The Eye of the Storm
By the time Tracy found herself alone in the haphazard, iron maze of the hangar with only her own footfalls for company, she found the very last remnants of doubt had faded away entirely, like melted ice leaving a trail in her wake. She could think clearly now.
And so she never faltered. She never reconsidered. She never even took a single wrong step; the clean, crisp clatter of towering stiletto heels conducted her plight through the giant aircraft hangar in time with her pounding heart. Container-lined corridors seemed to part to make way for the might of her determination, she didn't have to ever slow down before doors slid open at the mere flash of her keycard, and either a god Tracy didn't believe in was clearing her path of too many agents for her, or the now palpable chill emanating from her skin was keeping most of them at bay.
It didn't matter, either way. Because Tracy didn't regret what she'd just done to Noah – he might end up with a bit of frostbite but he'd survive. And she was past preserving her job for Renautas, a company she'd long since hated.
This felt right. It felt about time.
The few, bored guards she passed were more interested in leering at her as a distraction from their shifts than confirming her lack of clearance. Tonight, Tracy didn't let it get to her. The memory of a messy mop of curls obscuring warm eyes eclipsed all other rational thought, and for once Tracy Strauss wasn't thinking of self-preservation, overpriced martinis, or that below the thrill of casting her very comfortable salary out the window was a stark reality waiting to catch her after the crash.
And so she carried swiftly on, fighting to hold onto Micah's identification code like the memory was water slowly draining from her hands. It was only when she caught sight of a door branded 'High Risk Cargo' that she finally skidded to a stop in the empty corridor of containers. Relief swelling in her chest, Tracy approached the sealed door with her keycard held aloft, bypassed the warning and hauled the door open-!
But it wasn't Micah Sanders she found inside.
Bracing herself, Tracy peered at the unexpected figure, lying unconscious on a demeaning chrome slab with a tube taped up his nose like so many others before him. She, herself, knew the sensation too well. The burn in her throat, the cotton-tongued, heavy-headed nausea that followed the drugs Danko had once used to subdue her. But that wasn't the only thing familiar about this set-up. Hiro Nakamura was much too recognisable not to identify upon first glance.
Frustrated, Tracy almost turned on her heel and left then and there, the better to find Micah before Renautas found her...!
But then she had a better idea. After a moment's hesitation, she slipped inside the cool, metallic-smelling container, and let the door clunk shut behind her.
( )( )( )
Sylar stopped to catch his breath. Staggering back on aching legs, he looked over the upturned state of this latest shipping container; now barely recognisable beneath mounds of painted canvases that littered the place like fallen leaves.
Beside him, Peter wavered slightly on the spot, equally as breathless. Sylar couldn't even tell if the racing heartbeat currently deafening him was his own or just an echo of the empath's.
Together, the evos stood silently before a vast, painted roadmap of history entwined with the future, a map sprawling out for miles without directions. It was a mosaic, a puzzle shattered into a hundred insequential pieces: scarred faces; unrestrained abilities; the same two shadows backlit against a smouldering auburn sunset; silhouetted high in the clouds above a sprawling city skyline; poised inches apart atop a glistening, rain-drenched rooftop...
They hadn't bothered forming comic book-like panels, fooling themselves that some miracle, all-knowing, chronological story would bleed forth from the paint and solve all their problems. They didn't need to, anyway. There were countless inter-connecting tales here. Countless interpretations of countless painted prophecies, too many variations that could tell a completely different truth each time. None of it made any sense.
But that didn't matter at all.
Sylar couldn't refrain from flinching when, wide-eyed, his lips parted in a perfect little 'o', Petrelli turned to him for the first time since they'd started tearing the room apart. Sylar stubbornly avoided looking at that face, the living, breathing version of the one reoccurring throughout all these paintings alongside his own. As if scalded, he blinked furiously at the ground. Then wished he hadn't. He saw his own self, immortalised again in brushstrokes and canvas, this time standing his unsteady ground, arms out wide, looking fearless and brave and unrelenting before a towering wall of water. Like a hero. Like a stranger.
( )
"...You." Peter's voice broke. "You? It was -? All this time?"
More words never came. Maybe it was a blessing, since the thoughts alone were too dangerous to hold for long. Peter stared, unseeing, at the hunched, ill and guarded form of his enemy, helpless to stop the flood of revelation from claiming him.
Because he couldn't un-know it now. He couldn't un-see, even through his own frothing resentment, that all this time Sylar had still been ruining him. Even when he wasn't there he was, and even when Peter was free from his memories – hell, even from half a year of his own life – he could never be free from this murderer. Because that void, that empty space where something, someone, important had been stolen had not only sent him searching halfway across the country, but had kept him going these past few weeks. The thought that he'd once known something precious enough to miss so badly had given him comfort. It had given him hope for the life he couldn't recall. But now he couldn't deny all those seconds he'd wasted missing that treasure were seconds he'd unwittingly spent missing Sylar.
