log, complete;

[makes-you-tick.livejournal.com]

When; Early early morning of December 23rd, around 1am
Rating; PG for violence
Characters; Peter Petrelli (justdoingmyjob) and Sylar (makes_you_tick)
Summary; Peter learned of his brother's death, and there was only one thing on his mind- he was going to kill Sylar. Part one of two, as this is just their first meeting that night.
Log;

Compared to a lot of other people, Peter Petrelli understands that
he's been lucky, but the other side of the coin stands to argue that
he has been just the opposite as well. Never mind dad, never mind mom,
and nail it all down to Nathan. Maybe it was a mistake, to love him so
much, to carve out beliefs and prayers because he thought if he could
just be that steady line toeing the tide, he could find his brother
first beneath the politician, and later beneath the thing he never
quite got around to naming with any satisfaction. For all that a
father might want him dead and a mother view him primarily as a pawn,
the seminal difference between those two and Nathan had always been
subtle, and admittedly when Peter last saw him, he was no saint, but
even then Peter flew away with a grain's worth of hope, crushed
somewhere between logic and love.

In all his time here, Peter has hoped to see his brother, has wanted
to yell at him, to punch him, to demand answers, and he knows now part
of him that held back from that before was the part that knew--just
knew--that it couldn't be him. There had been something off,
even if he couldn't place it. Then again, he is willing to admit the
City may have made him even more paranoid. It might be a combination
of both instinct and environment. Either way, those feelings find
themselves replaced, sucked out through some indeterminable black hole
when Sylar comes back, when Sylar throws him a hook and Peter--because
he can't walk away--bites, when Sylar tells him his brother is dead.

Nathan is dead.

Nathan is dead.

Nathan is dead.

They say that sometimes death seems unreal, but Peter doesn't think
that's the right word at all.

'Unfair' comes to mind.

'Too soon' also fits, but that would be two words.

And for a while, he just stands there, staring at the network device.

Nathan is dead.

Perhaps uncalled for, his first question, dragging himself through
that slow-motion reluctance, is: why did I leave?

I could have saved him.

His shoulders shake and his eyes grow hot, hands curling until fingers
dig hard into his palms.

I could have.

Beneath it all, he feels ten years old again.

I can't do this without...

He can feel the erratic way of his breathing, the way his chest
doesn't seem to allow for the inhales he's taking. Maybe he yells but
he's in some off-the-track street in the City's vastness, and what's
one yelling man to the regular madness going on? Not that he cares.
How can he care?

Nathan is dead.

The real kicker of the whole deal is that he won't remember any of
this when he goes home. He'll go home and go back to hating Nathan for
the choices he's made; pick up right where he left off. It sends his
stomach turning and then he's losing what little breakfast he had so
many hours ago all over the pavement, but again no one stops. For
that, he's glad. There is only one person he wants to see right now.

Once he leans up, he shudders, all visible chills that have nothing to
do with the weather and he wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve
as he wills the remaining shivers to subside. Those tears he felt
earlier were not the last but he pushes the rest back for now,
swallows a painful, permanent kind of sharpness as he turns in the
direction of a watch shop, some number of blocks away, out of sight
but always remembered. How lucky. Scratch that. It feels more like 'it
figures' in his mind, and a second later there's nothing but the
whiplash of a sudden gust caused by something fast-moving left in his
wake.

It doesn't occur to him--for the first time since being here, in
regards to anything and everything--to call Claire. Later, he'll feel
bad about it, horrible...but even then, at this point it has become
the truth to say he probably would not do this differently given the
chance, and maybe it says everything that someone like Peter who once
would have let himself cry and taken a moment has become a Peter who
rushes off headlong to do something the practical part of him knows
actually can't be done.

And it isn't a matter of having 'someone' to save. There is always
'someone' to save.

But through all the estrangement, the trouble, and once in the night
sky a coming-through-for, Peter has had Nathan, and if not
Nathan then the promise of righting things or the hope for it because
someone in their family had to be an optimist, the dreamer. Now
he doesn't know what he was thinking, feels foolish, feels
shortsighted, feels everything he could hate about someone else, all
come to tangle a solid knot in his heart. Rushing around buildings as
nothing but a blur, he thinks, not for the first time that he wishes
he was stronger...just better.

I could have saved him.

Maybe, maybe not.

Not that he'll ever know for sure.

It's pure chance that has him catching a familiar face out of the
corner of his eye, even at this speed, and he disappears around the
corner of Building Twelve upon sight of him.


