I Can Fix You
Previously on Heroes
"Let's face it: Sylar is gone. It is only Gabriel now. I can't hate someone that doesn't exist anymore. Gabriel and Sylar are two different people."
"I was so angry, I felt something inside of me that I didn't know existed before," Gabriel explains.
"He had keys to our apartment. God knows when he would have plucked up the courage come into the apartment when one of us is home alone."
The corner of Gabriel's lips lifts to a small smile. "Like I'd let anyone hurt you."
"There's something you need to know," Noah says. "Sylar inherited his ability from his biological father and I have a good feeling that is who is killing those people."
"His father is going to come after his own son," Noah finishes, "and he's going to collect powers along the way until he finds him."
Gabriel brings his hand to his face and his eyes widen in horror as tiny blue sparks emit from his hand. "What is happening to me?"
Chapter 6: And The Hero Will Drown
Gabriel sits on a paint-chipped picnic table at Reservation Point, one of those lovers' lane areas that are surrounded by wooded area and over looks Costa Verde. It is Saturday night and he has not slept since he woke up from that nightmare on Wednesday, just a little after midnight. He looks down at his hands and spaces them six inches from each other and concentrates. Electricity sparks between his hands, a ball forming in the middle and off-trails of sparks dance on his palms like a plasma globe he once saw at a science museum. With only a thought it disappears, only for Gabriel to repeat the action several more times.
Then he places a palm on the picnic, and Gabriel closes his eyes and concentrates. Like a time-lapse film, images of people flow through his mind: Families having a barbeque, hikers resting from the long trail, teenagers making love under a clear night sky.
Gabriel opens his eyes, and rakes his fingers through his thick hair as he leans his elbows on his knees, "What is going on?" he asks of himself aloud.
Off in the distance, he hears feet pounding the dirt trail, and he sees Claire, in only a tank top and cotton shorts that barely covers anything, and tears are flowing from her eyes. She reaches the clearing and collapses to her knees, oblivious that Gabriel is there, and buries her tear-soaked face into her palms as she let out gut-wrenching cry.
"Claire?" Gabriel rushes to her, whatever worries he had moments ago left his mind. The only thing that matters is Claire. "What's wrong why are you crying?"
Instead of answering, attaches herself to Gabriel, nearly knocking him off balance as her arms fasten around his waist and she sobs into his chest. Gabriel manages to situate them both more comfortably on the ground as he patiently waits for Claire to stop her tears.
"Sorry," Claire says after a couple of minutes.
"Shhhh," Gabriel says. "You don't have to apologize, just tell me what's wrong."
"You remember that date I told you I was suppose to have tonight?" Gabriel nods and Claire continues. "Well, he called me Thursday, saying that something came up and wanted to know if we could go out Friday. So we did, and things were fine: a movie, dinner at a café, and a walk on the beach. We started making out and things got a little heated. Then I started having flashbacks from something that happened to me from when I lived in Texas, and I told him stop."
"What happened in Texas?" Gabriel wants to know.
"The star quarter back tried to rape me," Claire says as more tears start to come. "I told him to stop and he flipped. He said I was a prude, and a bitch for being a tease. Then he just got up and left me at the beach. So I called my dad, and you know what he said? He said that boys will be boys because boys are stupid."
"That sounds about right," Gabriel says, managing to get a small laugh from Claire.
"But the worst thing happened when a friend from school called me, saying she overheard him at a party telling his friends about how easy I was and how I was begging him for more and all these lies. Then she told me that he was trying to get one of his buddies to pay up for managing to get into my pants a day early," Claire buries her head into the nook of Gabriel's neck as he wraps his long arms around her shoulders to keep her from shivering.
"Tammy and Liz were out in LA clubbing…again. I called my dad to stay another day, but he said that I am a big girl, and that I am a better person than that jerk and that we'd talk more when he comes home again in a couple weeks," Claire sobs again. "Mom said what she could but she's going to give Dad an earful. I tried calling you, but you weren't answering."
"I guess I can't get reception up here," Gabriel says, unzipping his sweatshirt and places it over the two, tucking it under her chin. Claire shifts around so that her back is against his chest, and Gabriel scoots the both of them closer to a tree he could lean against. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when you needed me."
"You're here now," Claire says, finally able to stop sniffling. "That's all that matters."
"I ought to get you home," Gabriel says after a moment.
But Claire does not move, "Let's just stay here for a while."
"Ok."
"How come you weren't already married?" Claire asks. "I mean, you and Elle were only dating for like six months before the accident. But how come you weren't already married?"
Gabriel quirks a brow, "Why do you ask?"
Claire shrugs, "You're such a nice guy. How come a guy as sweet as you are isn't already married?"
"I don't know," Gabriel sighs. "I've always been really shy, anti-social, growing up. My mother complaining I never live up to my potential never helped. It didn't help that people thought of me as a huge dork, with my sweater vests over the dress shirts and my hair perfectly parted on the side. Elle was the first girl I liked that liked me back."
"What's stopping you now?"
"I'm just waiting for everything to make sense."
"Like what?" Claire asks. But when Gabriel does not answer, she sees that he is asleep and notices the bags under his eyes and his face is slightly thinner than she remembers. Feeling her move, Gabriel instinctively tightens his arms around her, pulling her back to his chest. Claire sighs, staring at the house lights that make up Costa Verde as she thinks back to one of Sylar's last words to her before literally throwing her out of the suite, "You may eventually come to forgive me, maybe even love me."
She is still amazed at how the man in the suite is the same man holding her right then. She is amazed at how fast she came to adore his sweet, innocent charm. The last five months she would see him, usually volunteering to help her mother and Lyle out with the yard work, but since she had moved out, she saw him in the evenings when he got off work and she had to drop something off before heading to work herself. Sandra and Lyle usually kept their distance but Claire would sometimes talk to him, mostly to see if there were any remnants of Sylar in his gaze. He was never there.
But now she is becoming scared. She has been seeing Gabriel's shy smile less and less. Especially since the discovery of the hidden cameras, she can see that she is starting to lose the one person she knows would always be there, and she does not know if things will be the same when Gabriel finally knows the truth.
So Claire sheds one final tear for her sweet friend, and falls asleep in his arms.
In a library in Texas, Samson views the micro phish containing all the news articles published in the last few years. The microfish is whizzing by, but one of his abilities is allowing him to easily pick up every single detail of each and every article. He stops when he sees an article about a cheerleader who had saved a homeless man from a train fire without a scratch, only to be found murdered with her forehead sliced. The only other witness is another cheerleader who was discovered covered in blood but without any marks.
Samson slides his chair over to one of the computer terminals. Automatically, the power switches on and Samson enters in every detail of the cheerleader simultaneously into every internet search engine. His search fruits success when details of the cheerleader, under a different surname, in California were briefly mentioned in a paper about a prank gone wrong. However, Samson knows better. His son's bread trails had stopped cold, so he decides to go after the cheerleader instead, even if it means scraping at the leftovers. He just needs to find the name of the high school this cheerleader attends.
A/N: eeeeh gads im such a hopeless romantic, I swear I'll get to the good stuff, its just that I saw Star Trek twice already and im still high off of the Spock/Uhura action.