Peter didn't even care anymore what cause must have been important enough to ever get them working together in any timeline. Or dangerous enough for Renautas to want to sever from their memories. He only cared about the congealed feeling inside his chest that he'd stupidly misinterpreted as love, now melting through the cracks and meaning something much, much worse.
"...You." Peter tried again, this time strangled with rage. He raised a hand to press over his heart, as if it could cauterize the pressure flooding from within, and wasn't even aware of what he'd done until Sylar's deep, endlessly dark eyes clocked the movement.
Something happened to the killer, then. He snapped back to his senses, hauled himself together like gathering all his loose strings, and turned his back on Peter without a word.
( )
"Wait – where are you going?"
Sylar didn't need to look to know the other guy was following him. He grit his teeth, so numb he barely felt the ache of his wounded body anymore. "Anywhere. Away. I don't care."
"You can't just leave! Look around us, you're part of this!"
Sylar span around, wrenching free from the other man's hand on his arm. "I'm not the saviour kind, Peter, you should know that better than anyone." He spoke darkly, through dangerously thin lips, but he couldn't even meet the other man's gaze long enough to look threatening.
Even so small an exertion took its toll on his waning strength, and Sylar wavered for a moment, heaving for breath. Looking anywhere but at Peter fucking Petrelli, his eyes fell upon another discarded canvas lying next to their feet. Two men silhouetted against an open window, cradled in each other's embrace, heart against heart, lips against lips, all walls and boundaries fallen away like the rain-drenched clothes being stripped from their skin.
The sight shot through Sylar's veins like rot on the vine. A snarl ripped from his throat. "Whatever the hell thisis is not my past, and it'll never be my future."
Peter followed his eyeline. Sylar saw his trembling hands ball into fists in the outskirts of his vision before Peter stood in front of the painting, pointedly obscuring it from view. "You think I like this? You think I wanna waste another second of my life on you?! But something awful happened, to both of us, and no one else is gonna help us! All this? It means something. And running away isn't gonna change that."
Sylar tried to laugh cruelly, but it locked in his throat when he forced himself to look at the other man's face. Of course Petrelli would fight to the death for his deluded mission. And here he was as usual being so stubborn and entitled and disgustingly passionate, how like a hero, how like a naïve, trusting idiot, and how, in any world or timeline,could they ever have gotten intimate enough to...?
Sylar had been right, before. It was better never to know. Better to leave the past dead and buried than see echoes of a life that could never have possibly been his.
His disobedient eyes fell to Peter's parted, red lips of their own accord. He couldn't breathe. Then turned his back again. "It means nothing."
"Hey!" Rather than attempt to drag him back this time, the furious empath appeared directly in Sylar's path, blocking his way to the exit. He scowled at Sylar like he was crazy. Maybe he was. Maybe they both were. "I set you free – the least you can do is live up to your end of the deal! You promised you were gonna help me!"
Sylar stepped close enough to sneer down at Peter's exasperation, fighting the impulse to put himself anywhere other than in this man's space. "You think I owe you, Peter?" Peter just seethed, a silent confirmation. "Am I supposed to help you simply out of the goodness of my heart? Did you expect me to run off and save the world with you? Serve your every, darkest desire just 'cause you were selfish enough to set a killer on the loose to suit your own agenda?" A flash of something resembling worry crossed Peter's furrowed brow. And Sylar was only too aware of being so close to him, too close, close enough to feel his warm breath and smell the familiar, rousing scent of his hair. "Even in this state, I'd rather take my chances out there."
( )
Peter didn't care that he was currently trapped beneath a towering, bruised, matted and terrifying looking serial killer. Or that Sylar was wounded and had just gone through the type of ordeal that would justify anyone some crankiness. It was either superhuman power or pure rage that stirred just below the surface of Peter's skin like static, raising the hairs on his arms.
The killer sneered down at him, the very same expression that still swarmed through the darkness at night to keep Peter from slipping into peaceful dreams. Peter couldn't believe he'd actually felt bad for the guy. What an idiot he was, to have really stayed behind in enemy territory out of an undeserved sense of empathy that was never going to make an impact. He shouldn't have fucking bothered and saved himself the trouble. He should have left the killer shackled in his cell. Then he'd never have had to escape on foot, he'd never have found this hidden trove of prophecies, and he'd never have known the precious yearning in his chest had really been anchored in his enemy all along.
And the worst part? A piece of him had actually thought that Sylar seeing these paintings might have somehow made a difference.
"By all means, Peter, do everyone a favour, stay here and get yourself killed." Sylar stepped widely around him toward the door of the container, casting parting words over his shoulder like knives. "And when you see Nathan, give him my regards."
Fury throttling his vocal chords, Peter could do nothing while he watched Sylar leave through a shimmering haze of red. The guy cleaved his way through scattered canvases the same way he'd repeatedly cleaved his way through Peter's heart; stomping on bonds, kicking families apart, imprinting footprints like bruises that were never going to fade. And he'd probably never once felt sorry for it at all.
"You son of a bitch." Peter growled.
He couldn't feel, couldn't see, he just entrusted himself to the hands of his anger, arming him like weapons he'd die weilding to protect the memory of his loved ones.
