Title: The Unmentioned
Characters: Sylar, Peter Petrelli
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Word count: 700
Setting: The Wall
Summary: Peter has begun beating on the wall in preference to talking or hanging out. Sylar is bored, so he decides to recount the acquisition of his various abilities. Peter thinks he's leaving out something important.

"I was terrified for the third one." Sylar sat on the loading dock, legs hanging over the edge as he idly watched Peter uselessly pound at the brick wall with a sledgehammer. "Well, terrified might not be the right word, but I was really nervous. Anxious is too mild. I was afraid I'd get caught, that it would go wrong, that the fact that I was doing this meant I was wrong, forever, and I was really fucked up by how okay that was with me. It felt like … like I was finally admitting to a truth I'd been denying for too long." He laced his arms through the metal pipe railing and leaned against it, listening to Peter's staccato hammer blows for a few moments.

"You see," Sylar went on, "the first time was all about need. I was overwhelmed, in a hurry, and I didn't know if I'd ever get the chance again. The second time … well, it's complicated, but basically it was greed. I wanted to show off and I wanted to do it a second time, with witnesses this time, and get away with it. Somehow I knew that would make the first time okay – for other people to know, and for it not to matter to them. Maybe it did – I don't know, but it made me sick. I hated myself after that. Really, truly hated myself. I never used his power. I didn't like it. It was a stupid ability. No finesse.

"Not that the third power was all that great either. It was the ability to control insects." Sylar waved a hand derisively. "Theoretically, it allowed me to summon or repel them, direct them to do my bidding, that kind of thing." He frowned. "It was nice not to have to worry about mosquitos anymore. I suppose I could have used it to attack people, but I preferred being more direct for that sort of thing. Or if I was going to be indirect, then I still wanted it to be in a way that showed I was in control, like I'd outsmarted them. I was superior. I knew that. I wanted them to know that. Having them bitten to death by a cloud of beetles lacked a certain … panache." He sighed, staring off into the distance as he contemplated his preferences in ending lives.

The lack of regular hammer strokes jerked him back to the moment. Peter was looking at him. "Do you realize," the empath began, "that you haven't told me anything about the people you took those powers from?" Sylar silently recounted what he'd said. Peter went on, "And this last one - not whether they were male or female, young or old, rich or poor, race, religion, what they were wearing, where it happened – not anything?"

"That's … not important?"

Peter snorted. "Maybe it was a guy, 23 or 22 years old, mixed race, longish brown hair with a scraggly beard, always eats TV dinners because he's the youngest of eleven kids of a black ex-marine widower and he never learned to cook for himself. He has the long hair because his dad was a freak about the opposite so now that's the guy's idea of personal freedom. He lives by himself in a tiny apartment because he dropped out of college and that's all he can afford, and he works a couple blocks away as a clerk in a convenience store."

Sylar blinked at him, wondering where such a bout of creativity had come from, then recalling Peter was the day-dreamer of the family.

"My point is, you mention nothing about who your victim was as a human being, Sylar! You murdered someone and all you tell me about them was the ability you got."

"Wait." Sylar glanced down, face loosening in wonder. "Matt Parkman said something like that to me. I told him the abilities had consumed me – they defined me. And he said … that we're people first."

"We're people first, second, and last, Sylar. With or without my ability, I can be a hero. And so can you." Peter turned back to the brick and resumed swinging. Sylar didn't argue. He had a lot to think about. He rested his chin on his folded hands where they were curled around the metal pipe railing and watched as Peter worked at his self-imposed Sisyphean task.