looking directly into hers. The eyes were smiling, but his mouth wasn't, and it was an evil smile that hid itself beneath the façade of normalcy. She would truly wake up then, often screaming, and the real Gabriel would rush in. The real Gabriel was wide-eyed with concern, with a mouth that smiled but his eyes never did. In the middle of the night his hair was always a mess because he went to bed with that old-fashioned side part he liked so much, and he looked just as afraid as she did. She dreamt of Sylar, but he was never anything more than a nightmare.

She snapped out of her reverie to the issue at hand. They were going to visit Peter soon. Though she didn't mind him, they only ever visited when bad things were happening. When bad people were a threat to nice people, to innocent people. Gabriel and Peter would leave her home, maybe with Angela or that pretty girl, Claire, in the Petrelli house. It was much bigger, much grander than their apartment, but it was perpetually dark and quiet, like an old museum after-hours. Gabriel would speak to her in a voice so stern she was frightened every time as he told her she was under no circumstances to leave the house while he was gone. She never did. Hours later they would return. Most of the time their clothes would be torn and bloodstained, but there was never a scratch on either man. She knew in all likelihood Gabriel and Peter had probably killed someone that night. But whoever it was had been a Bad Guy. Good Guys killed the Bad Guys—that's how it always worked.

But this time they weren't visiting for that reason; it was something else. Something dark. Something that brought Sylar out of her nightmares and into the daylight.

One lazy summer evening Gabriel had told her everything, about who he was, what he did, what he felt. Children could be heard playing baseball in a nearby park, and as the sun set, the sound of the night time cricket chorus was audible. But these comforting summer sounds were drowned in every word Gabriel forced out of his mouth. It felt like poison his body had overcome and now was burning him from the inside out as he told her in as little detail as possible what he knew she had to hear as he recounted the four years of hell for which he was responsible. He had intended on doing it in stages, but she asked question after question, bravely listening to the answers. Her Gabriel had not simply been a Bad Guy, he had been the Bad Guy. The Bogeyman. A murderer. As they stood in the kitchen together, for a moment he felt his eyes fill with tears. No. No, this was not allowed. There was no way he would cry when she so desperately needed him to be strong. He slid off his glasses to wipe away the tears, calmly, in the same manner he had always slid off his glasses every day. He heard her cry out, but it caught in her throat and was choked before it could grow into a scream. He immediately looked up at her, and for a moment she saw the same eyes that stood at the foot of her bed in the dark hours of night. His brows furrowed in concern, compassionate concern, and the smiling eyes gave way to Gabriel's wide-eyed stare again. When he replaced the glasses, he was the same man she had always known. They didn't sleep at all that night, not one second, didn't even lie down. The sun rose, and the kitchen was filled with a dusty grey light that was as cold as it was comforting. He thought she would reject him, loathe him entirely and would not have been surprised if she moved out.

After hours of silence, he quietly said: "If you want to move out, I understand. I'll give you enough money, I'll, no, I'll give you as much money as you want. I can, I'll…do you---do you want to leave?" She opened her mouth to reply, but it was as dry as cotton. She just shook her head.
"No?" Gabriel asked. She shook her head again; a definitive 'no.' He nodded. "Sweetheart, no matter what I say, what I do…I could apologize every moment for the rest of my life, and not begin to express the remorse I feel. I was …another person." He looked up from the kitchen table, at her, then back down again as if confused. "I suppose I was…looking to make love stay."

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She learned that for a brief period Gabriel had lived another life, that of Petrelli's brother, Nathan, who she never met. Matt Parkman erased Gabriel's memories and replaced them with Nathan's; it didn't hold. After a few months, it became evident that he had powers he couldn't explain and childhood memories he couldn't recall. One day he woke up as Gabriel; he had shapeshifted during the night. Parkman cornered him and tried to reset his memory again, but Gabriel resisted and Parkman almost died.

But then they met, and she changed all that. Had she known about Sylar, she would have tried to run as soon as she saw him, but she didn't. She was dying, a gunshot wound to the belly. By the time he found her she was numb and moments from death. Initially, he stepped over her with indifference, but something made him stop. Perhaps it was the fear. He raised a hand to finish the job, but something so compelling overtook him he was unable to finish. He tore open her shirt to examine the wound more closely and almost lost interest. Belly wounds were very bad, and this one had gone too long without attention. He wasn't a doctor and this kid had minutes, maybe less, before succumbing to her injuries. His intuitive aptitude kicked in, and he knew exactly what had to be done to save her. He understood the tissue damage, saw all the lacerations, understood what to do. She would need a hospital in any case, but he was confident he could keep her alive long enough to get her there. He carried her there and left her in a wheelchair in front of the emergency room doors. No one would have time to ask questions with someone this close to death. As he left her, she grazed his cheek with her hand.

