April 15, 2006
Gabriel sighed heavily, sinking further back into his chair and taking a deep pull from his drink until the ice clinked in the empty bottom of the glass. The warmth of the liquor ran its course down his throat sooner than he would have liked it to. He pressed the smooth exterior of the glass to his forehead in hopes that the chill would help to soothe the dull throbbing ache residing there. At some point during his debate whether to refresh his drink in the quest for relief or not the girl in the next room caught his eye bringing the slightest curl of a smile to his lips.
He wasn't the kind of man to drink often or out of habit. But as he stumbled into the kitchen to retrieve the lonesome bottle of Scotch, something purchased for him as a gift several years previous by a customer extraordinarily grateful for a restoration on a family antique, he couldn't help but be thankful for the numbing effects of the alcohol on a headache that simple aspirin couldn't touch anymore. Gabriel filled his glass one final time for the night, wincing once at the finely aged burn as he drained it before teetering off to the bedroom.
Claire lay securely bundled beneath the blankets, blissfully oblivious to the racket produced when he stumbled about attempting to remove his shoes as well as the creak of the bed when he sat down beside her. Long fingers combed their way through her golden locks that spilled over the pillow. They had barely survived what was undoubtedly the longest two weeks of his life.
He had stared relentlessly at the picture that he had pocketed from Dr. Suresh's map for the duration of the ride home that afternoon, memorizing the details of every youthful curve to her face and sunlit curl in her hair, the gentle glimmer of her smile and the subtle twinkle in her eye betraying notions of naïve hope that he had yet to see in her for himself. She was supposed to be fifteen, the picture supposedly having been taken somewhat recently, but the image captured in time was of someone entirely different than the young woman he had come to know. The girl unknowingly returning his gaze from the photo paper was soft and unburdened. Innocent. Claire had never appeared as any of those things to him. She was hard-nosed and to the point, haunted even by invisible weights placed upon her slender shoulders. She was shrewdly intelligent with a quiet calculation of circumstance that was not made of nature but learned through trial and fire. When she knew fear it was not created from emotion or instinctual response for her own preservation, but something strangely akin to frustration or perhaps self-doubt that she could not prevent the inevitable. Claire, for all the layers of intrigue that he had managed to pull apart, remained an anomalous mystery of strength and to some extent brutality.
"Claire," he had started, pulling her aside to sit beside him. "I need to ask you something. And I need you to be completely honest with me."
"Okay?" Hints of worry rippled over her features before being replaced by the carefully composed mask of the Company girl. Despite a shorter hair style than used in the picture her features were the same. And yet, her face was completely different. It was in her eyes, he decided, shining with a harsh ferocity that changed her every aspect from the girl she had been.
Gabriel produced her picture from his pocket once more and held it out for her to see. "I promise that I won't be mad no matter what your answer is and I'll believe whatever you say, but I need to know. How old are you really?"
"Where did you get this?" she quietly demanded taking the photo into her own hands for study.
"It was on the Union Wells High website." He swallowed thickly past the dry cottony sensation that had returned to his mouth. "You're listed as a freshman there for the 2005 - 2006 school year. Fifteen years old." For the first time in more years than he cared to recall, Gabriel found himself praying. He almost wished for a lie. As much as he cared about the girl he didn't want to believe that he was actually capable of the level of perversion that he was facing. If it was the truth then she wouldn't even be old enough to decide for herself what she thought was acceptable treatment of her body and he would have been reduced to being a twenty eight-year-old predator. A certifiable pedophile. He didn't count himself as being a religious man, but after growing up in a Catholic home he did firmly believe that there were special places in hell for people like that. Never mind what the law would have to say about it.
Claire sat quietly for what felt like an eternity thinking over all the possible scenarios that could result from her answer. The whole truth was out of the question with any number of ramifications for the future time line, but he had asked for honesty. There was only one answer available. "It's true."
