I really wanted to try and get into Gabriel's head for this chapter which resulted in some technobabble that I should probably slap a disclaimer on. I've never seriously studied in the areas of psychology or medicine (or anything else for that matter) so I am in no way qualified to actually know what I'm talking about. That being said please keep in mind that it's just entertainment - not to be taken seriously and have mercy on me.

This is a major plot chapter that has been divided into two for reading ease so without further ado I present:

Falling: Part I

April 18, 2006

"We should go out tonight."

Claire peeked up at him from her glass of orange juice that she had paused to sniff. "Out as in…?"

"As in we haven't really done anything exciting or special together in over a month now and I think it's time to fix that." He gave her a moment to let the idea sink in, watching her eyebrows slowly rise as her eyes drifted off into memory.

"What did you have in mind?" There was no masking the subtle trill of excitement in her voice at the prospect.

"Nothing too over the top. Just a nice, quiet evening together. No work. No phone calls. No family emergencies. Just the two of us."

"That sounds nice."

"I was hoping that you would say that." He glanced over the top of his newspaper mischievously. "I may have already taken the liberty of setting something up."

"Really." Claire rounded the table to take his paper and put it down. She took a seat on his lap to occupy all of his attention, happy that he didn't try to refuse the motion. "Does that include the surprise you've been working on?"

"Maybe," he answered coyly. "I still maintain that it wouldn't be much of a surprise if I told you about it."

A pair of arms lazily wrapped around his neck so that her fingers could fiddle with his hair. "And what should I be doing today to prepare for this surprise?" she asked with saccharine sweetness, fishing for clues.

"If I were to give you hints, which I'm clearly not," he lowered his voice suggestively, "then I would say you should spend the day being beautiful." Claire quirked a questioning brow at him. "Soak in the tub. Take a nice long nap so you're well rested," he added with an impishly insinuative smile. "Relax. And most importantly… Answer the door."

"Who should I be expecting?"

Gabriel shrugged his shoulders playfully with a roll of his eyes. Her mind busily whirled around the possibilities distracting her from the set of long fingers that splayed possessively across her belly, bringing a proud smile to his lips. At first the memory had seemed somewhat fuzzy like an alcohol induced hallucination, but as the details poured over him in the days since then his realization had come back in full force. He was almost positive that Claire was still clueless and he would have the joy of telling her about their little creation. He imagined the feeling of a tiny heart beat fluttering away beneath his hand as he quietly mused about how the evening would be perfect.

We've been so careful… Well, except for that day in the car, but I guess Mom was right. It only takes one time. I never could have believed that this day would come.

Initially the prospect of being personally responsible for another life form, a living, breathing, human being that would be freely thinking and acting independently of them was absolutely terrifying. 'What ifs?' had spiraled through his every waking thought process for days detailing every possible scenario that could ever happen. Not to mention the horrific notion of what might occur should they screw up in some psychological or emotional aspect… or socially. Oh, hell. I'm going to have to learn how to deal with other parents. And their children. And teachers. Is it okay if I don't want to join the PTA?

Parents… How the heck am I going to tell Virginia about this? Or Noah. Oh, God, Noah… Gabriel swallowed thickly over the nerves that rose with that thought, images of her father chasing him through the streets with a loaded gun running rampant. But if tonight works out the way I hope it will then everything will be great. Better than great. Perfect. And then all of those colliding thoughts condensed into one singular internal mantra.

I'm going to be a father.

"Just a little something for someone special." Claire laughed lightly when he pulled her into him, nuzzling her neck and sneaking a hand over her hip to delve into the pocket of her jeans. "I'm stealing the car for today though," he stipulated, fishing out a set of keys. "I've got an errand to run."

"Hmm. Being cooped up all day under threat of the dreaded bubble bath. How ever will I manage?"

