AN: Last time on M&M Gray, Adam was getting ready to blow Gabriel and Elle to kingdom come…or was he?

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Chapter 10

"Say goodbye to your wife, Sylar." Adam smiled insidiously right as he sent a blue pulse of energy towards the fuming couple.

Grabbing Elle and tucking her tightly in his arms, Gabriel jumped out of the way, rolling them across the littered living room floor. In his arms, Elle grunted at the impact of hitting the floor. The rest of her words were muffled by the boom of Adam's power demolishing their fireplace as it narrowly missed them. They came to a stop with Gabriel on top and Elle firmly tucked underneath him. Reacting without a thought, Gabriel raised the arm that was not shielding her head to telekinetically throw Adam across the room.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Elle's hand shoot out towards Adam at the same time.

As Adam went sailing through the air to impact heavily against the splintered door frame, an arc of crackling blue electricity raced from Elle's hand to engulf his body. Gabriel watched as he landed with a sickening smack against the broken wood and then fell forward to lay still in a sizzling pile of scorched human flesh. From the back of Adam's head, a sliver of wood protruded. For a moment there was nothing but deathly quiet as Gabriel's brain slowly processed what he had just seen. Underneath him, he felt Elle go utterly still. And then, unconsciously, the hand that had been cushioning her head from the broken glass on the ground tightened roughly and a strangled noise escaped her. His eyes snapped to hers.

The look on her face formed a hollow pit in the bottom of his stomach. Her eyes were glazed with terror and he realized then that his grip on her was bruisingly tight and that ice was forming on her hair and face. Before he could speak, she bucked him off of her roughly and a snap of blue light blinded him as his body spasmed, agony ripping through him.

She had electrocuted him.

He collapsed with his face on the ground as his skin slowly knit itself back together. Elle sobbed out roughly from the ground as she watched with her back pressed against the fireplace. He panted, not bothering to lift himself.

She had electrocuted him.

He heard the crunch of glass as she slowly got up and still he lay where he was. Adam was completely forgotten.

She had electrocuted him.

"Sylar," she choked at him, her voice full of anger and pain and knowing. It was that knowing that woke him from his stupor. The understanding of everything that that name represented that finally brought everything sharply into focus.

He had been sleeping with the enemy.

Slowly, he pushed himself up from the ground, swallowing the metallic blood that had erupted in his mouth from her attack. He savored the taste, pushing his tongue up against the roof of his mouth. Blood. His blood. She had hurt him. His smoldering eyes finally lifted to meet hers. She was trembling. Her face was ashen but her wide eyes were bone dry and utterly unreadable. The stared at one another as the ghost of her electricity tingled on his skin. There was only one electrogenicist in the Pinehearst database, he knew.

"Bishop," he mouthed, the word barely passing his lips but she heard and flinched as if shot. A gasping sob tore from her throat and her hands automatically came up as if to defend herself - as if he would hurt her. And he knew. She would hurt him if she needed to. She would kill him. This was how it was going to be. The realization that she viewed him as her enemy was like a sucker punch to his gut. She had been everything to him. And he was nothing to her. Stinging anger prickled behind his eyes, seeping down through his body like a flaming wave of lava.

She had played him for a fool.

With a thought, he had her pinned to the wall, her hands pushed up uselessly next to her head.

"Gabriel!" she cried out and the word fell on him like a blow. How dare she use that name? She had no right!

"Let's not pretend anymore, Agent Bishop!" he sneered. He flicked his wrist, sending all the furniture between them skittering away so that a path was cleared to her. "That's not my name anymore and you know it." She shook her head dully in denial at him, her head sagging so that her bangs came down to cover her eyes.

"No, Gabriel…" she said weakly. His lip curled. Did she really think that using that name would have any effect on him now? He had clearly married the actress of the century. Who knew how many lies she had had to feed him over the years to cover her tracks. And he had believed them all! He had eaten them up like a fool! He had been a fool for her tricks, for her lies.

There was a stinging pressure building behind his eyes at the sight of her and he ruthlessly forced it away. He would cut her out of his life now even if it meant one or both of them had to die. Hoisted against the wall, her hands flickered with a web of crackling blue sparks, inciting him further. He walked towards her.

"Do you think you can kill me, Elle? Your power is nothing next to mine. I could break you into pieces right now and there is nothing you could do to me. I can't die!" But I would have. For you, I would have.

