Title: Common Ground
Characters: Peter Petrelli, Sylar
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Word count: 1,750
Setting: The Wall
Summary: Peter tries to find common ground between Sylar's past and Nathan's, but doesn't realize the real similarity is between Sylar and himself.

"Did Nathan ever kill anyone?"

Sylar put down his book and gave Peter a level stare, as though he'd asked a rude question.

"You have his memories," Peter pressed.

Sylar raised one solitary brow. "Which you have told me in no uncertain terms not to use."

Peter rolled his eyes. "Use them."

"That's very hypocritical of you."

"I want to know."

Nastily, Sylar said, "Is that all I am to you? A traveling repository for your brother's memories, for you to tap or stifle as suits your whim?"

Peter pursed his lips and drew his head back. "As a matter of fact," he said tightly, "I was asking because I thought it might help us talk about you and the people you have killed."

Sylar stared at him, eyes widening just a fraction. Peter didn't back down and he wasn't prone to lying. "I don't want to talk about that."

"Then tell me about Nathan." It was delivered as an order.

Sylar took a deep breath, hunching his shoulders slightly and looking around as though for a way out. "What difference does it make if he did or not?"

"I want to know."

Now it was Sylar who rolled his eyes. "You're not going to give this up, are you?" Peter just looked at him expectantly. Sylar went on, "What do you think? He's a man who seriously contemplated killing most of New York to further his political career, tried to establish a concentration camp to exterminate his own kind, and calmly stood over his father's corpse after, as far as he knew, you'd killed him. He served in the military in several armed conflicts. Do you seriously believe he got as far as he did in his career without having a few skeletons in the closet?" He snorted dismissively.

Peter considered for only a moment before asking, "None of that answers my question – did he kill anyone, himself?"

Sylar's eyes narrowed and he gave Peter a side-eye for long seconds. Finally, softly, he said, "No one who is willing to take life so cavalierly has any personal experience of doing it. If you're looking for a shared experience between your precious brother and I, look elsewhere. As a living man, he never knew he'd killed anyone."

Peter's brows drew together at the last. "You … what? As a living man?"

Sylar made a put-out sigh. "He killed a girlfriend when he was … a teenager or something. It was an accident – drunk, stupid, but not intentional. It's not one of his memories, though." Peter turned his head like a confused puppy, so Sylar had to elaborate even further, "His memories were wiped."

"Then how do you know?"

"In an act of stunning prescience, your mother fed me a special back when I worked briefly for the Company and thought I was her son. The ability let me read the history of objects, something that was invaluable much later, when I, again, had reason to believe I was her son. It's almost like she knew, even years before, what I was going to do … or more accurately, what she was going to do."

Peter studied Sylar for long moments, until Sylar tired of the scrutiny and picked his book back up. Before he could get started on the text, Peter said, "There is something you share with Nathan." Sylar looked up at him, but didn't ask. "Her."

"I don't want her as my mother," Sylar said with a faint snarl.

One corner of Peter's mouth turned up in an otherwise humorless smile. "We don't always get that choice."

Sylar snorted softly, looking back at his book. He obviously wasn't reading it though, as he asked, "And who have you killed, Peter Petrelli, with your own hands?"

"My father. My brother. You. The woman I loved more than any other." He had Sylar's attention now. Peter gave a brief tilt of his head. "Those are the ones on purpose, knowing what I was doing, with my own abilities or by instrument. Versions of me have killed nearly everyone in existence, so I get to live knowing that's not outside the realm of possibility either."

Reluctantly, Sylar admitted, "There are some … similarities between us, but we're not the same. As I said before, I don't want to talk about it."

Peter tipped his head in silent concession and picked up his sketchbook, leaving both men to their many thoughts.

"Tell me about a time when you killed someone."

At the question, Peter looked back at where Sylar was tagging along a pace behind and to the side of him. "What? When?"

"Any of them. Whichever you feel most … responsible for."

Peter turned away again, continuing their walk towards someplace to grab dinner. He shrugged his shoulders uncomfortably. After as long a pause as he could politely manage, he answered, "Caitlyn, then. I stranded her in the future."

Sylar scoffed. "Leaving someone behind isn't the same thing as killing them with your own hands."