Gabriel slumped back into his seat with soul crushing defeat. He couldn't breathe. The walls were baring down on him, squeezing the air in the room until it constricted around his chest and caught in his lungs refusing to relinquish another atom of oxygen. "Oh, God, I'm a monster."
"No." Claire crawled over his side seeking attention but he had covered his eyes, bitterly unwilling to reveal them again. "Gabriel, no," she pleaded, climbing onto his lap so that she practically straddled him.
"I'm a monster," he continued to whimper. "Please forgive me for I have sinned. Please forgive me…"
She had never imagined Sylar being able to break down so thoroughly, not even as Gabriel and the scene unfolding before her… It was more than a little frightening.
"Gabriel, please. Look at me," she commanded, making futile attempts at prying his arms away from his face. Had she not chosen to take her position on top of him she wouldn't have been further surprised to see him curl into a ball on the sofa and rock himself back and forth.
"Monster… Forgive me. Please forgive me, I know not what I do."
"Gabriel!" She put the full force of her body into the struggle, straining muscles to that point beyond pain that she could no longer detect until his shell fell apart. "Gabriel, look at me." Claire gingerly removed his smudged glasses to fully take in the hot tears that streamed over his lashes and down his cheeks. "Look at me," she demanded again, pulling his chin up. "You haven't done anything wrong." His eyes snapped open to squint at her, reading into her intentions. "Do I look like a kid to you? Do you think victim when you see me?"
"No."
"Does this feel wrong to you?" she asked, leaning in to plant a light kiss on his lips.
"No."
"Do you love me?"
"You know I do."
"You haven't forced or manipulated me into doing anything I didn't want to. And it's not like we're keeping it a secret. So what's the problem?"
He stumbled for an answer surprising himself when he couldn't find one. Something told him that Noah Bennet was not the kind of man that would hesitate to use the Strayer Voigt Infinity 1911 .45 caliber semiautomatic that he covertly stowed away in the cover of his jacket, which he reasonably presumed would be undetectable to the typical observer. If he had a problem with his daughter's choices in life, Bennet hadn't taken an obvious issue with him and that was quite arguably the most important of sticking points in Gabriel's mind.
He had come to the conclusion, after many tenuous reassurances that the rest of their relationship had not been a series of lies, that he really didn't care if she were 15 or 1500. She was still Claire and for all his efforts to redirect his illogical attachments, he still loved her. There wasn't any way to take that back. All the same, their physical relationship had certainly taken a back seat until the required amount of trust could be replenished and each and every kiss that she blessed him with became the sweetest taste of hell that he could imagine.
"Gabriel?" she mumbled from the fringes of sleep.
"I'm here." He haphazardly stroked strands of her hair away from a sweat beaded brow line.
"You stink," she grumbled irritably. "Are you drunk?"
A bemused smile took possession of his mouth at the increasing keenness of her olfactory senses. "No." A cracked giggle burst from his throat followed by a stunted hiccup. "Maybe a little."
Claire rolled over to shoot him a poisonous glare. Alcohol would apparently have to be added to the list of items with smells that inexplicably upset her as of late he mentally cited. Was it wrong to think that she looked positively adorable when she was trying to be cross with him? The way a little crinkle appeared between her eyebrows and her nose wrinkled while her lips pursed…
"Gabriel?"
He bolted upright to a sitting position from the deepest reaches of sleep at the sound of that voice. Crap, crap, double crap.
Virginia Gray knocked only once on the bedroom door before turning the handle, sending a jolt of frenzied panic to shock his heart into alertness. She poked her head inside to witness her son hurriedly disentangling himself from twisted snags of sheets and the heavy arms of his dozing girlfriend. Shit.
The jig was up and he knew it even before he watched his mother storm off.
"Mom," he called to her softly, stepping out of his room and carefully shutting the door behind himself in false hopes that Claire wouldn't be disturbed from some much needed rest. "It's not what it looks like," he had started sheepishly, pulling on a shirt over his pajama bottoms.