Gabriel sat quietly amidst the ticks and tocks of Gray and Sons doing his best to remain focused on his work. All of his time spent away during the last month had meant an impressive accumulation of back orders for repairs and specialty designs. But even as he pulled his magnifying lens closer to study the watch face that he was replacing, delicately moving hands back into place with a set of tweezers, he knew that his heart was no longer in the project. There was still that little thrill for being able to see how the parts would fit together in a whole, speaking to him in a sense of what they needed to function correctly, however his imagination was wandering towards something better. Something more. For his family. That thought brought a shadow of a smile to his lips.

The shop door opened and closed signaling the entrance of a customer that disturbed his reverie. Gabriel removed his glasses, looking up to discern whether the person would be looking to pick up their order or place another one. A short man of rounded physic appearing as though he had just wandered away from a cubicle met his sight. However ordinary he may have seemed on the outside though Gabriel knew before speaking that he wasn't. There was something in the back of his mind that itched when he couldn't place what the difference was causing an uncontrollable draw. As with others that he had encountered before, he detected an inexplicable trait that set him apart from the average passerby.

"Can I help you?"

"Yeah, um, somebody called me? My name is Brian Davis."

It was the moment that he had been waiting for. An overwhelming sense that his entire life had been leading him to that very point in time swept over Gabriel's consciousness. Everything that he could have ever wanted was potentially being held in the nervous hands of the man before him. His time had finally arrived to make him, or break him. The point of no return.

"Yes, I called you," he stated calmly in spite of his own tumbling anxiety, rising to face what could have been the greatest puzzle of his life. A grand mystery to solve in the form of a person. The key to unlocking all of the universe's answers.

"My name is…" he faltered. Gabriel had been deceitful in his means of getting Davis to meet with him and if Chandra found out that he had been used as a means to an end after their last unpleasant encounter he would be angry. For a second there was a pondering over whether he could really be accused of fraud for what he was doing. If his plan was successful though and he could go back to the doctor with undeniable proof that he did indeed belong on the list, that he really was special, then all could be forgiven. His eyes flickered to the Sylar wrist watch that semi-permanently adorned his work desk, his touchstone of sorts for the girl that had brought him a guide towards its intrigue. "Sylar. Gabriel Sylar."

"You must be the student then? My wife said that there was a research project looking for people…" Davis shuffled his feet uncomfortably, twiddling his thumbs. "Dr. Suresh tried calling me before, but at the time the things he said sounded crazy." He took off his glasses to wipe away a nonexistent smudge, an action that Gabriel recognized for the distraction it was. He had used the cover himself more than a fair share of times to help mask his own uncertainties.

"I told him that I wasn't interested. I - I just wanted to be left alone. But then these strange things started to happen to me… Stuff… my things… It was like they started to move on their own." Brian glanced up at him with worry as though he expected Gabriel to declare him as insane as he felt. Perhaps if he hadn't been so readily willing to believe that there was a greater purpose for his existence Gabriel would have felt the same way. It was easy to imagine how jarring of an experience it would be to one day find out that you were fundamentally different from all the other people around you, and he could sympathize to some extent. "Do, um… Do you need to see it?"

"Yes, please," he smiled eagerly in a way that he hoped was reassuring and not quite as greedy as it felt. Gabriel gestured towards his work table where there were plenty of items for the man's disposal while quietly wondering just how large of an object he would really be able to move with the force of his mind alone.

Brian squinted his eyes for a long minute, focusing past his glasses on the coffee cup that was resting on the work table. The cup gave off a small shudder before slowly turning about and sliding inch by inch over the wooden surface seemingly of its own accord.

"That's incredible." Gabriel had known that the existence of Telekinesis was real, had felt it in his gut when reading about it or listening to Chandra passionately explain the ability. But to actually see a power such as that in action confirming everything that he had learned was something else entirely. To truly witness an agent of his coveted evolutionary processes at work only feet away from him… Stating the obvious hadn't helped to diminish the disbelief in his voice.

"Can you make it go away?"