Peter shot him a look that was murderous enough by itself. "It mattered," he said hotly, stopping and turning on Sylar. "How many of your kills involved strangling the life out of someone or beating them to death with your own fists, huh?" He glared, then added, "If that's what you want, then you, in that cell on Level 5. I broke your neck, hands-on."

Sylar's brows rose slightly. "Yes," he purred. "Now we're getting somewhere."

"Fuck you," Peter spat, turning on his heel and continuing on their way.

"Tell me more," Sylar said quietly several steps later. But it was loud enough to carry.

"You were there," Peter said over his shoulder.

"This isn't about me."

"No, this is about me asking you about Nathan earlier."

Sylar's shrug went unseen. "It was a good question. Which you're evading."

"No more than you were earlier."

"I answered it," Sylar said with an edge of irritation.

Peter gave a voluminous sigh. "Okay, okay. I get it. Fine. I had your ability. I-" He paused when Sylar picked up his pace rapidly to walk next to him, where he could watch Peter's face more carefully. Peter looked at him for a long moment, then seemed to recenter himself. His tone became more serious. "I showed up angry. You know that. I'd just … killed …" He looked away, but then back, "Nathan. In the future. Because of your ability." He stopped speaking, waiting for Sylar to say something, but Sylar was silent, absorbing this. "You said we were the same; we were brothers. I … didn't want to believe that." He quieted again.

Eventually, Sylar said, "You haven't gotten to the part where someone dies."

"I broke your neck. You died. There."

"How did you feel about that?"

"What?" Peter looked affronted at the question.

"Both before and after," Sylar probed, unfazed.

Peter rolled his eyes and shook his head, but answered anyway. "Before, I was angry. I wasn't thinking. I wasn't caring. I wanted you gone. I'd just killed Nathan because of you, so it didn't matter … I didn't care if I killed you, too." He frowned heavily. "After …" Peter watched his feet as they walked. "I still didn't care. No regret. No horror. Nothing. I turned on Ma. It seemed like her fault, too. I was going to get to the bottom of it, of all of it. Then you …" He shrugged one shoulder and glanced over at Sylar, who was still watching him with undisguised attention.

"Do you regret it now?"

"Yes. Sort of." Peter gave Sylar another glance. "I mean, it happened, but you're alive, so I don't know how to count that. Sort of like killing Nathan myself – I got to go back to a world where he was alive. I got to see him again, be with him, in a place where I'd never done that and never told anyone that I had, so I don't know how that works." He stopped in front of a likely restaurant. They'd been here before.

"Would you have regretted it if I never came back? If I hadn't regenerated and recovered?" When Peter gave him a speculative look, Sylar hammered home his point with, "Like most of my victims?"

Peter swallowed and looked inside the diner, away from Sylar. "Yes. You didn't …. That version of you that I killed – you," Peter turned back and nodded at Sylar, "this version of you – didn't deserve what I did. You hadn't done anything to me. Even the other one, Gabriel, didn't 'deserve' to die, but I guess someone could argue he started it, or should have done more to stop it, but his son had just died …" Peter pursed his lips and shook his head. "No, the only person at fault was me."

Softly, Sylar asked, "Is that what matters? Who shoulders the blame?"

"No." Peter answered that one immediately, straightening a little. "What matters is what impact it has on people. I killed you; I hurt you. If you'd stayed dead, that would have mattered not because I did it, but because you'd be gone. You didn't, so that's not an issue but …" Peter's brows pulled together. He stepped forward and put his hand out, palm downward over the center of Sylar's chest. "Even if there isn't any consequence in this world, like when I killed Nathan in that other place, it still hurts … the person who does it."

Sylar looked down at the hand, then up at Peter. He didn't move away. His face was carefully blank.

"That's why I asked," Peter said finally, after having stood there touching Sylar's chest for most of a minute. "That's why I asked about Nathan. Because maybe you could see how killing had affected someone else and then maybe it would," Peter dropped his hand away, "let us talk about how killing had affected you."

Sylar fingered his shirt where Peter had touched. "How it affected both of us."

Peter gave a single, slow nod in confirmation.

They stood in silence for long moments before Sylar spoke. "I need to think about it more."

"That's okay," Peter said with another nod, this time with a jerk of his head at the restaurant door. "Let's go eat."