"This is sin, Gabriel," Virginia growled at him. A deep flush of shame swept over his cheeks. "I should have known when you stopped going to the church…"
"Mom, that was twelve years ago!" Almost as long as Claire's been alive. Ugh.
"And look at where it's gotten you, Gabriel." He might have stood more than a head taller than his mother but the slight woman had perfected the art of looming over him, pointing a half-cocked finger at his disgrace. "Seduced by that harlot."
"Claire is not a harlot."
"You don't even see it, boy. That girl has sunk her claws into you. Dragging you away from me and into the hands of the Devil."
"Mother." His tone took on a dark sense of warning.
"Are you going to marry her?"
She had caught him off guard with that one. "Well, I - I, um…" He ran a distracted hand through his disheveled hair, not for the first time reliving his failed proposal to the woman in question. How could he explain that he had asked, but… She hadn't even bothered to turn him down. Claire had just elected not to answer the question at all.
"No. You're just selling your soul to share a bed with a whore."
A startled gasp sounded from behind him and if it was possible his heart sank even further. He hadn't even heard her get up to go to the bathroom, but there Claire stood in the open doorway to their bedroom with her mouth open and a hurt glaze to her eyes. "I'm not a whore." It was barely a whisper above the thundering beat of his own pulse in his ears.
"Get out."
Both women turned their rapt attention to Gabriel. His voice was deep and even but it was more than obvious that he was absolutely seething with suppressed rage. "Gabriel?" Virginia started, suddenly unsure of her standing.
"Get out," he commanded again. When no one made to move he closed the distance between himself and his mother in a few strides and took her roughly by the hand. He dragged her along to the apartment door and as gently as possible with all things considered, shoved her out into the hall.
"She's holding you back, Gabriel. You're special. You're meant to do something important and she's only going to hold you back."
"She's not the one holding me back, Mother. You are. And for the record, it was exactly what it looked like." And with that he unceremoniously slammed the door in Virginia's gaping face.
"You never told her." Claire's muted voice reached him again. His anger deflated as quickly as it risen when he turned to face her. "I can't believe… All this time and you never told her? What…?" She rubbed her eyes as if she could ward away the situation like some unpleasant dream. "Are you really that ashamed about me?"
"Claire, no. It's not like that."
"Then tell me what it's like, Gabriel!" The tables were turned. It was her turn to be furious and once again he shrank back in the fashion of a small child.
"She wouldn't understand." He half-heartedly gestured to the door as though it should have been able to answer all of her inquiries. "She expected me to get married before…" he waved a hand to indicate the whole of their situation. Claire's anger too dissipated, the corners of her mouth falling into a frown that he didn't quite understand.
"Does it make your head feel better?"
"Better than anything else I've tried so far." She nodded with understanding even though he seriously doubted that she even knew what a headache would feel like and kindly chose to ignore the way his words slurred a bit at the end. Her hand twined into his with a little sigh for the pillow and he knew that he wouldn't be in metaphorical dog house for much longer.
"I hope you're not coming down with something."
"I imagine I've probably picked up your flu. Surprised I didn't catch it earlier… but then again Lysol is a wonderful product to have around."
A small smile flickered in her eyes, replaced all too soon by a look that he wished he hadn't seen so often of late. "Gabriel, I don't feel so great."
"I'll get the crackers."
"Well? Anything yet?"
Chandra poured over endless graphs and analysis reports, shaking his head despondently. "Nothing yet it seems. All of your blood work has come back as being perfectly ordinary. Hormone levels are all within average ranges…" The doctor flipped his chart over to take in another set of statistics.
After two weeks of various testing methods the duo had yet to discover any indication of what Gabriel's special ability could be. It had only taken one day at an obstacle course to determine that, while he had an intuitive understanding of how he needed to make his body function for the test, he had lacked any form of superior strength, agility or speed. Hours on a treadmill had displayed his bull-headed inability to give up, pushing his body beyond normal limits, but enhanced endurance or stamina were also crossed off the list of potential powers. Endless rounds of flashcards had failed to produce any forms of precognition or telepathy.