"You son of a bitch." He growled again, wrenching the killer back from the door with a strength that wasn't entirely human, unaware of anything and everything except the all-consuming, corrupting intention to hurt.
It wasn't until Sylar fell heavily to the ground, his legs giving way beneath him, that the fog began to clear. Peter saw he hadn't even moved from the spot. And exactly what he'd just done.
Telekinesis buzzing in his fingertips, he stood, horrified, over the very mortal form of his enemy, watching blood splutter from an open gash sliced cleanly across the man's throat.
( )( )( )
Tracy hurried along more iron corridors, fighting the urge to cut free the extra weight slowing her down. Hiro Nakamura may not have been the biggest of men, but that didn't mean he wasn't deceptively heavy. Especially when he was drugged up, tripping over his own feet, and determined to point and gasp at every identical corridor they passed.
"The Divine Labyrnth, just like in Deep Space Nine..."
"Snap out of it," Tracy ordered, shaking him a little. "We don't have long, we'll be lucky if they're not watching us already." She said, more to herself than the doped up baby babbling to himself at her side. Another security camera passed overhead, too high to infect with an ice-laden finger. Envying Peter Petrelli's trick of neutralising them with a zap of electricity, she just hoisted Hiro up a little more and ran deeper into the labrynth, eyes scanning every door code as she went.
"An honorary rite of passage for the dead Cardassian people..." Hiro continued.
Tracy's retort died on her tongue when an identification code finally swam into view on a container up ahead. She took a moment to confirm it as Micah's this time (the last thing she needed was to leave this place laden down with armfuls of high evos), before propping Hiro Nakamura up nearby and unlocking the door with her keycard.
And this time, when she set eyes on the bound, unconscious captive inside, the rest of her frustration ebbed away.
Only vaguely aware of Hiro staggering along at her heels, Tracy approached the chrome bench tentatively.
Micah had grown so much since she'd last seen him up close. His limbs a little longer, a little thinner than before. She wondered if that was due to his being held here for so long, or if it was the natural slight gangliness of transitioning into a teenager. He was still so young. And here he was imprisoned like nothing more than a slab of meat. It was all Tracy's fault, for letting him be captured at all and letting him waste away in here ever since.
Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Tracy made quick work of removing the tube from the boy's nose and freeing the straps keeping him down. Within seconds Micah's eyelids began to twitch, and Tracy allowed herself to run a hand through his overgrown curls while gently rousing him awake. "Micah? Can you hear me? Open your eyes for me."
The boy groaned, squirming as he pried open one eye just enough to glance blearily up at her. At first he looked confused. Then a besotted, relieved smile lit up his entire face. "Mom?"
Tracy's ribcage compressed painfully. That lump in her throat made it impossible to get another word out. But then Micah's forehead furrowed a little, and he blinked his way closer to reality.
"Tracy...?" It definitely wasn't as besotted, and it wasn't as unblemished, but the bright, relieved smile remained on his face, meant solely for her this time. "You came for me."
Tracy's ribcage tightened even further than before. Nodding curtly, she helped the young technopath sit up on the bench, holding him steady while he got his bearings. His little hands clung to her arms, and his dark mop of curls swung as he took in the state of his cell, and only now did it occur to Tracy that she'd been so intent on finding Micah and freeing him from his sentence that she hadn't once thought about what would happen after. When she... well, when she actually found him. She'd never been any good with kids. But it wasn't that, this time, that made it difficult to meet the pride and adoration that shone from those eyes.
"I knew you were a hero!" Micah grinned, dropping unsteadily from the bench and toppling into Tracy in a tight, unexpected hug that instantly sent tears stinging at her eyes. "I knewit! I knew it!"
Tracy's awkwardness faded fast, and she hugged the boy in return, stroking the back of his head. Forget life as a fugitive evo, or even the struggles bound to come with having no income. Tracy was pretty sure that this here, alone, was worth the full might of Renautas, Erica Kravid and Noah Bennet's wrath at once.
"Awww, I join too!" Grinning brightly, Hiro staggered forward with both arms held out for a hug. Then he fell flat on his face.
Having completely forgotten about Hiro, Tracy and Micah worked together to help him back onto his feet. Then, standing with an arm looped protectively around Micah's skinny shoulders, Tracy addressed the time traveller, applauding herself on her earlier foresight. "Can you teleport outta here?"
Still slightly cross-eyed, Hiro nodded with a bright smile. "OK."
And then he popped away into thin air.
"No!" Tracy gasped into the empty, ringing silence. Fuck. Suddenly Renautas' hangar seemed a million miles long, and Tracy was extremely aware that she was trapped in the centre of the labyrinth with a weakened, young fugitive cradled to her side. And that their clean ticket to freedom had just thrown them to the wolves.
She met Micah's imploring eyes. He raised an eyebrow. "Was that supposed to happen?"
( )( )( )
Sylar.
It only took a second, unless time had stopped around Peter, for horror and regret to rush in on him like a battering ram. He stared, cold all over, as his enemy's chest twitched with rapid, tiny breaths, and a dark pool of blood seeped along the ground beneath him.