"Why would you want to do that?" he asked incredulously, not understanding that train of thought at all.

"I don't know what this is," Brian frowned insistently. "Or who I might hurt. I - I don't want it." Long creases etched their way across the length of his worried forehead.

What little sympathy Gabriel might have been able to feel for Davis instantly evaporated in a sharp snap of intense jealousy. The man had been given a gift that set him apart from the common masses compliments of nature. He was different, a part of the next step in human evolution, important, special, all of those things that Gabriel wished he could be. And he wanted nothing more than to throw all of it away in favor of being ordinary, unnoticed.

There were so many parallels that Gabriel could draw between them. They were both painfully average men all too easily overlooked in their understated lifestyles with no more purpose in life than a pitiful career that left them with just enough monetary value to keep moving along day by day. With every trait from their mutual social awkwardness to their shared timid demeanors and interchangeable mannerisms he imagined that they could swap lives all together and there would be no one to notice the difference. Of course Brian had his wife and Gabriel was lucky to have Claire, but would anyone else give a damn if one or both of them disappeared from the face of the Earth?

And yet the situation remained the same. For all of their similarities Davis continued to hold the world in the palm of his hand to be left by the wayside while Gabriel could only look on helplessly. Nature could be a cruel bitch sometimes with a sadistic sense of humor. The ultimate punch line had yet to be spoken though because watching Brian's ability at work was far different than seeing Claire's skin endlessly stitch itself back together.

Over the weeks of paper cuts and stubbed toes he had grown more or less desensitized to the power of regeneration. On occasion he even wondered if she had intentionally dropped the spoon into the pot of boiling water for retrieval or purposefully sliced off the tip of her finger while dicing tomatoes as a means of jading him to the idea. He couldn't escape the theory that breaking the bones of her hand by getting it caught in the door had been some sort of test, but he had endured triumphantly. And there had been so many sets of ill fated sheets that they had had to replace…

"You're broken." The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop them; before he could even logically substantiate the statement. But the cogs of his mechanical mind had begun to turn over observations long before they became a conscious reality. One sweeping look over Davis's chalky pallor, lack of any definable muscle tone and the over production of sweat in the palms of his hands, the consistently heightened heart rate made evident by the pulsing arteries in his neck and the uncoordinated focus… Brian had stepped forward to approach him when he had asked for help in a way that suggested innate neediness of personality, even fearfulness. He was looking to Gabriel to be an authoritative figure, someone that could dictate what needed to be done and solve his problems for him. All of those anxieties took on a completely different meaning.

Reaching out with his steadily growing awareness, treating the man before him as though he were just another time piece or machine, parts began to fall into place.

Following the illogical activity occurring within the sympathetic nervous system, Gabriel retraced the pathways of nerve impulses into the brainstem, connecting into the hypothalamus and cerebellum, through the nuclei of the basolateral complex where the sensory information was being interpreted by the amygdala. From there he could find that the prior connections were unusually indistinct due to a higher concentration of gray matter within the central nucleus. In a slight twist though the connections with the parietal cortex and prefrontal cortex were heightened. Fear and anxiety were being processed allowing for the action potential that caused C4H9NO2... The gated ion channels of the cells' plasma membranes were faulty allowing the neurotransmitter gamma-Aminobutyric acid to release into the synapse where it bound itself to receptors causing the excitability of his nerves.

Gabriel pulled back from his study with a blink.

My God… He must feel like he's constantly on the verge of having a panic attack.

"What?"

"Suresh was right." He handed Brian his copy of Activating Evolution and took a few steps to clear his mind of the great revelation that had just happened. "It's so clear now. How it all works. Pieces fitting together. It is in the brain."

"So you can help?"

Images of a lioness dashing across the open plain in pursuit of a fleeing gazelle flashed through his mind. The lithe, agile body with its retractable claws and angled incisors capable of crushing force all designed with that specific action in mind. Strength and cunning meant to cull the weak from a herd, keeping the greater population healthy and under control. Maintaining the balance of nature. They don't want to. They have to.