The only area where he exceeded the expectations of the average human being were in mental capacity. That had given Suresh some hope that perhaps Gabriel's ability would be a cerebral one. However, after endless puzzles meant to strain logical capabilities, which Gabriel genuinely enjoyed, and all manner of psycho-social study, he was once again revealed to be completely normal if not somewhat emotionally and socially stunted. Scans that had been taken while Gabriel was required to do his best not to think at all and then to answer questions designed to stimulate specific portions of the brain had also failed to indicate anything out of the ordinary. His reflexes, balance, blood pressure, stress management, conductivity, reaction speed, space awareness, nerve pulses and miscellaneous other forms of measurement said nothing special at all.
At one point after a particularly strenuous series of puzzles he had felt something inside of him… Not snap, that wasn't the correct word for the feeling. Release? Expand? It was as if his mind had been the size of a dime for his entire life and then suddenly allowed to grow to the size of a quarter in an afternoon. Physically he felt no different except for the aching drum beat of pain that throbbed from behind his eyeballs, but his mind… He started to see things slightly differently. What had been simple parts before became a whole of interlocking synchronizations - in everything. Gabriel had always had a talent for figuring out how nearly anything could work, how to fix it, how to break it, but that talent had been pushed significantly farther in capacity, slowly continuing to grow and manifest, forcing past the barriers of previous limitation.
"You're Intelligence Quotient is by far the highest I've ever encountered, but unfortunately genius is not what we're considering to be an evolved ability."
"We'll find it, Dr. Suresh," Gabriel assured, more for himself than the disappointed geneticist. "We have to."
"I thought your regeneration was supposed to keep you from getting sick." He patted her gently on the back with one hand, holding her hair out of the way with the other while she continued to heave.
"I," her stomach surged forward again, "I've never been sick before… I," strangled gasp for air, "don't know what's wrong with me." Claire hunched over the toilet to clutch at the porcelain for support. Gabriel grimaced and looked away while fluids mercilessly sloshed into the water. His own stomach was going to turn on him in a moment.
"I don't know if you can get," hiccup, "dehy-dehydurat- dehydrated or not, but you really need to drink some water when you can." Just the thought seemed to be enough for her back to spasm violently, sending another fountain of regurgitation into the toilet. "It's okay." He tried to console her through his own internal twitches, mentally willing away the urge to dump his head into the bathtub and vomit as well. "Just get it all out. It'll," hiccup, "be alright." Thankfully the bucket of cleaning supplies hadn't moved from its faithful position beside the sink. Lysol, paper towels, disinfectant wipes, rubber gloves and an economy sized package of Saltine crackers patiently waited for use.
"Stop following me!" Claire flitted through the apartment in another one of her moods. Gabriel continued his trek behind her picking up all manner of chaos left in her wake. He had readjusted the table from where she moved it, put her scattered selection of shoes back into their appropriate locations, returned her laundry to the hamper, and pillaged the kitchen for empty soda bottles and discarded wrappers meant to be in the trash.
"Someone has to," he had automatically retorted. Claire stopped her tracks and purposefully brushed one of her magazines off the coffee table onto the floor where the pages wrinkled. Her fiery eyes never left him while he bent over to pick the reading material up and replaced it accordingly.
"God, you're even more anal than my father!"
"And you're a slob!" Gabriel watched her flushed face fall and immediately wished to any higher power that would listen that he could have been able to claw those words back out of existence. A cracked sob escaped her before she collapsed onto the couch in a full blown wail.
"Claire, I'm sorry." He plopped down onto the sofa beside her dejectedly. "Please don't cry. I didn't mean -"
"Yes you did!" Tears streamed down the length of her face like a set of flood gates had been opened. "And - and I don't even know why I'm crying again!" Gurgled sobs crashed their way through her lips despite her best attempts to hold them back. "I'm not even sad but I'm crying like an idiot and I don't know how to make it stop."