"S-Sylar?" Peter whispered, all rage and breath stolen from his lungs now. Sylar didn't reply. Short, gargled gasps and weak moans of pain were the only things that proved he was even still alive.
It was only when a single drop of blood spilled over the man's lips, livid against the deathly pale palor of his skin, that Peter came back to himself with a jolt similar to that of Elle Bishop's electrokinesis.
"No!" He gasped, and the next thing he knew he was on his knees in the spreading, hot blood next to Sylar's powerless form. He wasn't healing. "No, no, no, no!" Hands shaking, Peter reached to apply pressure to the welling red gash marking the killer's throat, raw and violent like a collar, like ownership. It was too deep, and he was too late, and all the medical training in the world couldn't help him now as Sylar's pulse beat wet and slippery against his palm.
Kneeling uselessly over his victim, Peter couldn't look away from the sight of the once mighty super-being now rendered pitifully human, vulnerable and helpless in a way he had never once imaged Sylar could be. It was grotesque. It was shameful, in that Peter wanted to turn his face away and apologise for intruding upon such a private moment, but he couldn't. And as concern threatened to drown him, he had the strangest feeling he'd had these thoughts before.
Sylar's eyes were losing focus. Watching Peter. Blaming him. And the worst part was that he didn't even look angry. As if it were always meant to come to this, but he'd hoped to outrun it a little while longer. Because they were bound together by something more than fate, since before the first time they'd died together. They were always going to be each other's end, but not like this. It was wrong. It was too soon. And Peter wished the same thought hadn't hidden in the back of his own mind, too, as the other man's eyelids weakly fluttered closed.
"Don't!" He cried, his voice as wrecked as the rest of him. He applied more pressure on the wound, scared of choking the guy to death before he could even bleed out. "Don't you dare, Sylar, we're not done yet! Come on!"
He could call for help – but even if they got here in time Renuatas agents were as likely to kill or capture them both as save Sylar. He could teleport somewhere for help – but abilities weren't working on Sylar and the thought of leaving him here alone was worse than never leaving at all. And then there was the third option, lapping relentlessly at the corners of Peter's mind, the one he was failing to hold at bay like the rising tide.
He could let him die.
It would be so easy. Hundreds of victims would finally be brought to justice in their killer's final punishment. Peter was already too familiar with the fantasy of forcing this murderer through the very same fear and pain that he had brutally forced upon so many others. Upon Nathan.
For the briefest moment, the world lurched. And then he was looking down not upon his dying enemy, but on the slackening face of his brother. Peter screwed his eyes shut, opening them once again upon Sylar, but that meant Peter was the villain this time. And seeing rage stain his trembling hands in stark reality didn't feel anything near as vindicating as the thought had used to in his dreams.
"Come on, Sylar, heal, I know you can! Help me out, here! Please!"
Peter didn't care that his voice was breaking, or that he would be humiliated to have acted this way in front of someone who would only remember and recite it as a means of dominance as soon as he got the chance.
And he didn't even care that he was trying to save a serial killer who he more than despised – for he would not be responsible for cold blooded murder, and end up just the same as this ruthless son of a bitch, himself.
And he wouldn't let Sylar haunt him forever, even more than he already had. He wouldn't give him the satisfaction of wrecking Peter entirely for his one final act, and then living with him always, infiltrating every moment of the rest of his life.
But mostly... Peter just didn't want him to die.
Cursing aloud, he scrambled to telekinetically slice a cut into his own forearm without letting up pressure on Sylar's wound. It was a desperate attempt, with no regard to his medical training or the complete lack of procedure, just because he didn't know what else to do. Far too much blood already stained the ground, creeping across the edges of painted prophecies, marking them. Sylar had stopped moving now, his gargled breathing either ceased or so faint that it no longer whispered throughout the container. Peter couldn't feel the wet heat of the man's pulse pouring free from his veins anymore.
With blood-soaked, shaking hands, the empath braced himself to attempt the clumsy transfusion. But when he lifted his palm from Sylar's throat... there was no wound.
Before relief, much sweeter than it probably should have tasted, could fully kick in, Peter yelped as an invisible boot kicked him in the stomach. He was sent sprawling across the floor of the shipping container, dazed and utterly winded.
As he struggled to orient himself among piles of littered canvases, a tall shape swam into focus high above. Sylar towered over him in all his bloody, disheveled, furious glory, vivid red drenching his torso, messy hair half obscuring his shadowed face.
And Peter feared he'd just made one hell of a mistake in trying to save him.
( )
"You righteous, self-serving son of a bitch, Petrelli."
"N-no. I didn't... was an accident -"
"You think this gets you off the hook? You think you're not a murderer, that you're not just as bad as I am because, like everything else in your gilded life, you were fortunate enough only to slaughter someone who could survive it?"
