AN:Sorry for the really long wait. I know it's long overdue and we're finally getting to the heart of it! I'd really love any and all feedback. It definitely makes a difference. Long story short, I've fixed my computer issues by buying a like six gen old mac book keyboard and plugging that into my super old macbook pro (as they keyboard has shorted out on it and I couldn't get on the computer forever because my password including letters that weren't working LMAO fml). So now it's like a desktop! Bit of a headache and a little ingenuity.

Anyway, the chapters are going to start jumping back and forth a little bit more like the show did though we've done a complete deviation from the SL. Hope you enjoy!


Today

The sun was creeping through the window but it landed on Gabriel completely unawares. Lately he found himself sleeping but never truly resting. This night and this sleep were the longest and the deepest. The weight had gone from his chest and the air had returned to his lungs. Frightful images had ended their marquee on the backs of his lids and Gabriel slept soundly. Soft huffs of air left his lungs.

Gabriel woke slowly. A noise came creeping, shifting his brain from the murkiness of sleep to awareness. The cogs began turning as his mind awoke before the rest of his body. The brief disconnect was dizzying as synapses fired the commands to bring the rest of him two. The noise came creeping but it was far away and getting closer. Not birds singing outside of the window. Not the sounds of the carnies commencing morning chores. Or the wind or the soft thumps of feet walking past.

All of these sounds were identified but none of them were creeping closer and growing louder. Gabriel's eyes opened but shied shut just as quickly from the brightness of the sun. Morning was too much for him just then. He lifted a hand to filter the light and tried opening them once more.

What's wrong with the light?

It was red like the sunrise but the position was all wrong. The sun was too high.

Gabriel's brain kept firing and the last piston fell into place. His eyes snapped open. It wasn't the light that was red but his hand. His hand covered in blood that had dried overnight and stained his skin.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

A distant part of his brain fired the incessant clicking of a long quiet clock. It was fuzzy. Far away. It waned to get closer but it remained at bay, almost sleepy.

Blood? My hand? Am I hurt? He closed his eyes and did a quick assessment... but he felt fine. Perfect. Better than perfect, really. He felt rested and slightly more... settled. Like his skin fit better than it had before.

Tick tick tick tick.

Last night... he prompted himself. He had to think. There was something very much missing. The muscles in his stomach twisted in on themselves. It became very important that he not open his eyes. Gabriel had to remember last night. The last of whatever sleep this might be- the tail end of a nightmare?- would disappear once he remembered. That's how sleep addled minds worked. They just had to be made to like anything else not functioning, as it should.

Last night... Last night...

Gabriel rolled away from the light and grabbed for the pillow reaching to position it better under his head. As it shifted, his fingers found a thick patch on the bed beside him. Immediately he tried to rub it away on the blankets but was met with more damp.

Ticktickticktick.

Lydia lay beside him, her mouth tugged down in a grimace. Her lips were parted just barely and her intrusion in his bed left him unsettled. The disappointment she seemed seconds away from voicing didn't come, but neither did any other sound or movement. He reached out and touched the tousled hair covering her forehead and brushed it aside. The fierce red line across her forehead found him on his feet in moments, standing on the cot he had shared with Lydia the night before.

Tickticktickticktick.

The sound echoed in his ears and the despair welled up in his eyes. His hands went immediately to his own head firmly planting themselves on top holding his own scalp in place.

Holy fuck... What have I do? Lydia... Oh my god, I couldn't have... Could I?

The night was an invisible knife in his hand like the one that pulled Lydia apart.

Tickticktickticktickticktick.

The roaring in his temples multiplied and he closed his eyes again trying to block out the light and the sound. Last night... they had showed him things. Things about himself that couldn't be true but it was like paresthesia... the limb was yours but the numbness and the tingling and the movement... it was yours and it wasn't. You didn't really control it. It was divorced from yourself.

"Are you okay?"

She had found him outside smothering himself under the stars hoping to drown himself in the night. Lydia had gone wholly unnoticed by Gabriel as her bare feet padded through the straggly grass without a sound until she reached out a willow arm and her fingers brushed his hair. Gabriel's eyes had snapped open and she noted he looked equal parts feral and meager. Lydia knew what Samuel had done without asking. Still, she stroked his hair and asked him softly. When he didn't answer she asked again.

"Sylar? What happened?"

Icy fingers danced up her spine; her voice sounded too sincere. Lydia knew better but she felt her heart break as Gabriel deflated in front of her, a strangled stutter burbling passed his lips. He was beyond seeing. "You shouldn't be out here," she had whispered and like a lullaby she lifted him and coaxed him back to her trailer and to her bed. He had stood still, a cold mute statue as she tried to remove the more restricting items of his clothing: shoes, jeans, button up. Gabriel's eyes were fixed out of focus to a spot just above and to the right of her left shoulder; he made no fight to stop her from removing his clothing. Nor did he help. He just stood with eyes open never blinking. Hardly breathing.

