By mutual agreement, my writing partner and I are ending More Between Us Than a Wall. I appreciate everyone who came with us on this journey that spanned so many years and hundreds of thousands of words. I'm providing an epilogue so you know where the rest of the story was going to go. I wrote for Peter, so this summary is mostly from that point of view.
At this point in More Between Us Than A Wall, the wall itself was going to appear. Peter was done with Sylar. There's nothing keeping him here except the physical manifestation of his inability to leave: the wall. Peter is okay with this. On a symbolic, spiritual level, he can relate.
He spends his time beating on the wall. He gathers hammers and pickaxes. He enjoys the heft of the tools and the application of his body against a visible barrier. He swings relentlessly, regularly, frequently. He beats against the brick until his hands blister and his shoulders ache. He takes breaks when he needs to and resumes when he can.
He's aware of the pointlessness of it. He tries to meditate. It's easy to lose himself in the work. He knows it's a Sisyphean task so the lack of progress doesn't bother him. He tries a few more sophisticated tools, but it's a token effort.
It's noisy work. Sylar finds him easily. Peter doesn't care. And that is the crux of it: Peter doesn't care. Whatever core of empathy he had has been broken. He doesn't care about Sylar's mental health, Sylar's loneliness, Sylar's anxiety. He doesn't care about Nathan's memories or what Sylar might do or even about the Carnival. It's not that none of it matters, but that he's accepted he's powerless to change these things. He can't do anything. But he can swing a hammer and here's a wall. He gets busy.
He doesn't play the guitar or the piano. He doesn't sing songs or volunteer conversation. He'll answer questions as long as they're not too deep and shrug off the ones that are annoying. He treats Sylar like most people treat strangers – polite, uninterested, absorbed in his own reality and uninterested in engaging with anyone else's.
He eats, sleeps, and hammers on the wall. He might lie in bed and stare at the ceiling at times when his body isn't up to the work. Sylar can find him reliably, almost any time Sylar wants to find him. Peter is utterly disconnected from him. An animated mannikin would be easier to deal with because at least then you could pretend with it.
As for Sylar's part, my writing partner said that Sylar would go through a range of escalating attempts to get Peter's attention. He would be anxious, threatening, scared, guilty. Somewhere along the line he would realize he'd managed to push Peter-of-the-infinite-empathy into not caring – not caring about Sylar, not caring about much of anything.
Sylar might blow up about it. He might calculate a worse plot. He might enact it – all depending on the exact feedback or lack thereof he received from Peter. For Peter's part, he still feels pain and still avoids it. He would react to some of Sylar's attacks (if there were any), but he's checked out mentally and he stays that way.
Sylar has to rebuild things between them from the ground up. He's a watchmaker. He knows how things fit together. There is no appeal to the past he can make here. No promise. No threat. No manipulation. He has to reach Peter emotionally and the only way he can do that is by being authentic. No more dodging. No more blaming. No more masks and roles and pretense.
Our intention was that this would lead to real love and real support.
When that was achieved, they'd wake up in Matt's basement. And that would be the end of this story.
This is the end of the story now. Again, I thank you for your support and encouragement!