A/N: As I suspected, this fic no longer really fits into the season 3 timeline as of episode 3.6. Hopefully the characterizations, at least, are still in tact. Feedback welcome and much appreciated! Also, I'm trying to remain spoiler-free, so please don't mention spoilers for upcoming episodes in any comments. Thanks. :)


Part II

"I would've looked the other way, you know," Angela says as two workmen down the hall heft a door off the linoleum, their boots crunching on the shards of glass littering the floor. "If you'd killed her."

Surveying the damage to his room, replaying the fight scene in his mind, Gabriel can't believe he didn't kill Elle. He'd flung her hard enough that her petite body slammed against the door and ripped it off its hinges before she struck the window of the vacant room across from his and fell, unconscious, in a shower of broken glass.

"I never meant to fight. She was using her power..."

He becomes breathless thinking about the current of electricity tearing through vein and marrow, igniting a level of sensation unlike anything his body has ever before experienced, arousing the very depths of the hunger within him.

"I told her to get out," he continues, to distract himself from walking the path to temptation, "but she refused. I had to get her out. I was so afraid I'd lose control and take her power..."

"Of course you didn't mean to hurt anyone," says Angela, more briskly than comforting, as Gabriel feels the situation merits. But she's getting used to being his mother again. "Elle's survived worse. A few bumps and bruises, that's all. She was conscious when they took her to the infirmary, if you were too distraught to notice."

"I noticed," Gabriel says, and lets out his breath as he did when Elle's blue-gray eyes blinked blearily open as she lay crumpled in the corridor. He imagines she'll be a little more worse for the wear than Angela thinks; she hadn't seen Elle go through the door, as he had -- though in fairness, Angela is the one who sees the future in her dreams. Somehow, Gabriel doubts she'd dreamed this.

A smile tugs at his mouth, and he looks down at his mother. "I wanted Elle's power. I wanted to kill her and take it, like I killed and took from all the rest. But I fought the urge. I didn't--"

"You should have."

Gabriel's smile falters, but he forces his lips to retain their upward curve. He can't have heard her correctly. "I should have what?"

"Killed her." Angela's tone implies an of course that says Gabriel is being obtuse. "Taken her power. Finished what you started the day you came here."

"Those were Elle's words," Gabriel says quietly, seeking his mother's eyes for reassurance, still not quite believing what his brain is telling his enhanced ears they're hearing. "She asked me to kill her."

Angela's sharp, monosyllabic laugh echoes in the sterile hallway. "That should have made it easier for you."

"You know Elle," Gabriel persists, telling himself there must be some joke he's not getting. "Why would she ask me to kill her?"

"Because Elle Bishop is deeply disturbed." The words fall like the shards of glass the custodian is dumping from dustpan to waste bin. "She's weak. All her life she struggled to integrate her abilities into her life. It destroyed her sanity."

"Then we should be helping her!"

Gabriel startles at the passion in his own voice. He's spoken so before -- to Mohinder, to the unsuspecting victims he stalked...to Maya -- but the words were lies, the decoy's of a hunter tracking prey. Doubtless anyone who heard him then would believe he's sincere now, that he genuinely relates to another human being's struggle with extraordinary abilities and wants to help, as he has since been helped.

But the woman who has been his chief help is looking at him tolerantly, speaking to him as if he's a child, rather than the way a mother talks to a grown son. "What do you think we've been doing all these years, Gabriel?"

"I don't know, Mother. Elle said you told her to leave here. That doesn't really sound like helping someone whose father was just murdered."

A dark eyebrow arches, and Garbiel burns with shame even before Angela says, "And you think you're the one to help her cope with that?"

For a moment the sounds of the workers are impossibly loud as Gabriel stands, head bowed.

And then Angela continues, in a business-like tone, as if she's said nothing untoward, "If you knew the terrible things Bob did to Elle, you'd be glad you killed him."

"Maybe that's why she struggles with her abilities."