"Sylar," Lydia tried again. She brushed her long hair from her eyes and from the proximity some of it brushed against the bare skin of his arm. He didn't flinch nor did he embrace her but his lips parted.

"I hear a clock.

Lydia maneuvered him towards the edge of the bed. It took a bit of work, his taller frame less cooperative.

"Clocks," he mumbled. He was quiet for a moment and blinked for the first time in minutes. With sudden clarity his eyes snapped into focus and up they traveled to her face. Lydia inhaled sharply and started to pull back; she stopped herself after withdrawing just a few inches. "I'm not what they said."

Her heart softened as she thought to herself, however briefly, that he truly wasn't Sylar. He was broken. Not whole. There were pieces missing but where they were and who had them, even she couldn't divine.

But even broken men had their purposes and if he could not be filled to the brim with his past then he could be build from his roots. Lydia had experience with broken men.

She offered no argument for or against. She wasn't meant to know what he was speaking about, least so far as he knew. Every stroke to his temple and soft coo from her lips was sincerely fond but callously orchestrated and though she wanted to tell him no, no he wasn't. Maybe he had been but not any more, not with what she had seen. He was not what they said, that had changed. But she had to make him be. That was her role. Lydia leaned closer, her hair falling across his skin as she leaned over him. Her hand took one of his and gave it a squeeze.

"You're freezing. Let's get you to bed."

Empty. Upset. Desperate. Detached. The soft sound of clocks continued setting the tempo. Lydia had shared the night with him and as each fabric barrier was removed and distress became passion, another piece snapped into place. She turned tides with strokes of her hand and pulled strings with movements of her body. Gabriel was just as easy to play as any other and as she straddled him, her hips rocking prestissimo to their mutual crescendo. His pupils blown, completely unseeing, he had clung to her thighs as if trying to push himself deeper. She was Charybdis and he had gotten too close. Still, she panted her own satisfaction trying to still her own heart as she grazed her fingers curling briefly in the hair at his chest.

"I can feel you," his voice was thick.

Lydia thought it sweet, such an obvious thing to say after a less obvious action. But she could feel him, too. The tides turning and the turbulence building under his skin. When his eyes opened they were black. Gabriel leaned up and kissed her, different from before. Eager and assertive and... cold.

She pulled back and the smirk on his face said more than any future her skin told. Lydia grabbed for her top but her arm froze mid motion fighting against... nothing. Turning her head back to look at him she opened her mouth to ask him what he was doing but she knew and there wasn't any air for her lungs anyway. An invisible pressure tightened on her throat.

Without intending she'd given part of herself to him. He had understood it and absorbed it and somewhere deep inside his brain it clicked. It clicked and it ticked and it tocked. The gears had begun to turn.

Lydia's eyes widened. Samuel had known. She had done exactly what she was supposed to. She would build Sylar from the roots up, not as a lover but as a victim.

He could hear clocks.

Then he could feel inside her head the cacophonous rush of understanding and the never sleeping hunger.

Gabriel blinked and felt his stomach force itself up and out of his mouth. Oh god he didn't mean to but he couldn't avoid her as his stomach emptied itself. Stumbling off the bed, he was blind with the burning in his eyes and deaf of everything save for the thundering of his own heart. Throwing out his hand to catch himself on the bedpost he was filled with a rush of lush and a disentangled thought, a multicolor memory of the night before. Lydia smiling slowly and taking his face into her hands. She was naked and climbing into his lap.

Jumping back he slipped; the blood had soaked into the bed and much had pooled on the floor. His hand landed on her equally soiled shirt and another bright bulb burst behind his eyes, this one of the slow but synchronized motions of her fingers as she pulled the top from her frame and tossed it aside.

The lust was palpable and it warred against the fire in his stomach. Gabriel was covered in blood, bathing in it. He had to get out.

A shriek tore passed his lips as he slid once more and finally threw himself to his feet. Tearing out of the trailer and into the knowing sun, he pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. He didn't know if he was trying to get the images out of his head or hold himself together. Sobbing, he glanced back inside one last time.

Lydia.

She had realized too late what Samuel had meant for her to be. But he had, he'd felt it. He'd felt so many things. The tempo buzzed in the distance.

Gabriel screamed to silence it.

Before he could think he was soaring through the clouds with the circus a retreating dot below.


Some Time Ago...

He was kneeling not in front of an alter or at a pew but in front of a wall. Something was wet on his cheek, dripping down his face. Everything was blurry, his thoughts were running away from him. Nothing made sense. When he finally blinked his lashes stuck together for just a moment too long; he was crying. Droplets fell to his hands.

Sucking in a deep breath, the air deflated from his lungs and he grasped more firmly to the beads in his hands. They shook, but he held tight to the rosary. The beads were small and feminine, worn where tinier hands far more delicate than his own had taken equal turns clutching them to a chest, or softly caressed them finding comfort in their power. Tiny grooves mapped soft polished spots from frequent use. Someone more pious than he had prayed with them and, he suspected, had been heard. Maybe all of her prayers had not been answered in the way she meant, but he was sure they were heard by ears willing to listen.