Gabriel passed her an open box of tissues which had been designated for her specific use. He wished that that had been the first time an episode of that nature had occurred. He breathed evenly though to remain collected and only winced a little when she blew her nose disgustingly loud.
"I'm sorry I'm a pig," she sniffled after having a few minutes to calm down.
"I never said you were a pig, Claire," he sighed.
"My pants don't fit anymore. I'm getting fat."
"You are not fat." Another sniffle threatened more tears so he took her hand and pulled her closer to him, wrapping fatigued arms around her for comfort. The late nights of work with Suresh and coaxing her through her flu bug beside the toilet weren't getting any easier. "You look fine." Her eyes flashed up at him with warning signals to tread carefully. Course correcting before certain disaster he added, "You're beautiful. I love the way you look." And it wasn't a lie. There really was something to be said for the shapliness of her hips and backside.
He never saw it coming. On a hair trigger her mood had changed again and before he could register what was happening Claire had crawled onto his lap, attached her mouth to his and slid her fingers down his shirt to tangle in the buttons. For a not-so-brief moment he greatly appreciated her stimulative enthusiasm, allowing his palms to grace the fullness of her breasts while her hips moved against him, but that little voice in the back of his head made an appearance to say that what he was doing was wrong. Wonderful, incredible, blissful, feel-good wrong. She really had no right to feel so inviting, lush and supple and warm… Wrong!
"Claire, no." It was downright painful to push her away especially when she made another reach for his belt buckle, but the moment wasn't right. The growing amount of frustration without release wasn't in any way helping to smooth the course of their relationship.
"Please? Don't make me beg. I need it. Please?" She definitely needed it. She didn't have to be sitting on his lap for him to feel the heat that was seeping out of her. Claire leaned in to drop a wet kiss on the pulse of his carotid artery and a whiff of her scent clung to his nose. Hazy thoughts danced around in his head entertaining ideas of breaking down and burying himself inside of her, feeling her constrict and shudder and tremble all around him while he got lost in tangles of blonde hair and broken moans. Who the hell was he kidding?
"No, Gabriel. Get off." Somewhere in the process of taking possession of her hips and staking his claim on her cherry lips they had turned over so that she was pinned in the cushions and shoving at his chest.
"What is your hormonal malfunction?" Claire ran off to the bathroom and slammed the door behind her without another word. He knew she was sick and he had done his best to remain patient with her but… Gabriel needed a break.
He stepped out of the apartment under the pretense of taking a walk to get some fresh air only to run smack into none other than Noah Bennet. "Gabriel," he older man greeted with a scrutinizing gaze.
"Sorry, Noah. I didn't see you there."
Bennet watched him rub his tired eyes and quickly picked up on the tension in the air. "Trouble in paradise?" Gabriel snapped his attention to Claire's father. There was something in his voice like dry sardonic humor. Was he mocking him?
"Your daughter is insane."
Noah seemed mildly taken aback for a second but a slow smile crept over his lips followed by a low chuckle. "You don't have very much experience with women do you, Gabriel?" He wanted to be insulted but he couldn't muster the energy for indignant outrage. Noah smiled again, leaning back against the wall next to his counterpart. "There's a little known secret about them, you know." They shared a conspiratorial look before he continued. "They're all insane."
The two shared a quiet laugh before the moment turned serious again. "I just wish I knew what was wrong with her," Gabriel blurted out. "She's been so moody lately. One minute she's fine and the next she starts crying even though there's nothing wrong. She's always tired and… She's been getting sick a lot."
Something flashed behind the older man's eyes so quickly that he couldn't even be sure what he had caught before it was gone. Recognition? Had Noah seen that kind of behavior before? "Sick like she has the flu?"
"That's the only thing that I can think of."