He was weak and Gabriel knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Davis was unworthy of his power. He didn't deserve to have an ability that he would only waste when Gabriel could use it, wield it with purpose. If only he could get a closer look at the components…

"Don't worry Brian," he said as his fingers curled around a quartz formation that he kept for display. "I can fix it." Gabriel turned on the man whose back was to him, caught unaware as he examined the book that he had been handed only seconds ago. Quickly analyzing the shape of his head he could pinpoint where the sutures of the skull fused the neurocranium bones together and calculate the weakest area above the brain. "It's an evolutionary imperative!"

Raising the quartz above to swing in a downward arch, Gabriel cracked the rock over Brian's head and watched the man crumple to the floor. The carefully triangulated strike had instantly killed him. He wouldn't have even felt the pain.

He pulled his glasses back on, eager to uncover his precious mysteries while the tissue would still be fresh. Ignoring the red-black blood that was rapidly pooling beneath the body he knelt down take in the extent of the damage, as delicately as possible using the quartz again to create a series of spidering concussions that would allow him to pull away the bone and expose the unharmed brain matter.

Davis had visually focused on the cup to telekinetically move it. The image of the object had passed through the iris, past the cornea and sclera, the choroid, and ciliary body along nerve fibers that transmitted the information where it could be interpreted in the cortex and the occipital lobe, favoring the left side. Gingerly sliding his hand into the tight space of the skull Gabriel extracted Brian's brain for inspection.

But no… As his fingers tenderly explored the cognitive tissues he could sense that his initial conclusion had been wrong. He hadn't been looking directly at the coffee cup itself. He had been focusing on the space immediately around the object. Gabriel turned the lump of bloody gray muscle over in his hands to examine the parietal lobe.

Spatial awareness. Yes, that's it. Now where's the part that doesn't belong…

Surface layers of twisting fissures did little to satisfy his intrigue. For a male it would be… on the… right hemisphere… So helpful for the left handed. There was a sickly wet squishing sound as his fingers sank deeper into the organ, working the pieces apart until an extraordinary space of intricately interwoven neuron clusters revealed themselves. Understanding instantly washed over him in a soothing wave once he could see exactly how the process had functioned as a part of the whole.

Endorphins were flooding his system as though he had just experienced the greatest physical work out of his life. While his eyes were rolling back with the elation his subconscious was formulating how to replicate the Telekinetic ability and integrating the appropriate changes into his own DNA for reproduction. It was as relieving as sex. Really great sex.

The change was pitifully slow at first and he didn't immediately recognize the sensation for what it was, but he could feel something happening within. His mind was expanding, billowing outward in a steady growth not unlike what he had known when working through Suresh's testing phases. Once he had finished riding out his high Gabriel returned to reality.

And found himself knee deep in gore.

Oh, God. What have I done?

All of the jealousy and anger and ambitious compulsion vaporized with one look for the body that had housed Brian Davis. He was once again just a man, so much like himself. That could have been me.

Gabriel's pants were completely soaked in blood that was congealing on the floorboards as it cooled, sticking to him, refusing to let go when he made to stand. It had seeped through his socks and coated the insides of his shoes. Grotesque swaths of crimson were smeared all along his chest and stomach, up his arms, and his hands… His hands were slick with the oxidizing fluid that caked in his nail beds defining every crease and curve of a fingerprint.

Panic.

Life was a blurred haze of adrenaline fueled desperation as he hurdled himself into the back room ransacking the storage space for the long rolls of plastic bubble wrap that he kept on hand for long distance shipping. Running back to the scene of the crime he threw down a long sheet of the plastic and set about wrapping the body in the translucent material, picking up scattered fragments of bone as he went.