Sylar heard the danger vibrating in his voice, tasted the blood lingering in his mouth, and he felt his body regenerating back to full health, giving form to his wasted muscles and blushing colour back into his skin. He felt steady. He felt strong. Having just bled out any remnants of drugs in his system, he luxuriated in the sensation of his abilities returning to him one by one, like raindrops rolling down a car window. He stretched, once again whole, his head crystal clear for the first time in as along as he could recall. And now that he was thinking straight he knew he didn't have to stay here any longer, and he didn't have to put up with Peter Petrelli for one more goddamned minute.
But Sylar would be damned if he'd just walk out after that calibre of performance. So much for selflessly doing their best for humanity, side by side...
Petrelli's eyes flew wide in the white-blue electric light that crackled ferociously around Sylar's hand, stretching warped shadows up the walls like the bars of a cage. Peter only scrambled backwards on the ground, seemingly forgetting about his own array of abilities. Sylar allowed himself a moment to take in the sight. Peter Petrelli, dripping with Sylar's blood, shrouded on all sides by paintings upon paintings of the two of them together, united, intimate in ways Sylar couldn't begin to fathom, saving the world over and over like a couple of brave little heroes. He'd known all along that it couldn't be true.
A ripple of something other than anger ran through him, then. All the way to the power sparking dangerously in his palm.
"Sylar – don't -"
He tore his gaze away from canvas, meeting the fear shining clearly upon Petrelli's face. Sylar recalled that same expression fading in and out of sight above his own just moments ago, fighting to save his life. No – fighting to save his own hide from living with the responsibility of murder!
Sylar tilted his head slightly, baring just the sharp tips of his teeth. "You were right, Peter," he said quietly. "We're not done here."
( )( )( )
Micah ran on trust alone, through seemingly endless, clinical rows of cages like his own had been. Tracy's hand was ice cold and sturdy in his, a point of focus, of radiating confidence that gave strength to his clumsy feet as the sedation slowly fazed out of his system.
He had no idea where he was or how he'd come to be here, but none of that even mattered. It was difficult to focus on anything other than the humbling fact that after months of being the unseen savior pulling the strings on everyone else's rescues, someone had finally rescued him.
"Stay close to me, Micah, we're almost there."
Micah nodded, although Tracy was too busy scoping out the path ahead. He followed blindly, feeling tiny in this monstrous iron cavern, and he quietly obliged when Tracy hid them from more troops of guards hurrying past in their direction, the fourth time since venturing from his cell.
It was only when a cool gust of air brushed his cheeks, the nectar of fresh air and freedom nearby, that Micah heard the screaming.
"Wait! Stop!" He tugged on Tracy's hand, listening. Reverberating screams echoed hauntingly through miles of metal containers, so raw it was as if such sounds had been physically ripped from the poor man's throat by force.
"There's nothing we can do, Micah. My priority is getting you away from here."
"No! Stop! Someone's really hurt – we have to help them!"
"I'm sorry." Tracy only resisted, dragging Micah onward toward the taste of freedom ahead. But the boy wrestled with her icy grip, tugging free with the slight crack of breaking ice.
"We can't just leave them! Heroes don't run away, they don't save themselves when other people are in need!" He stood his ground in the big empty corridor, balling his fists as if that would stop them from shaking. He wasn't even sure if that was due to the aftereffects of the drugs or not.
Tracy looked down at him with a frustrated sigh, visibly struggling with her better judgement. It reminded Micah painfully of the look his mother would wear when trying to decide whether to laugh at or scold him for leaving his dirty socks littered through the house like breadcrumbs. Then another of those tortured screams echoed from deep within the well of the hangar, casting him back to the present. Micah shivered. Tracy closed her eyes against the sound.
With another sigh, the woman reached for Micah's arms and bent to bring her face level with his. "Get outside and hide. Wait for me. Trust no one else, you understand?"
Having braced himself for another excuse, Micah could only stare at her in awe.
"Micah, do you understand?!" He nodded in confirmation. "I'll come back for you." Tracy promised. And before she could straighten up Micah bowled into her in another bone-breaking hug.
The pair rocked on the spot for a timeless moment. "Thank you." Micah whispered.
When Tracy pulled free she lingered just long enough to brush his cheek with her fingers. Then she was pushing him on his journey and running back the way they'd come, guided by the agonized yowls from within. Micah waited just long enough to see his pseudo-aunt disappear around the corner with a swish of blonde hair and a click of her stilettos, then pelted toward the exit as fast as the pins and needles shooting through his legs would allow.
He encountered no resistance along the final stretch. All the guards had ventured deeper into the hangar already and he passed no more security doors – although this particular evo didn't need a flimsy old keycard to unlock any barricade anyway. He made it to the gaping hangar entrance entirely without incident, but Micah was too experienced with Companies and, in particular, Renautas' surveillance methods, to simply take this as a good sign.
Spotting a flashing security panel on the wall, he doubled back to slam his hand against it and close his eyes in concentration. It took longer than usual, through the receding haze of drugs in his system, to ease a tendril of his ability free to grab onto, but he managed it. At least enough to slip into the data stream and slowly interpret the code that came rushing up to meet him.