Sylar never slept all that much, but that little sleep had dwindled to nothing since his return. He could have argued that it was because he had so very much to do, and with a twinkle in his eye he could have implied that it was because he had some revenge to get up to. But the truth was that the people he really wanted to hurt weren’t in the City. Faith, for as much as she had hurt him, was a poor substitute for the people who turned him into someone else entirely. He didn’t really feel like playing the part of the jilted boyfriend, especially with Lorne jumping on his case as he had.

He honestly didn’t know what he was going to do about Faith. He’d need to get his rage out somehow- it was already at a proper boil, something he could barely contain. Far better that it would go to someone fitting, right? But it’d been pushing him, more than he’d like to admit. Soon he was going to have to make choices- although most likely he’d just react. Even he knew that was what he tended to do, by now.

He’d also felt bad about Peter, of course- or, more accurately, he’d felt bad that he’d killed his previous chances for getting along with Peter. He didn’t know what it was like to have a real brother, and he couldn’t have cared less about Nathan himself. In fact, he really wished he could go back in time so he could kill the man more painfully and slowly, considering all the trouble that politician had put him through. But Peter- especially here, Sylar was sorry Peter hated him again. He really should have expected that, he supposed.

All of these things swirl in his head, but none of them are what push him out onto the street that night. That honor goes to what he just put on the Network, thanks to a curse. He’s only talked about his family to a select few, as a way to try and get them to understand where he came from. And now everyone in the City can just look and read and know to their heart’s content, why Sylar is the way he is. It’s not something they can really understand, but now they’ll all think they do.

It’s too much.

He doesn’t know where he’s going- the only criteria at the moment is ‘far away from the device’. He stomps his way vaguely towards where Faith might be, his breath visible in large huffs in the cold lamplight.



It's then, unaware and unsuspecting that Peter rushes the man who it
seems can never be anything more than the villain. Even when looking
at the situation of being forced into becoming someone else,
everything loses itself in incomparable shades of gray and what little
trouble he might have had with becoming--in a blink--judge and jury
has gone out the window with his brother's name. Having found that
reaching certain speeds he can almost forgo hitting the ground
altogether, it is with that in mind that Peter's fist connects with
the side of Sylar's face and his other hand reaches to drag him along
for the run, sending them both in a haphazard blur toward one of the
lesser used warehouses, an area comparatively deserted to others in
the City.

There are no words of greeting, no threats to be made. What time he's
spent trying to figure out what to say to this man now seems
like a complete loss, or worse, negative time, but in the midst of
what is part anger, part loss of sense, and all grief, there is guilt
too, that ever daunting, impossible to ignore echo: I could have saved
him. Some people would and probably will argue how ridiculous a thing
to think that is, but he can't let it go. All his life Peter grew up
thinking it was best to just try and be there for people when they
passed, and when that changed, when he decided he would rather save
them than just make them comfortable, it still stemmed from the same
place: wanting to be there, wanting to make a difference, and wanting
for it to matter. He should have been there for Nathan. Having only
heard the story from Sylar, maybe he should consider this might be a
lie, but the way of his approach and the frankness with which he was
told just reeks of a truth no one wants to face. With Nathan dead but
his own life still implicitly in tact, Peter can only deduce--has come
to the conclusion rather--that they got separated, that he left. From
what the man in his hold right now has told him, that's pretty much
the gist of it, and he feels sick all over again. Maybe he should say
something, but nothing comes to mind, but he has a lot of hate, and a
lot of anger, not all of it toward Sylar and more than a little of it
for himself, and the fact still stands: Sylar killed Nathan. Like it
was nothing, and maybe it was, to him, but to Peter, it has in a pin
drop's space become everything.

All but skidding to a stop, he half drops and half throws his target
against the warehouse wall, surprise his continuing element.

Nothing makes sense.

But he'll kill this man. It's so nearly the only thing he's sure of anymore.



Sylar feels his jaw breaking before he knows what’s going on. Everything’s a blur, and rightly so. He’s realizing the speed they’re traveling at, his jaw just barely starts knitting back together, when he’s suddenly brought to a stop. Seeing as the deceleration is due to a concrete wall, a lot more bones are now broken.

He hadn’t had a chance to cushion his ‘fall’ with telekinesis, so he’s left a number of cracks in the wall. As his ribs start to knit back together, he imagines it probably looked something like a Road Runner cartoon. It would be funny if it weren’t for the person who did it to him.

Peter swims into view and Sylar, against his better instincts, opens his mouth. “I’d wondered how long it’d be. Where’d you pick the speed up?” He rubs at his jaw, setting it back into place. Peter is due some revenge of his own, and Sylar’s not going to deny him that. Who knows? This might be cathartic for both of them.