"Other people have overcome much more devastating powers than Elle's," Angela says, appraising him. "Not all of us treated her like her father did. If we weren't enough to help her pull herself together, then she--"

"Should die?"

Angela sighs. "She's a liability to this company--"

"Aren't I?" Gabriel flings back at her, the old urge to split open her head and know what she knows rising with his temper. "I could kill you -- all of you. No one could stop me. But you've let me out of that cell on Level 5, given me a chance--"

"It's not that I hate her, it's that she knows too much."

Gabriel shakes his head, unwilling to believe that his birth mother, like his adoptive mother, could think so little of his desire to just be normal.

"Then lock her up. But don't ask me to kill her." A heartbeat, then, "Please."

The plea hangs overhead, as though suspended in the air by the tension between them. For a long time as Angela stares at him. Gradually, the hardened mask of her face crumbles into a compassion that compels Gabriel to bend and embrace her, resting his head on her shoulder, as he has inexplicably longed to do since she told him she is his mother.

"Oh, Gabriel," she croons, fingers stroking his hair. "I'm not asking you to do that. I'm sorry, I don't mean for you to feel like I'm training you to be my attack dog." He sighs as she goes on, "If you knew who we face, you'd understand my fears..."

Angela's body tenses, her arms holding Gabriel tighter against her, their roles as comforter and comforted seemingly reversed -- but only for a second. Her demeanor softens again, and she just grazes his forehead with her lips.

"I know in your heart you're a watchmaker. Your gift is meant to enable you to put things together, not take them apart."

Closing his eyes, Gabriel holds on to her words, the very words he begged Virginia to say to him; he embraces Angela, his real mother, tightly, as if letting go of her will take them away, prove the moment to be the imagination of a heart left too long to hunger. It passes soon enough as it is. Gabriel's mind, always keen for knowledge, takes a step backward in the conversation, fixating on the other words that fell among Angela's maternal affirmation.

"Mom?" Lifting his head, he peers deep into Angela's troubled eyes. "Who is it? If I knew what you know, maybe I could help--"

"No," says Angela with a faint smile and a far-away look on her face. "No, dear, for now you should concentrate on putting things together. The time for the other will come before we're ready."

Though skeptical, Gabriel nods. He glances down the hall where a workman is removing the damaged hinges from the door frame of his room.

"I think I'll start in the infirmary. With Elle."

He starts for the stairwell, but turns back when Angela calls his name.

"If...you aren't able to control it, you'll have another chance. I gave you up once, Gabriel, but I'll never give up on you."

The statement contains such a bizarre mixture of support and discouragement that Gabriel isn't sure what to feel or how to react. Did Angela mean what she'd just said about him being a watchmaker, not an attack dog? Does she believe he can really change? Is she trying to manipulate him into offing Elle? Or is the voice of her fears talking, warping a mother's sense of what is best for her son?

Giving her the benefit of the doubt, Gabriel finally says, hoarsely, "Then don't give up having a little faith in me."

Outside the hospital room where Elle was taken after the fight, Gabriel realizes he doesn't know what he's going to say to her. I'm sorry might be a start, but...Sorry for what? For breaking her ribs and giving her a concussion, as the nurse on duty informed him of Elle's status? Sorry for not helping her commit suicide? Nothing sounds right.

Ridiculously, he wishes he had flowers or a balloon or a get well teddy bear or something. People always bring flowers and gifts to hospitals. Granted, the Company hospital, lying a few floors above a high-security confinement block for dangerous criminals, isn't like most hospitals, and while equipped with more than most people would dream of, lacks a florist and gift shop. Anyway, Gabriel decides, it probably only makes an awkward situation more so to give flowers to someone who's only in the hospital because you put them there.

Reaching for the doorknob, he catches his reflection in the slat of glass in the door and notices he looks fresh from the fight. Although, of course, the minor injuries he sustained have healed, he wishes he'd stopped to change his rumpled shirt, comb his hair, shave...And then he chides himself for being a self-centered ass. This isn't about him; it's about Elle.