No wonder the guards had abandoned their posts here. Aside from the screams, a silent alarm had been triggered somewhere deep within the system – a high risk prisoner had been reported as missing from their cell – but it wasn't Micah. And it wasn't Hiro Nakamura, either.
Micah concentrated, thumbing along all the activated cell codes with a weight in his gut, and it steadily became clear that there had to be at least dozens more prisoners logged and stored for transport within this building, too. Suddenly furious, without even second-guessing himself, Micah overrode the mechanical locks on every last container door. With a grunt he managed to reach far enough in to shut down the power supplying the drugs into the veins of each registered evo prisoner.
And then he ran free from the hangar into the crisp, soothing darkness of outdoors, searching for a place to hide.
( )( )( )
Darkness had fallen so sneakily that Erica Kravid hadn't even noticed she was sitting in her pitch black living room, illuminated only by the glow of her tablet screen, until the strain on her eyes became too much to ignore. Setting down her influx of never-ending emails, she took a rare moment to stretch her neck and rest her pounding head.
It wasn't a reprieve. Not when the loss of a months long investment had refused to leave her all day, as if the illusive Gabriel Gray, himself, were repeatedly snarling the world 'failure' in her ear. Renautas had surely suffered a blow to its ranks, today – never mind the fight to preserve the future of mankind after the world burned. Mr Gray's abilities would surely have gained them unprecedented progress, had he only cooperated. What a fucking waste. And then there was Noah Bennet to consider. Erica toyed with the thought of firing him simply to avoid seeing his righteous, told-you-so expression mocking her from behind those famous horn-rimmed glasses of his.
Honestly, she didn't even know how late she'd stayed on the clock, tonight. Of course work never stopped when you were the head of a global superhuman corporation. It had been part of the appeal of the job in the first place. Erica had long adapted to run efficiently without sleep, dedicated as she was to the helpless, needy newborn of her company that couldn't seem to survive an hour without her. But some days, like today, only served to remind her she'd never been a particularly maternal woman.
Nursing a gnawing headache, Erica was just weighing the pros and cons of adding a generous glass of wine to her symptoms when the shrill peal of her tablet ringtone pierced her skull. She stretched and turned on a nearby lamp, bathing the monochrome, minimalist room in filtered blue light. Then answered the call with as professional a manner as she could muster.
"You know not to bother me when I'm working, honey." Erica said sternly, narrowly resisting rubbing a hand over her face. It couldn't be that late, then, if Taylor was still at her desk and not out on the town until god knows when? Unless the universe had finally decided to develop a sense of humour after all, just to spite her.
"Trust me, Mom. You don't want to miss this."
Erica sighed. On second thought? Fuck it. She pried herself from the couch and ventured to the kitchen in search of some wine after all, while Taylor forwarded a series of livestreams to her tablet. Erica only managed to consume one silky smooth sip before her throat closed up.
She stared at Taylor's intercutting security footage, in danger of shattering her wine glass in one hand while breaking her tablet in half with the other, as months upon months of dedicated work unravelled right before her tired eyes.
She saw the outpost hangar in full revolt; empty holding cells, unlocked doors, priceless, drowsy cargo parading to freedom all at once while dozens of M.F. Harrises failed to round them up. Then a car-shaped sculpture of ice half-hidden on the outskirts of the parking lot; Noah Bennet's registration plate just legible and a smudged shadow moving within. And then the interior of one particular shipping container; the crates within ripped to pieces like confetti, two recognisable men together at its core while pained cries of their reunion echoed throughout Erica's kitchen.
The headache now the least of her problems, Erica downed a much larger gulp of wine. "Taylor." By some miracle, she managed to sound something resembling calm. "Get me a car."
( )( )( )
Peter screamed. He writhed on the floor. Curled in on himself and shivered, shuddered, as electricity ripped ruthlessly through his nervous system. His voice rebounded off the metal walls of the cell, his veins stood out livid against his skin, and Sylar waited until he began to smell smoke before letting up the current of his ability.
Peter gasped, slumping in a heap. Dropping to a knee beside him in the pool of his own drying blood, Sylar watched the guy heave for breath, the twitching of his limbs subsiding, the lifted hairs on his arms settling as his superhuman body worked to save him. Sylar rolled him onto his back, ignoring the static shock that jumped from Peter's heated skin, and waited until the empath hazily located him through sweaty strands of hair fallen over his face.
"What's the matter, Peter? No fun in fighting back unless your opponent is unarmed?"
Peter's attempted retort dissolved into another yell as Sylar struck him with a fresh bout of electrokinesis. He arched off the ground for long, pained seconds before Sylar carelessly let him fall.
"Please, we both know you would have left me to bleed out if you had what it takes, but you don't. After all, you're a hero." He hissed, extremely aware of the cluttered canvases blocking him in on all sides. He refused to look at so much as one more image of himself saving the day with Peter, or cherished in one another's space, yet still they seemed to multiply in his peripheral vision and creep closer and closer by the second.