Claire rolled her head back to rest on the edge of the tub with an effortless sigh. Surrounded by delicately popping bubbles and the fizzing of bath salts it was all too easy to allow her eyes to close and her mind to drift. She inhaled a deep breath of the vanilla that floated in the air from her scented candles wondering what all Gabriel could be plotting. He had been quite the sneak lately which meant it was something big. All of the mysterious twenty-minute-long 'wrong number' phone calls, the late working hours, the days when he would be inexplicably missing from the shop when she came by to bring him lunch, and the bumbling excuses or half baked misdirections…

Either he's trying to book us a two week vacation at some exotic resort or… Or he's cheating on me…

She shook her head to clear away dark thoughts not wanting at all to entertain that train of logic. Claire couldn't make herself believe that Gabriel was the kind of the man to wander too far from home, with his body or his eyes for that matter. Only the week prior had she mentioned something about the female tenant down the hall being attractive and he had spluttered his morning coffee everywhere. Besides, with her father and the Haitian constantly on the look out for anything that could be unusual they surely would have mentioned something to her should another woman have been involved. Or maybe… A thought struck her with blunt force. A surprise, secret plans, wanting me to dress up for a night out. Oh, my God, he's going to propose again.

There should have been a stab of panic to accompany the realization but it was curiously absent. Suresh had been successfully drawn away from his focus on Gabriel, leading him instead to her which her father was already contending with. With 'Patient Zero' safely undiscovered and Gabriel blissfully unaware of his ability they should have been in the clear. Sylar would never rise and the future was saved. Claire was free to -

A knock sounded at the door. Claire hurried out of the tub and into a fuzzy bath robe to answer as she had been instructed. Water dripped down her legs to pool on the floor as she cracked the door open to reveal nothing. Whomever had done the knocking vacated before she could get there, but they had left a gift behind for her to find. She bent over to retrieve the glass vase of flowers, her eyes widening considerably at the impressive array beauty. Calla lilies, stephanotis, Vendela roses, and soft white apple blossoms all spilled over the sides of the arrangement intertwined with spiraling vines of ivy. Tucked inside she found a card written out in a tidy angled scrawl: To the best of all that is dark and bright, I always thought my angel looked beautiful in white.

Warmth flushed over her body in a blush for no one to see. Maybe this time I can say yes.

Gabriel exerted the full force of his musculature to pry open the man hole cover that served as a sewer entrance for the alley way directly behind the watch shop. Breathing heavily he poked his head inside briefly to see a mob of scurrying city rats fleeing from the light. Satisfied with the temporary hide away, he pulled back, glancing in all directions for potential witnesses and finished dragging the plastic wrapped body of his victim to the dumping site. There was a morbid cracking of bone that splintered on impact with the clang of the rusted steel ladder and then the concrete below, followed by a barely audible splash. The rats would return and feast on Davis's cold flesh effectively destroying the body. Within a few days even the bones would be dragged away and scattered throughout the tunnel system.

Rushing back into the store, Gabriel hurled himself into the bathroom and clutched at the back of the toilet for a life line while he emptied the contents of his stomach with violent force. That could have been me, he whimpered to himself again. "What have I done? Oh," heave, "God." He didn't even register the tears of grief and pain that ran down the sides of his face as he vomited away his guilt like some poisonous toxin that refused to leave his gut. "What did I do?"

He stumbled back into the front section of the shop, groping at his stomach when he saw that he hadn't even locked the door or flipped the 'closed' sign over. Anyone could have walked in and seen what he had done. Briefly he paused to think that it might have been better that way. Instead his eyes turned to the stained floorboards of his crime scene.

The blood… Christ, there's so much of it…

Gabriel stopped to throw up again before grabbing a mop bucket and all of the cleansers that he could find. Stooping over the chilled puddle of browning blood, he sloshed soapy water over the area and sopped it up one careful rag sweep at a time, releasing orange-like tendrils of color into the bucket that quickly churned about into a rabid crimson. After nearly an hour and a half of feverish scrubbing the greater whole of Brian's pool had been lifted but Gabriel was forced to accept that no manner of intent or chemicals would lift the stains completely free of the wood.