He draws a fortifying deep breath, opens the door, and strides through, still not knowing what the hell he's going to say. But before he can think about it, the sound of his own voice fills the tiny space, silent other than the beep of the machine monitoring Elle's vitals.

"You know, electrocuting me really isn't the best way to convince me you won't knock me out if I try to perform a lobotomy on you."

Momentary panic grips Gabriel at the thought of having been far too flippant with a girl who's not only been injured at his hands, but is suicidal, as well...But he relaxes when a chuckle rattles from Elle's throat.

Though the laughter quickly dissolves into a cough that doubles her over in the elevated hospital bed, it doesn't stop her from rasping, "That's because I was trying to convince you that you want my power," or from managing to look sexy to Gabriel as she says it. His eyes wander over the powder blue hospital gown tied loosely around her no doubt bandaged ribcage, slipping off one shoulder, and her disheveled blonde locks falling into her pain-brightened eyes. "Did it work?"

"No. I don't want your power." But other things of hers--He nips the lustful thought in the bud. This is not the time or place.

"Yeah, you do. You want everyone's powers."

"What is this?" Gabriel says lightly, even though it's true, the wanting, the hunger, hasn't stopped since he embarked upon this quest to reform, and now, apparently, it's combined with a different kind of hunger. "Are you trying to cultivate mind control?"

The coughing fit past, Elle sinks back against her pillows, exhausted, and gives her head a minute shake. "Just basic reverse psychology."

"I hate to break it to you," says Gabriel, stepping further into the room, stopping at the foot of the bed, "but that's not really working, either. Right now I only want to give power. If only I could teach you to access the part of the brain that controls cellular regeneration..."

Beneath her bangs, one of Elle's eyebrows quirks. "Okay, that's seriously got to be the geekiest thing a guy's ever said to me."

"Well..." Gabriel gives a lopsided grin, and, feeling self-conscious, rubs the back of his neck above his collar, his skin prickling hotly. "I am a watchmaker, after all. Typically thought of as a geeky occupation."

"I noticed the glasses on your desk. With the little magnifying lenses."

"Sexy, right?"

"Uh, no. Not the word I'd use." Abruptly, Elle's bantering mood, which, though so unexpected, had put Gabriel pleasantly at ease, vanishes. "Sit down, Sylar."

"Gabriel," he corrects her, even as he moves to lower himself into the uncomfortable chair beside the bed.

Elle rolls her eyes. "Whatever. Why are you doing this?"

"Why am I visiting you?" Gabriel asks, then says, quietly, "Or why am I not killing you?"

"Both."

"I'm visiting you because I want to help you." It sounds foolish to him even before Elle snorts. He did, after all, kill her father...

"The only way you can help me is by killing me."

"I'm not going to do that."

"Yeah. You said that already." Sighing, Elle seems very small and young, a lost little girl, against her pillows. "Why?"

It's a legitimate question, though one Gabriel is not at all sure how to answer. Contemplating his reply, his eye catches the cracked face of his wristwatch.

"Because I'm tired of being a broken timepiece," he says.

Elle stares at him. "I'm taking a crap load of pain medication here. Can you not be metaphorical?"

Undaunted by her cynicism, Gabriel sits forward in his chair and explains, "I became Sylar because I wanted to be someone special, someone of significance. I hungered for it. But the more I took from others and added to myself, the more I filled the hunger, the more ravenous I became, the more fragmented. Then I met my mother, my brother, and even though our relationship is far from perfect, the part of me that always wished for family like me is complete. I'm learning that my power doesn't have to have power over me, and what it really means to be significant."