Sylar had never felt so exposed. Not even when strung up and hooked into tubes to survive, stripped of his powers, memories, and dignity. Prophecies he didn't want to see, a past he couldn't make himself believe, had been captured and exposed and put up on display by all the greedy eyes of his enemies. He felt naked despite the pitiful paper garments that now clung stickily to his chest, drenched in his own blood: a gift from the savior Sylar was supposed to believe had ever accepted him once upon a lifetime.
He shuddered. Unlike the swaggering confidence of many of his other deaths, he hadn't known what would happen to him this time, without abilities. The crumbling precipice of the end had come far too close, close enough to still cling to him like dirt embedded in his skin.
He let Peter regenerate once more, haul himself back from that very same edge with the practice that only came from experience. Then Sylar leaned in close. "We both know you can't let yourself kill me, Peter. But that pains you, doesn't it? Because you want to." Catching his breath, healing, Peter just looked up at him with rage swirling in those large, hazel eyes. It only stoked the coals smouldering deeply in Sylar's chest. "You can't lie to me." He snarled. "It'd be easier to kill me than live with the thought you ever could have chosen me over the memory of your beloved brother, right? Get rid of me now, a lost cause, before you're landed with the monster thatno one wants on their conscience?"
Peter tried to form words, and Sylar hated that he let him. The empath's lips worked twice before his voice finally made it out, rough despite the fact his strained vocal chords must have healed already. "No."
The word jolted Sylar head to toe, but not due to the tingling of a lie that thrummed through his senses. Due to the blatant absence of one.
For a moment he was entirely at a loss. Then Sylar grit his teeth as fresh sparks crackled from his fingertips in promise of hurting the younger man again, just for the sake of it, because he had to, because imparting pain was easier than accepting the truth and Peter was lying, somehow he'd managed to trick Sylar's ability, and that just wouldn't do –
But this time Peter was ready for him. This time, before the white blue arcs could scorch into his skin, Peter closed his eyes tight and disappeared.
What the hell...? Sylar blinked at his surroundings, but nothing moved among piles of prophecies that suddenly felt too heavy to be faced with alone. Peter Petrelli had never ran from any of their fights before. That wasn't who he was, that wasn't how he ticked, and the mere idea that he would ever flee rather than bounce back a million and one times before still not taking the hint was, frankly, absurd.
"We've already danced this dance, Peter."
Slowly, Sylar rose to his feet. Playing along, he let the thrill of the chase infect his veins as he tugged on the strings of telekinesis. He watched blood-soaked canvases rise from the ground one by one, levitating in mid-air around him, swirling like a tornado captured in slow-motion with Sylar at the eye of the storm.
"What is this? Second time's the charm?"
Senses honed like the hunter he used to be, he looked for any twitch, listened for the slightest breath that didn't come from his own lips. For the first time, the grounding thrum of a commotion leaked in from beyond this cell, a stampede of panicked prisoners and angry guards racing through Renautas' aircraft hangar, unnoticed until now. But Sylar didn't care what was going on out there. It couldn't reach them here.
"Got any nailguns lying around while you're at it?" He added scathingly to the empty cage. Countless tender depictions of himself and Peter pressed in upon him from all sides, a taunt, a nightmare in its own right as he scoured every brave deed, every touch memorialised on canvas, every kiss, for a person-shaped disruption in his meticulous orchestration. One nudge of a painting... one footstep in the dark pool of blood...
"Not this time."
Sylar span at the voice behind him, only to be blinded by an invisible crack across his jaw that sent him reeling in pain.
( )
Shedding the veil of invisibility, Peter felt a ripple caress his still burning skin as telekenesis burst forth from his core with the force and sound of an explosion. It hit Sylar like a wave, sending him crashing through the corrugated wall of the container and sprawling onto the floor of the neighbouring one. The hovering paintings clattered away in all directions, some following Sylar and raining down upon him and an empty chrome bench standing in waiting for more prisoners.
Heaving for breath, Peter drew close while Sylar staggered upright, deflecting another feeble bolt of electricity with a counter-strike of his own. He crossed the threshold of the expanded alcove of their arena, anger and sapphire flames pooling like gasoline in his palms. Sylar watched his every move. No longer was he wearing his structured mask of arrogance, as though it, too, had been knocked askew along with his balance. And for the first time all night... Peter glimpsed the true face lying beneath.
Then he couldn't take another step.
Eyeing the fire licking over Peter's hands, Sylar laughed hollowly and held his arms out wide at both sides. He grinned, an invitation. "I'm all yours."
It was supposed to look arrogant, but it didn't. It was supposed to be dangerous, but it wasn't. It was a dare, because Sylar knew that Peter couldn't take him down, but he wanted him to try anyway.
The intricate trap was poised right in front of Peter, ready to catch him, unmissable now he was finally seeing clearly. And if he made one more move he would fall, like he always did, for the same old trick and start the same old cycle over again. He would launch at his opponent, who would be waiting for him, and they would tear this entire aircraft hangar to shreds in their wake, fighting and dodging and countering each blow with so many abilities they'd light up the sky like fireworks, deadly and devastating and tangled in the web of each other. He could see it already. He could feel it.