She looked up at him, some of the fight coming back into her eyes. "You're wrong. There's plenty I could do to you." He was right in front of her now, looking down into her heated eyes and admiring how the blue crackle of her power lit up her face. God, she was beautiful. Still as beautiful as the day they met he realized with an ache. But she had one flaw. She lied. She was his beautiful lie.

"Show me," he whispered and brought his hands up to thread through hers. Her heaving chest was nearly touching his and her eyes widened and then narrowed. He braced himself, expecting the agony of being charred to begin at any moment. Show me, he told her silently. Do it. I'll give you this one chance to kill me.

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The moment that Elle saw Adam's battered body fly through the air, her eyes had been inexplicably drawn to Gabriel's wrist – his outstretched left wrist, where a polished silver watch face glimmered at her mockingly. There, written clear as day…Sylar.

Oh, god.

They stayed unmoving for a moment, watching Adam slowly bleed onto their polished wood floor. And then Gabriel's hand tightened roughly on her head. It had hurt but she had grit her teeth and taken it. It wasn't until she felt him slowly begin to freeze her that she had panicked and blasted him off of her.

It was like a nightmare. He had nearly fucking killed her! And for a terrifying moment, she thought that she had killed him until she saw his skin knit itself back together. It was really him. The telekinesis, the cryokinesis, the god damn healing.

"Sylar…" she uttered. Sylar…why did you have to be Sylar?

It was un-fucking-believable.

Looking into his eyes, she no longer saw the man that she knew. No longer saw the man that not ten minutes ago had been trying to save her life. Had kissed her. Had made slow love to her the night before. Was everything between us meaningless? You're trying to provoke me.

And now…

"Show me," he commanded, his face dark with anger but his eyes full of pain, full of Gabriel's pain.

And she couldn't. Not like that. So instead, she closed her fingers around his.

"No," she breathed, pleading with her eyes.

"Show me what you're made of," he ground out, squeezing her fingers until they were numb. She shook her head at him slowly, never losing eye contact. "If you don't," he whispered, "you'll die."

She felt it then, that slow agonizing prickle of ice cold needles seeping into her skin. It began at her hands and slowly moved down her wrists and arms. He was encasing her in ice, the son of a bitch and it hurt. It was slow and it was deliberate and she felt a little bit of herself die inside at the knowledge that he could hurt her so easily. As the ice began to encase her, she knew that if she didn't act now, her hands would soon be too frozen to save her. Slowly, without her permission, silent tears slipped down her face.

"Did you love me?" she asked numbly. At her question, his face took on a horribly pained, wounded look. He knew what she was going to ask. She was forever asking the same things. He sagged onto her, his forehead coming to rest on her forehead.

"Yes," he whispered.

"How much?" she asked quietly back.

"Too much," he answered quietly, regretfully. "I loved you too much."

Loved. Not love. She hadn't thought hearing him say that could hurt so much but it did. It was a different kind of pain than she was used to. If he loved her as much as she did him, he would never be able to say those words to her, do this to her.

And then he was speaking again but she couldn't hear anything past the roaring in her ears. It was over. Yesterday, she had been about to throw away her life at the Company so that they could have a real life together…and now it was over. They were over - because he was choosing it to be over.

Slowly, a numbing white rage began to build inside of her.

Did he really think he could just love her and kill her and walk away? Maybe he could do that to the woman he knew as Elle Gray…but there was no fucking way he would ever do that to Elle Bishop. She focused on the cold of her body and the sharp, sharp pain of the ice penetrating her skin.

She would show him what real pain was.

He was still leaning against her heavily, his eyes closed, and that's why he never saw the crackling rage in her eyes before she filled him with as much raw electricity as she could.

"ELLLLLLLEEEE!!!!" Sylar's harsh scream filled the air and she was sure the neighbors could hear him from miles away - not that she would never be coming back here again, she decided. He was thrown back away from her and landed across the room where he lay dead and smoking. She watched as his skin slowly mended itself, going from black to red to pink to pale tan. Her father had been right. Men were bad news - they only hurt you in the end. Unfortunately for Sylar, she could hurt right back. A tiny smirk emerged on her lips as his head turned towards her in groggy astonishment.

"Love you too, baby," she smiled mockingly at him. And then she blasted him again and again and again.

And again.

If he thought he was leaving her, he could very well do it in a body bag.

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AN: Bet you thought I was never going to update, hmm? Well, I'm slmost done with the next chapter, too! I will try to post it before I leave for Japan for two weeks tomorrow! No promises though. :)