He stops speaking with a feeling of elation, of being swept away by the truth and understanding that rushed from his lips like waters through an open floodgate. So much became clear as he spoke. In his solitary confinement, he'd had little to do but think, but until now hadn't realized how much he'd wanted to talk. He feels victorious at another facet of himself reclaimed; Sylar hoards knowledge, but Gabriel is keen to share. He recalls the thrill of tea with Chandra Suresh, of hours slipping by without their noticing as he told the scientist all he'd felt when reading his book on human evolution -- before the hunger consumed him.

In his enthusiasm, Gabriel sits at the edge of his chair, leaning forward, stretching out his hand toward the young woman in the hospital bed. His face is flushed.

"Don't you see, Elle? I have a chance to use my abilities to do some good in the world. I know I can never atone for all the terrible things I've done..." He falters, briefly, his mind filling in the blank: Like kill your father. "But Angela says something worse than any of that is coming, and now that I've got control, I can stop it."

"Oh, I get it." Elle's characteristically flippant tone has precisely the effect on Gabriel that a pin has on a balloon. "When you were the only supervillain running around, that fed your ego. Now there are a bunch of you on the loose--"

"I'm not talking about the escapees from Level 5--"

"--so you're going to be a superhero to get your ego stroked again." She lets out a short, mocking laugh, shaking her head. "You've got an ego problem, not a hunger. And let go of my hand, you freak!"

Gabriel is so astonished to feel Elle's small hand wriggle in his grasp that he can't even think about her words. When did he take her hand? he wonders, releasing it. Clearly some part of him wanted the contact, because his hand feels empty now.

"Sorry," he says, looking down as he clasps his fingers together in his lap. "Guess I got a little carried away."

"So much for control, huh?"

Gabriel looks up at her, his mouth open in a sharp retort that does when he sees laughter playing on Elle's lips, a teasing expression in her eyes. His shoulders roll forward, relaxing, as he studies the pretty blonde whose observations run so much deeper than the plastic Electroshock Barbie Angela makes her out to be. He wonders who's seen this side of Elle as much as he wonders whether she might have a point about him. He quakes inwardly that she might, and, catching himself reaching for her hand again, occupies his hands with pulling a loose thread from her woven blanket.

"What makes you think this is an ego trip?" he asks.

"You throw the word significance around a hell of a lot."

She does have a point. Damn. And yet simply knowing that someone has taken an interest in puzzling him out, for good or for bad, takes the edge off the idea that his motives may be self-serving.

"Doesn't everyone want to be significant? Don't you, Elle?"

Her eyes flash, briefly, then she turns her head away, her face looking pinched and pained. Knowing nothing of Elle apart from Angela's descriptors -- weak, unable to integrate her abilities, disturbed -- Gabriel regrets his question.

"I want to believe I'm doing this because there's goodness in me. My brother -- Peter -- traveled to a future where I can control my powers. That has to mean there's goodness in me. If it were ego, I'd surely fail. Wouldn't I?"

"I don't give a shit about your goodness, Sylar," Elle spits. "And if you're not going to kill me, you can leave."

"Elle, I--"

"Fuck. Off."

Gabriel stumbles off his chair and out of the room as if he's been blasted out by one of Elle's bolts of electricity. As he pulls the door shut, he catches a glimpse of Elle's profile, reddened, against the stark white of the bed linens. He thinks she might be crying, and the thought of having brought her to tears, no matter that he's not sure how, makes him ill.

One thing he is sure of is that he wasn't a hero today. Maybe Elle is right about him being an egomaniac. It certainly didn't take him long to forget that this discussion was supposed to be about her. As usual, he'd made it all about him.

Which was hardly living up to his name.

To be continued...


A/N: Thanks so much to all of you who read part one and encouraged me to continue. I'd love to know what you think of this chapter, as tensions build between Gabriel and the women in his life. As incentive, reviewers will get a visit (not necessarily in the hospital, unless you like that sort of thing ;)) from the Gabriel of your choice: romantic Gabriel, who shows up with a bouquet of flowers; watchmaker Gabriel, who parts his hair on the side and woos you with geeky talk; or Sylar, who only wants you for your brain.