So, with great difficulty, Peter forced away the fire in his palms.
Sylar's grin faltered. "Fight me." He commanded, taking a step closer. But Peter wouldn't. Not this time.
Blood rushing in his ears, he looked down upon one of the paintings he had just blasted through the hole in the wall after Sylar. It was broken from the journey and stained red with drying blood, yet Peter could still read it. He saw himself and Sylar, covered in mud, surrounded by flashing ambulance lights and dozens of emergency stretchers. They were hugging so tight it was as if their lives depended on it.
Peter felt weak at the sight. It was achingly intimate. It was genuine. It was the type of connection he'd longed for all his life but only ever managed to find in his dreams. It captured the feeling he'd been chasing all these weeks, the Sylar-shaped void that had been ripped from his chest and left him half a person, incomplete without knowing why. The void was still tender around the edges. Peter was still suffering the burn.
And now he realised, with that one glimpse behind Sylar's inflated, forced bravado, that the other man felt it too.
The killer inched even closer, his voice echoing feebly around metal walls. It didn't frighten Peter as it used to. It wasn't that man's anger he was scared of, anymore. "Fight me, Petrelli!" Getting desperate, Sylar shot another bolt of electricity at the empath, a hand raised before him like a weapon. Peter winced through the ripping pain and the healing of the burn, but resisted the urge to retaliate.
Because how could they possibly devolve into another fight before the dozens of painted eyes of those two men, their better selves, the ones who had somehow formed beauty from hate and would be ashamed of them if they knew? Because they were proof that every cutting word, every injury and return from death hadn't been inevitable after all. They didn't need to have fought all this time. Maybe if they'd only tried harder dozens of people wouldn't have died. Maybe Nathan wouldn't have died. Because now Peter could see, laid out indisputably in all the colours of the rainbow, that kindness could work between them. And that Sylar was capable of love.
Drawing a deep, steadying breath, he simply shook his head. "No."
The concept didn't seem to translate. For Sylar looked utterly lost, very small suddenly, as if he'd never encountered such an issue as this before. As if he didn't know what to do or what came next, as if when the promise of pain was removed entirely he couldn't remember how to communicate without it.
He looked terrified. Furious. Forcing back curses or tears, forcing back everything at once. Peter watched the most complete display of emotion he'd ever seen flicker across that face, and he wished he couldn't feel his anger slipping away by the second, but he did. He saw Sylar's dark, confused eyes dart around the paintings surrounding their feet, properly lingering for more than a frantic heartbeat on each this time. Truly taking them in. Truly seeing them for the first time.
And when Sylar looked back at him, Peter forced himself to hold his gaze until he caught the shiver that rolled across the wild-eyed, bloodstained serial killer. Until Sylar slowly lowered his hand.
Then they didn't need to move. They didn't need to speak. Because the longer they just stood there, untethered together in unknown waters, forced together by the tide, the more they dismantled one another's walls brick by invisible brick. Peter couldn't remember when he'd last been this frightened but still he stood his ground, heart racing in his chest, as he let the other man see him, expose him layer by layer, as he tentatively explored Sylar in return.
And it didn't even feel like the first time. It was familiar. Which was the most terrifying part of it all.
Finally, Sylar parted his lips to speak gently, uncertainly. "Peter –"
But then a rusty, metallic groan pierced this fragile breath of time. The pair turned, caught off guard, to see the door of the container shudder open and reveal Tracy Strauss in the doorway, equally as surprised to see them as they were her.
"You?" She realised.
And before Peter could begin to wonder what the hell she was even doing here, a palpable heat rolled over him like a fire had roared to life nearby. He felt the fragile truce shattering around them like ice, Sylar's shields slammed closed again, shutting out the world, and Peter could only watch helplessly as danger glinted too darkly in his eyes.
"Sylar, no!" He cried, ready to jump in front of Tracy, but Sylar was faster than him.
All Peter knew was that a hook pulled behind his navel and his feet were no longer touching ground. That Tracy was thrown into the hard, metal wall opposite him. And that he was falling backwards, hauled weightlessly through nothing, until a splitting pain broke through the back of his skull.
Then darkness swallowed him whole.
A/N: Thank you so, so much if you're still with me and our boys after all this time! I'm so sorry for the OBSCENE delay in chapters, life has been insanely busy lately and making it very hard to find the time to write, annoyingly! The last thing I wanted to do was rush and update this chapter when it wasn't ready, and I just hope that all you superheroes who have come back to read my story think it was at least worth the wait X) Don't be shy to let me know, comments are always cherished.
I'm warning you now, next chapter will have a lot of angst, tears and feels, and nobody will be leaving that shipping container in the same state they got there...
I really don't think it'll take anything near as long for me to write the next chapter, so you should find out what happens next much sooner than last time. We're really coming close to the finale now, I'm estimating we might have only another two chapters left depending on if I get carried away word-count wise! If you've followed my story this far I honestly can't thank you enough for your support and patience, and I truly hope you'll come back to see how it's all going to end!
