Your eyes are drawn of charcoal/
They're black, they're so cold, they're so imperfect/
Because they see a sleeping world/
Where waking isn't worth it/

Candice found Jonathan easily, at the bar where they'd agreed to meet on the corner of West 150th. She was mildly surprised to see him drinking, underage as he was—but after all, this was New York, and it wasn't like he looked seventeen, with his world-weary gray eyes and challenging forward-thrust shoulders. He didn't so much as glance at her as she sat down next to him, only threw back a shot of some amber liquid, lit through with the pulsing white beams of the strobe light behind them.

"Well, hello there, Mr. Sunshine," she said sardonically. "I can't imagine what adolescent sorrows you might have to drown, but you're doing a pretty good job of it there."

"Nice to see you, too," he replied, speech slurring only the tiniest bit—either he hadn't been drinking long, or he could really hold his liquor. "That dress looks terrible. Have you gained weight?"

She stiffened indignantly, but then forced herself to calm down when she saw him smiling. She wouldn't play to him by lashing out—oddly enough, that seemed to be what he wanted. She wondered why it was that he did that—would up everyone around him like puppet fists, spring-coiled to punch him, prodding them into taking it out on him. Then again, he was just a kid, mobster-protégée-child-prodigy or not, and sometimes she could still catch the realization of what they were doing in his eyes. Based on that guilt, she guessed his provoking was some odd kind of masochism, his struggling last better instincts trying to punish him for his actions. I deserve this, he seemed to be saying. Come on, give me your best shot—hit me, hate me, I'll take it. I deserve it.

He signaled to the barman as easily as if he'd done this all his life—and who knew, perhaps he had. "Another of whatever the hell I just drank, please," he ordered. The man slid a shot glass to him and he promptly tossed it back, slamming the glass down empty.

"Slow down there, kiddo," she said, alarmed. "I am so not carrying you back if you pass out."

"I'm going to Hell," he said broodingly, running a finger along the edge of his glass. "She said I wasn't, but I am." He laughed bitterly, a hollow, acid sound. "I sure fooled her."

"So that's what it is," Candice said triumphantly. "You've got some kind of sad crush on darling Claire. How completely, sickeningly adorable. What an amateur's mistake."

"Shut up," he said dully.

"You'd better let go of that one, little boy," she said gleefully. "Even if she wanted you, Peter wouldn't ever let you get near her. He'd rather die than let anyone hurt her. He's so stupid that way, he'll get himself killed sooner or later, mark my words. He probably won't even care, either, he'll be glad to take the bullet for whoever…" She broke off as she realized he was staring at her, looking as if he'd realized something and found it very interesting. "Damn," she said regretfully. "I've shown my cards, haven't I?"

"Amateur's mistake," he said humorlessly. "What a fine pair of villains we are."

"Give me one of those shots," she said grimly. "I think I need to be drunk now."

---

Gabriel was running out of options. He had some money—God knows where Sylar had gotten it, but he'd stopped asking questions. That wasn't the problem—it was one of the only things that wasn't, at this point. His most serious problem was, of course, Sylar—he'd made it very clear that he was still around, lurking just beneath the surface, watching for any weak point. He was a survivor, he was stronger than Gabriel, and he wanted out.

To make things even more difficult, he was a fugitive from justice, which was terrifying and horribly inconvenient. Gabriel had considered turning himself in to the police, but chances were they would just hand him over to Linderman again, and those memories, at least, were very clear. He didn't know what to do, except keep his head down and keep fighting. He hadn't even dared to try getting on a plane, though he did look quite different from the pictures being circulated, with his haircut and all. He'd had to take the train to get here—'here' being New York City—and it had been a long ride.

His pieces-and-bits memories had given him a name: Mohinder Suresh. He was a genetics professor, and he knew about them, the specials, and he could help. It was a long shot, but Gabriel had grabbed it and clung to it like driftwood in a fast-moving river. He didn't know what else to do.

But now he was here, and his patchy memory had failed him again—he had no idea where Professor Suresh might be, in this city of eight million. What could he do—ask Sylar? After hours of wandering the slick streets, he'd ended up here, a bar in the West End. He wasn't even sure why he'd come in; he wasn't much of a drinker, not even as Sylar. He'd simply felt drawn to the locally-owned little venue, and barring everything else he still had his instincts, so he'd chosen to trust them. He'd been sitting here for nearly an hour now, swirling an untouched glass of vodka in his hand, hiding in the corner away from all reflective surfaces.

He should have known by now that he couldn't hide—not from himself. Every time he lifted the glass, every time he looked at the glossy black table, Sylar was staring out at him, the reflection unnervingly refusing to mirror his actions. Now, as he saw himself echoed blurrily in the table surface, he had to make the struggle again, a short pitched battle for control. Sylar never stopped trying, never rested for a minute, so Gabriel couldn't either, and it was starting to eat at him from the inside out.

He'd had enough—he got up from the table and walked for the door, determined to do something more than sit around waiting for opportunity to fall on his head, determined to show Sylar that he wasn't the only half with initiative. In his near-desperation to get out of the bar, he nearly collided with a woman and a young man, and a distant recall told him that he'd met these people, recognized them. He didn't stop—he knew by now that anyone Sylar had associated with, anything he'd touched was bad news.

He ground to a halt in front of the doors, confronted by the inescapable reflection of Sylar, baring his teeth in caged starvation. Before he could help it he was sucked in, shoved under like a swimmer grabbed by a thrashing drowning person. He felt Sylar roar to life within him, blazing up like a fire at the slightest touch of oxygen, driving mercilessly against his paper-thin protections. He gasped at the attack, falling against the bar, fighting to keep control. People asked him if he was all right, bending solicitously over him, but he heard their voices as if from a long distance off, blurred by static, unimportant to his struggle. It was a losing battle—Sylar had had enough of being locked up. With one final push, he punched through Gabriel's willpower and snatched the reins away, shoving him back from control.

He tried his hands, with the careful testing movements of a puppeteer. They moved at his command, sweeping glasses off the bar to shatter into glittering knives, splashing their contents on the thirsty wooden floor. He looked into their fragments, dazzling under the strobe light like cut diamonds, and saw Gabriel in their surfaces, reflection scattered over a hundred jagged pieces. He gazed down at his exorcised better half, his conscience captured in the pieces of glass, and he laughed.

Sylar was back.