He held them but felt no connection. Not with her. Not with God. No lesser weight on his shoulders. If only it was the sky- he envied Atlas.

There was blood under his fingernails where he had scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed but somehow missed. It was deep under by the quick of his nails. The tips were torn from where the metal wool had eaten into his skin until his own blood had washed away with the scalding water. He had heard her the whole while ringing in his ears, over his shoulder. How had he missed it? Such a filthy boy. His stomach rolled over; the beads fell from his hand.

They froze as they fell and shattered when they hit the ground.

There was no absolution for what he had done.

Everything. He had tried everything. He had sought help from those who knew what he might be capable of but not one had been worthy of his trust. Not the fleeting father figure in Chandra Suresh who had sparked the kindling that he really was special and could be capable of amazing things but so casually dismissed him. And when he had returned with blood on his hands knowing the full weight of just how special he was Chandra had rejected any responsibility.

Then in Elle, the angel with a halo of blond hair- she'd betrayed him as well. She had given him hope in second chances and momentarily renewed his waning faith in God. But like all miracles, she was smoke and mirrors, fueling the fire Gabriel had been trying to extinguish in his gut.

Where was God in all of this? No where to be found. Not in church. Not when he prayed out loud. Not when Sylar had born himself from the sacrifice of his first victim tearing into flesh, breaking bone, immersing his hands (first ripping and then probing and studying the gray matter). Not when he painted on the walls confessing his sins in their blood and sometimes his own.

Forgive me father for I have sinned. Forgive me father. father father mother. Forgive me. Forgive me. Sinned sinned sinned sinner.

All had been lost but one. There had still been some hope left in the end deep inside. Sylar had not settled so completely as to silence the mourning of Gabriel. There was one constant so pious that God would have to listen if only she could accept everything that he could never be, not without selling his soul. Maybe they could barter for it back. Virginia Gray had opened the door and smiled upon the gift he brought her and for a moment nothing had changed. There were no abilities or murderers or monsters. There was this small life he had always known with this woman who had raised him as best she could. Who talked about opportunities for her son and big dreams she had for him that may or may not consider his own, and made him sandwiches he didn't like or didn't want disregarding any requests that he made because mother always knew best.

There were a few brief seconds any trace of Gabriel might live inside forever. A handful of seconds when Virginia had understood that her son was special, though she did not understand the cost at which it came. But she had laughed and twirled, a small girl in a snow globe, the very thing she loved. Virginia had cried in amazement when the globes themselves began orbiting her, embodiments of places she had never been. Places she could now never go. She had collided with one of the larger globes and his mother had awoken from the dream. He was not special. He was a monster.

It had been an accident. Gabriel hadn't mean for it to happen but the woman in front of him no longer looked like his mother. He saw her through different eyes. Her features were twisted, a rabid glint to her eyes. Virginia had clutched the scissors with such authority as she labeled him a monster and a demon and disowned him. Virginia had not been able to give Gabriel the gift of acceptance. Nor would she be able to chat with God and bargain for his soul. He took hers without intention, the scissors piercing her heart. She had died in front of him, in his arms and he knew she had gone where he would never follow. He wept for the loss of his mother, but he cried harder because he felt no real loss at all.

Using his forearm he wiped the moisture from his eyes. They lost their softness as he stood. There was no savior, he wouldn't be kneeling again. Not for anyone. He wouldn't be bound by their expectations or disappointments or doctrines. He would be the judge- and if fit, the jury and executioner. Something inside him rumbled.

If there was no way to stop the hunger, he would quench it.

Before he left, he scrawled a final message behind the door. Chandra would find it and he would know what it meant. Turning his back on the mural of his sins, he locked the door behind him.

GABRIEL GRAY IS DEAD.

He wasn't strong enough for this new world.

YOU'RE NEXT.

But Sylar was.


Now

Peter's eyes opened and found he was sat up straight in his bed. Glancing back and forth, he searched for the source of what had pulled him from his sleep. In the darkness there were few shadows, what little furniture he still had in his apartment. The sound of his breathing and his heart and the shifting in his bed.

Knock knock knockknockknock.

The frantic rapping on his door came again. Throwing the blankets off himself he jumped out of bed and glanced at a clock. Three AM. Not a social visit, then. As he rubbed some sleep from his eye, he undid the lock and chain and opened the door just a hair.

Nathan stood outside his apartment in a state. Save for his bachelor party, he'd never seen his brother looking nearly as rough. His clothes were soiled, his face streaked with blood and dirt, his hair hanging in his eyes. Opening the door wider, Peter waved his brother in noting it wasn't just the hall lighting that made Nathan appear gray and drawn. His pallor wasn't followed by the usual stench of stale whiskey and overly priced cigars.

"Something's wrong, Pete. Something's really god damn wrong."

Peter closed the door and turned back to his brother.