Yes, Bennet definitely knew something. "My wife had something like that several years ago." He bit his tongue hard enough that Gabriel thought he could have drawn blood, but the master of cool was careful not to betray a single muscle twitch of knowledge. "Try giving her crackers. Just the regular salted ones. It'll help her stomach."
Gabriel nodded in agreement, thankful for any kind of helpful insight from the more experienced male no matter how small. "Go get some air, Gabriel," Noah directed. "It could be a while before she gets over this and you'll need all the down time you can get." There was a clear dismissal in those words that he didn't care to argue so he made to scoot off.
"Dad?" Claire came out of the bathroom just as he was entering the apartment.
"Hey there, Claire Bear," he smiled.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, giving him a whole-hearted hug in greeting.
"I got a very interesting call from Chandra Suresh." Panic crossed her haggard features before he continued to explain. "At home, in Odessa. Your name showed up on his list for people with abilities." A small sigh of relief escaped her. It wasn't exactly convenient that the scientist's focus had landed on her, but at least it wasn't on Gabriel.
"I guess that means that he got his system up and running again."
"Don't worry. I've already got Eden McCain working on getting your name off the list."
Gabriel pulled his ear away from the door. He hadn't originally meant to eavesdrop on the family conversation but he had remembered that he forgot his keys and turned back to get them before leaving, listening to whether Claire was still upset with him or not before walking in. Stealing her picture from the doctor hadn't been enough effort to keep her from being discovered. Apparently there was a list that she was a part of as well, something on a computer. If the Eden person that Noah had spoken of couldn't handle the situation it would be left up to him to take care of it. Perhaps with his relationship with Suresh he would fare a better chance at getting closer to the information.
If neither Claire nor her family wanted to be found out then it was his responsibility to help keep their secret safe at all costs.
"Thanks. I think I feel better now." Claire rinsed her mouth out and sat down to nibble on the crackers.
"I guess taking you to the doctor is," hiccup, "out of the question?" She nodded in the affirmative.
"I can't let them take any of my blood."
"Blood," he mused, "right." Weary, inhibited eyes focused their attention on her. Throughout her bout of illness Claire had managed to keep a healthy rose colored glow to her skin and a high gloss shine to her already soft hair. Her lips were full with color. He supposed that her ability had much to do with those aspects but if he wasn't mistaken the process seemed to have picked up in pace. Her hair and nails were growing a fraction quicker than they had before, and from what little his palms had been able to tell him recently her breasts were getting just a touch larger.
"Blood," he muttered again. His alcohol induced daze was clouding his mental acuity but something was occurring in the recesses of his mind. Parts were forming, sliding together like the pieces of a great puzzle to form a picture of function. Claire shifted nervously, watching the color drain from his eyes as the black holes burned into her midsection.
Her resting heart was just a tenth of a second shy from being ten beats higher per minute than it had been when they first met. Her blood pressure however remained steady and the vascular system was functioning in perfect time but an excess of oxygen and nutrient rich blood was being directed to the vicinity of her lower stomach. Gabriel thought he could even detect the generation of a spare artery forming there with according veins. "Human Chorionic Gonadotropin…"
"What?"
"Hormones," he slurred out. "hCG suppresses the immune system."
"Gabriel? Are you okay?"
He was slumping back against the corner where the wall met the tub. She wasn't sure that he registered how he was falling over but his eyes had widened, some brilliant discovery shining behind them.
Her regeneration is combating the rise of hormone levels which is causing a further increase in their production. Her body is fighting itself. That's why she's such a mess.
"I get it now," he mumbled with a bark of a laugh.
"Gabriel? What do you get? What's suppressing my immune system? I don't understand." Claire had crawled over to his side and tried to shake him awake by the shoulders but it was too late. He closed his eyes and his breathing deepened with oncoming sleep. A faint smile tugged at the corner of his dreaming mouth with a final word for the night. "There's two of you now."
And then he was gone. Out like a light and snoring loud enough to wake the dead. Whatever his discovery was, Claire was left clueless about it and doubted that even he would remember in the morning.
To be continued...