Title: Empty Memory
Genre: Romance / Angst
Rating: T
Pairing: Sylar x OC
Spoilers: N/A
Summary: You will forget. To remember any portion of it, any word, will cause you pain, terrible pain, growing more terrible as you fight to remember.
Word Count: 1,174
Warnings: Weird timeline.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Summary is from Star Trek: The Original Series.
A/N: I am pretending Heroes: Reborn doesn't exist.
You do not choose your destiny, it chooses you. And those who knew you before fate took you by the hand cannot understand the depth of changes inside. They cannot fathom how much you stand to lose in failure. That you are the instrument of a flawless design. And all of life may hand in the balance.
He does not understand how to fix this. There is no power in his arsenal that can take back something that was stolen. Telepathy can bring memories she has forgotten to the forefront of her mind, but it cannot rewrite something that has been erased.
The Haitian was younger then, newer to his powers perhaps, because she looks at him with a sort of vague intent, like she remembers his face from a dream. Like she knows him but does not know why or from where. The details are gone, but the image remains.
"So you really don't know why you were there?"
She sighs, and looks up from the clock she was staring at on his table. Evie has been focused with hawk-like intensity on his work since they arrived here, trying to unravel some unknown mystery in the gears and knobs that are strewn about his apartment. "No, they just asked me a lot of question. Like about my childhood and my friends and stuff."
"And what did you tell them?"
"That I didn't know. I mean, I only know people from the coffee house where I work." Her gaze is internal. "I don't remember my childhood – like, at all. I don't know my family."
He wants to tell her that her father was a police officer and her mother made cookies every Sunday and pretended she didn't know the pair of them ate them all. "That must be strange."
She smiles, a little ruefully. "I've gotten used to it. You can't really miss what you don't remember, right?"
But she does not remember ice cream cones in the summer, or her – their – first kiss, or – "Where did you get that watch anyway? It's fine work."
She looks at in surprise. "I don't know, I've always had it." She fumbles with the clasp in order to show him the inscription, the one he spent hours making perfect. "I feel like…" she pauses, blushing, and the sight makes him so nostalgic that for a moment he almost reaches out to her. "I feel like whoever gave it to me must have really loved me. It makes me feel safe…"
He quirks his lips in a wistful smile. "That's a nice thought." What's nicer is the memory of her face the first time he snapped the watch around her wrist. What's nicer is the memory of her smiling, huge and happy, at him.
She shrugs again, turning to smile at him. Presto: time travel. "Just knowing that someone out there loves me this much, makes everything seem not so bad."
She is radiant tonight – in a sleek black dress that hugs the curves he has been thinking about every night for a year. Her smile is wide and open and beaming as she saunters over to him, standing on the sidelines of her and her younger friends as they dance.
"You're not going to dance with me?"
He snorts. "No."
"But it's my twenty-first birthday," she pouts.
"And I am only here for you." He presses a teasing finger to the tip of her nose. "You know I do not do clubs."
Her smile widens. "Wanna go home?"
"No, I –" Suddenly, there is a teasing brush of fingers against his side, making his breath hiss. She is very close, leaning up to look at him with wide, imploring eyes.
"I said: do you want to go home?"
She emphasizes each word of her question with a tap against his side, until she reaches the hem of her shift. Before he can answer, she hand underneath the fabric, skin pressed to skin, scalding and close. His breath shudders out of him, and there's only one answer he can give. "God, yes."
So they leave her friends, drunk and dancing, and walk to four blocks back to his apartment. But it is not like the last time he brought her home, blacked out and mindless. This time she is coherent, she knows what she is doing when she walks so close her arms and hips sway against his. She is fully aware when he finally groans in annoyance and pushes her against the nearest building to press his lips, harsh and demanding, against hers. She kisses him back.
He groans again, pressing closer, but still not close enough. He wants more – he wants skin – he wants everything. When he pulls away he is panting. "Let's go."
How they make it all the way to his place he doesn't know. They are hungry for each other – can barely take five steps before they are kissing, before they are reaching for some piece of the other. Hands are sliding beneath clothes in the halls, his jacket and her shoes are lost as they make their way up the flights of stairs. When his door finally closes behind them, he slams her against it: hands frantically pulling up her dress, never still, wanting more.
"Bed," she exhales and it sends a shock straight through him.
So they stagger to the bed, clothes falling in heaps onto the floor, so that when they tumble onto the mattress together it is naked flesh against naked flesh. "Oh, fuck." He does not know where to start, he wants to worship her, he wants to touch her everywhere, he wants to be perfect. But her hands are restless against him, her legs are cradling him closer, pulling him in to where he wants to be the most. "Evie, oh God…"
"Gabriel…"
His name is a sigh, a benediction. It makes him tremble and he is gone, sliding into her and seeing stars. She is warm and hot and wet and perfect and he has been dreaming about this for what seems like years and now that it is happening he wants to make it last but does not think he can.
"Gabriel, oh, please…"
Yes, please. Yes, more. Yes…
He stops thinking. He feels. He can, if he thinks, see the perfect way to make this work. He is not new to this, but he is new to caring, and he wants it perfect. And so he focuses on her, and he makes this flawless.
He builds and builds and at his peak he has one clear and concise thought – as bright as fireworks:
He loves her.