Between the shakes and shivers of the shock leaving his body he fought off the urge to break down and give in, focusing instead on finding the logical solution to his problem. His mind turned over any possible remedy for the situation before slowly dawning on the circumstance that had lead there in the first place. Reaching outward with that same sense of awareness that he had felt earlier Gabriel found that he no longer had to see the objects around to detect their space. It was as though the fabric of reality had thickened around him like a semi-gelatinous atmosphere. Everything had a space, and everything in that space could be manipulated. Is this how Brian felt?

Straining his hand to hold steady he held it above the red tinted floorboards, feeling out that sense of matter. A sharp stab of pain pounded through his eyeballs like nails in his attempt to exercise the newly created part of him that had never been used before. The brain is like any other muscle. It has to be exercised to get stronger. Use it or lose it.

Concentrating intently, not on the molecules of blood themselves, but on the matter of space that they occupied, he willed the fluid to lift itself away from the wood. The throb of pain increased exponentially with the effort. He managed to unclench his eyes long enough to glance down. A thin cloud of brownish droplets hung suspended in the air just below his hand. Gabriel reached quickly for his bucket to collect the liquid but found that they splashed back onto the floor with the drop in continuous focus. It took him another hour of exhausting trial and hour, but he managed to gain control over the new ability enough to complete his task.

They can swab for DNA in the pipes, he thought to himself as he looked from his bucket of collected blood to the sink in the modest bathroom wondering how he would be able to dispose of the evidentiary substance. And then his gaze drifted to the toilet. Maybe it wasn't the best idea that he ever had but then again who in the hell would think to look there? He carefully poured the bloody water into the bowl and flushed what remained of Brian Davis down the drain. After some more thought he decided to scrub the item down with a healthy dose of bleach to remove any residual traces before flushing again several times.

Where his clothes weren't sticking to him the fabric was stiffening and itched and scraped against his skin. He couldn't exactly go home to Claire that way. He couldn't even leave the shop looking that way without arising suspicion or curiosity that he had gotten into some kind of terrible accident. Gabriel pressed his forehead to the mirror trying to think about how to get out of his next catastrophe. Flipping open his phone and searching through the sparse contacts he saw his mother's name and another idea occurred to him.

"Hello, Mrs. Wilson? This is Gabriel… Gray. Yes ma'am, Virginia's son. I'm here at Gray and Sons and I, um, seem to have had a rather embarrassing accident with my coffee." The Wilson's owned a small clothing boutique just down the street from the watch shop. Over the years Virginia had become friends with the Mrs., who happened to be nearly as flaky as she was. "Yes, ma'am. I'm kind of in need of a shirt and some pants. Uh, style doesn't really matter. Just something that I can get home in. Is there any chance that I can get delivered? Great. Yes, ma'am, you accept Visa, right?"

It shouldn't have surprised her when there was another knock on the door that afternoon. Claire was in the middle of grooming her nails to a highly polished shine when the sound startled her. She hobbled over the entrance, careful to keep her toes, parted by cotton balls, off of the floor lest the paint get smudged. Once again when she answered there was no one around to see, but a decoratively wrapped Gray and Sons gift box waited by the threshold.

Closing the door behind her, she pulled apart the lengths of white bowed ribbon and enthusiastically shredded into the paper. Inside she found a black velvet box. Timidly urging the silky container open a crack her attention was caught by gleaming silver. Claire pulled out a shining pendant crafted from a glamorous looking watch face on a delicate chain of linked metallic rings. On the back was an inscription etched into the silver: My life started when I first saw you. Turning the piece back over she could see that the time had been set to 3:51:10 P.M. urging a bubbly smile onto her lips.

To be continued...

Free kudos to anybody that spotted the quirk with Claire's new necklace.