The question asked only draws another attack from him, this one with a
hand to his enemy's throat, holding him against that wall for a few
short breaths that are visible in the winter air. Those moments allot
him seconds for staring, for trying to discern who he is looking at
and what, not to mention why. He can't find anything familiar in this
face though, and that acts as a relief, because the truth is he
doesn't want to. Fingers digging hard enough into the side of his neck
that the trembling might be missed, they would leave bruises if this
man bruised, but he doesn't. Doesn't scar. Doesn't bruise. Doesn't
die. Peter knows.

But he only came here to do one thing.

And he doesn't know how to back off anymore.


Sylar tries to let it go. After all, he’s planning to let Peter win this one, which means at least allowing the man to choke him into unconsciousness. He might wake up somewhere else entirely, or he might not even wake up at all. That last entry on the Network made him think that might not be so bad.

Unfortunately, Sylar isn’t the sort of person that can let anything go. His vision starts blurring and the telekinesis comes out, forcing Peter’s hands to unclench and blasting the man backwards a good ten feet. He coughs for a moment, then looks up at Peter with something bordering on annoyance. “You can kill me a thousand times if you really want, but nothing’s going to stick,” he says, his voice croaking just a little. “It’ll just make you more frustrated.”


Impulse self-preservation, that's what it chalks up and down to, or
that's what Peter thinks. It's hard to figure out exactly what Sylar
thinks he has worth living for, a thought that with someone else in
some other circumstance might make him feel badly for the person in
question, but in the here and now it only embitters him further. When
he hits the wall, his head snaps back, the crack that sounds through
the otherwise deserted side street an echo that reaches out to
disorient him in every way possible. It's unavoidable, the drop to his
knees as his vision spins and the deadening throb in his skull makes
itself a home.

When he stands up he hasn't got himself completely set again but he's
not running on sense anymore, hasn't been since he went out looking a
night and a half ago.

"I'm not taking advice from you."

As if to punctuate that stance, he goes very still before using his
speed to his advantage again as much as possible, for the first time
in his life completely unconcerned with the way bones crack, the way
everything in him already seems to hurt from something without a clear
mark on the map.

For the first time, Peter Petrelli wants to be someone else, but it
figures, he couldn't tell you just who.


Sylar had watched Peter as he slowly got back up, wondering on the strength of family to influence one’s actions. It wasn’t as if he didn’t completely understand the loss Peter felt now- despite not being Nathan any longer, he still remembered everything that happened. He remembered trying to look out for Peter in the ways he knew how. Nathan had gotten it wrong, too, so frequently. But he had needed Peter, in the same way Peter needed him.

And of course, in the end, Sylar had come back to himself and lost that tenuous connection again.

He’s just deciding to leave when Peter comes after him again, that split second causing more damage than he thought possible. Sylar barely has time to think, but his reflexes kick in and he blasts Peter back again- this time into the air where he can hold him. He stumbles and coughs up blood, but he keeps his concentration with one hand held out, and Peter stays suspended ten feet in the air while Sylar recovers.


The days when Peter too acted not unlike a human sponge, just soaking
up whatever ability was close to him, things he could connect with,
seem very far away, paralyzed in a way that makes it hard to breathe.
He can feel warmth at the back of his head, but it's a peripheral kind
of acknowledgment, the kind that takes note and then shuffles said
note away. Long since having learned the futility of struggling
against this manner of a hold, one would think he'd remember, but he
either doesn't, or doesn't care, tensing as if all the will he has
left could loose him from this. It can't. He knows.

Words don't come. What he might say, what he wants to say--that Sylar
can't leave, that this is between them, that he doesn't understand
anything anymore but he knows his brother is gone and that Sylar is
the reason for that. Still, he fights against the invisible strings
that seem to keep him from moving right down to his fingertips, the
only coherent fluctuation being that of his inhales and exhales and
the too rapid beating of his own heart.

Strange, but he swears he can hear the ticking of clocks mixed in with
it, but madness of one degree or another seems to run in the family.
He might be long overdue.


Sylar takes his time getting himself fixed up, pushing broken bones here and there to instantly reset. His outfit is a mass of blood now, and it’s really too bad how often that happens to his nice coats. He lets Peter sit up there and struggle, and it reminds him of earlier times. Peter managed to stop him then, stuff him in a cell in a medically-induced coma. This time it’s possibly more dangerous, because it isn’t an outside power that’s caused it.

He finally stares up at Peter and drops his hand, staring. What he sees is something he doesn’t like, and something he doesn’t want to admit. “No, I don’t think it’ll help you at all,” he says quietly, almost to himself.

With a frown, he reaches up and closes his hand, almost into a fist. His telekinesis puts pressure around Peter’s throat, taking a cue from him and intending to choke the man into unconsciousness.