"Thank you" she whispered softly. Grunting in response, he quickly looked down at her to lower her into the wheelchair. He was momentarily startled when he saw her eyes had glazed over with a ghostly white haze. She was staring at him intently and focused with her eyes, white as bones, though moments ago she had been barely conscious. "You're sick…you don't know who you are." He was taken aback. "Gabriel Gray…it's who you are." Gabriel stepped back. He had abandoned his Nathan Petrelli shape most of the time, preferring the shape he twisted into each night. He had dark hair and dark brown eyes, prominent eyebrows, slightly taller than average height. Slim, but not skinny, with somewhat defined muscles. He had no idea who he was, but he liked this look. As soon as she healed he spirited her away, past security and out of the hospital, intent on finding out who he was. She restored his memories easily; that was her ability. Instead of taking her ability, which is what Sylar would have done, for some reason it was Gabriel who emerged from the human shell which had been so entirely emptied by amnesia. And Gabriel was sick of Sylar. Sylar had done enough damage. So Gabriel walked home with her in his arms and left Sylar to die in the rain.

Or so he thought.

******************************

Gabriel was kneeling. He had not prayed for years, but he felt the words spilling out of him as uncontrollably as blood gushed from a fresh wound. Had he been able to hear himself, he might have noticed that his pleas were so hysterical they were hardly coherent. He felt the dark walls of relapse close around him like sand, burying him alive as he clawed and gasped in a pathetic attempt to climb out, but there was nothing to hang on to. He was soaked in blood, and not his own. He stared down at his clothes, hating himself for wishing Sylar's numbness could take hold of him again. They were drenched, absolutely covered in blood and vomit. Though he had killed dozens, Gabriel could not stomach the sight of it now, not more death. He began to gag again, but had already emptied the contents of his stomach, leaving his abdominals to contort with the dry heaves. The lifeless corpse rested at his feet, her face still twisted in the final scream, her last futile act before a violent death. Gabriel tried to reason with himself. It wasn't me, it wasn't me, it wasn't me…but it was. It was him. And this was body number six. Murder was horrifying, but the truly chilling revelation set in when he caught himself justifying it. Allowing himself to be a moral judge, deciding who lives and who dies—it was …Sylar. Sylar was returning. Gabriel dropped his head to the ground and begged not to be condemned this way. He had worked so hard, but the hunger was too strong. It was like eating or sleeping, to sleep perchance to dream…an 'evolutionary imperative'. Damn you, Chandra. Damn you to hell. How he wished that man had never found him! Was that why Sylar had killed him? Shaking, he squeezed his eyes shut as he repeated the same mantras over and over, but they fell flat in his mind. He wouldn't hurt her, he couldn't. But for thirty years he never would have believed he could hurt his mother, until one day Sylar drove a pair of sewing needles into her chest. Instead of cleaning the blood he painted the floor with it, literally. And Elle, the woman who almost loved him, he killed her moments after softly kissing her with genuine affection. Could she tell then, what he was going to do after he lowered her to the ground with such incredible tenderness? He could still feel her small fingers, interlaced with his against the cold, wet sand. She had squeezed his hand tightly when he began to cut her, not looking to escape his strong arms, only to brace herself against the pain.

No one was safe; not from Sylar. His most desperate cries couldn't help him now, nothing could. His voice was too faint, and the world, even her, was simply too far away. He was paralysed. Memories of Elle brought to mind another sensation he had not thought of for a long, long time. It was rough and terrifying, but Gabriel had been a braver man then. He hadn't hesitated to put his head through the noose and dutifully remembered to slide the coil of the knot to the nape of his neck. He had tied it slowly and carefully, hoping very much to do it correctly so his neck would snap. Climbing upwards now, seeing a view of his workshop he'd never seen; it looked so different from up high. A final image of Brian Davis, a flash of the jagged quartz so cool in his murderous hands, and he kicked the chair away. His knot, tied with careful watchmaker's hands, was not enough to snap him though, not without a drop. He was left to strangle to death. He hadn't heard her come in.

Gabriel knew what he had to do.