I'm like a prisoner getting ready to talk.

[justdoingmyjob.livejournal.com]

When; BACKDATED INSANELY B| early early the 24th...of December. Yeah.
Rating; PG...? PG-13? Honestly it's...not...IDK JUST TO BE SAFE.
Characters; Peter Petrelli and Gabriel Sylar
Summary; Things come to a head around Nathan Petrelli, but Peter's never been especially good at being the hunter.
Log;

When Peter wakes up, everything still hurts but that's not exactly a
surprise. It takes him more than a moment to root himself again
though, half-truths and wholes splitting through the seams of a
smoother consciousness. A curse gets lost in a groan as he works to
force himself up, leaning heavily on the side of the building, far
enough back in an alley that he knows no one's seen him; no one who
cares, at least. Fingertips to forehead are cold to cold, and his
breaths huff out in smokescreen type puffs, sitting in the air like
pieces of a curtain to keep himself from the rest of the world, but he
doesn't have time for that. Looking up the side of the building, he
catches a glimpse of someone, and really it could be anyone, but going
with his gut--it's very close to the last hint remaining that he has
to go on at all anyway--he makes his way into the lobby of said
building, glad of its vacant state.

An elevator up and then that last flight of stairs brings him to the
roof, and rather than sneak up like last time, he simply opens the
door, hands and eyes and everything exposed to the cold for too long
now burning as he steps out.

Again, words don't seem to have a place here, and his body feels
tired, brittle with the winter and exhausted with too many truths.
Hate has never been Peter's strong point, and neither is revenge, but
it feels like the only thing he has left where Nathan is concerned. No
one can fill that void. No one should. But someone should justify the
emptiness. They say an eye for an eye in some places, and they say to
walk away in others, and the plain reality of it is that he's never
been good at either one, but it's all he can do now to make an
exception.

In the face of all of this, or despite it, he does have a question.

Why?

It's been a long time since it was as 'simple' as just wanting to be
more powerful, the black and white antagonist of movies and other
fiction.

But he doesn't know that he can bring himself to ask, so he just
stands there, staring, willing the other man to make the first move,
but willing to take that on too if he waits too long. They aren't on a
deadline, but everything feels just this side of fevered and faltering
on Peter's side, and he knows he hasn't got the physical details on
his side this time, not for so long in fact, but he wants to hurt this
man. That much he knows and has, at this point no scruples about. It's
just a matter of 'how' at this point, biting wind scraping across his
skin while he stands, watching, wondering what goes on inside Gabriel
Sylar's head, and if it's even worth it to wonder anymore. Probably
not.

Sylar’s been here for quite awhile, stopping at his apartment only to change his coat. It’s not a night he can spend inside, and he somehow had the feeling that Peter might follow him. He’d hoped it wouldn’t happen, but- well, if it had been him…

He doesn’t acknowledge Peter’s presence at first, still staring up at the stars. He was wondering why, too. He was also trying to decide what to do about it, but not even someone who could see all the angles knew that.

Eventually he decides to give Peter a little of what he wants. “It’s too bad the Haitian isn’t here. Last time, you took his powers, beat me to within an inch of my life and used a nail gun to crucify me.” He feels a little rising anger at that- it had really hurt, but all it results in is a shrug. “You took some memories, too, in order to try and draw Nathan out. Obviously I don’t know what they are now, but- I suspect years of my watchmaking career are gone.” It wasn’t much of a loss, really.

Sylar frowns and looks at the ground, uncomfortable for once. “You got a chance to say goodbye,” he adds, with a swallow.

Mention of the Haitian has his interest piqued in spite of himself,
but it dies away quickly enough, replaced with the overbearing twist
and turn of what could be simplified as anger but really oughtn't be.
There are too many layers, too many back doors, too many trap walls to
deal with to 'simplify' any of this anymore. His steps toward Sylar
are measured, pointed, solid as if every motion anchors him to a
heavier center.

Then he hears that and what tremble of resolve there was to
bide his time this go-round dissipates.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" To say his tone colors
itself ironic is an understatement, but tone likely isn't what either
of them are focusing on when he rushes the other man again, fast
enough, with enough momentum to throw the bulk of his weight into in
order to get him pinned against the ledge of the building. It's a
snapping reactionary kind of attack that his him grabbing the collar
of his shirt, not wincing when he hears the sound of skull to
concrete, not hesitating with a hale of punches, as if he could beat
this evil within an inch of his life just the way he is. He can't.
Again, he knows, but he's beyond letting practicality stop him from
trying.

The sad thing was, it was supposed to make Peter feel better, although- obviously not right away. It’s something Peter will know for later, that in the future he isn’t denied that, at least. It was all Sylar had.

It’s hard to concentrate when your skull cracks, and Sylar’s finding this out right now. It’s even harder when it cracks in several places. The punches rattle him around until he barely knows what’s going on. Sylar has never been all that great with pain and right now, it’s all he feels. He has to stop it. He cries out with a warbling wail and rolls to the side, lucky that the telekinesis is so ingrained in him by now that he uses it automatically.

Once he’s moved far enough, the TK slides him across the ground one way and Peter another. It’s crude, but it works. He pants as he attempts to sit up, cringing as he starts trying to set his body right again.

Being, for all intensive purposes or not, dragged across raw cement in
the cold, for the record, hurts. As there isn't any particular care
being exerted here, he can feel the back of his neck as it scrapes
itself raw to bleeding until he comes to a stop, whenever that is.
Once again the person who ought to be on defense, but can't really
throw himself into either court, he clenches his jaw and forces
himself up against that invisible hold, fruitless, but he can't just
lie down and settle for nothing.

Sylar coughs up more blood and continues to pull bones back into place, and eventually he takes a full, deep breath. He struggles to stand, but once he’s up, he seems fine- a little bloody, but fine.

He stares at Peter, the way Peter’s held back, and he searches. His gaze is piercing but unapologetic as he stares back at the man, looking through his soul. “Peter. I apparently can’t even let you kill me. Even if you managed it, it wouldn’t make you feel any better. It would just make you feel like me, and you really don’t want that.”

He doesn’t expect this will stop anything- it’ll probably just make him more mad, but maybe they’ll get a chance to talk it out rather than Sylar just being pummeled, and Sylar decides he’d honestly prefer that more.

What Sylar wants is far from Peter's concern, always has been really,
as much as it could be with anyone, and what pipe dream might have
existed of seeing some common ground--begrudgingly as it would have
surely been--has made its exit, messy and unattended. It's a losing
battle, to fight what hold Sylar has on him, but he can't help but
try. He has to at least do that much, so he struggles, struggles to an
extent that some would perceive more as hurting himself than anything
else.

"I will never feel like..." and he stops short because he
doesn't even know how he feels now. He knows what he wants, and he
knows what he's willing to do, but everything else is a jagged blur, a
fuse and flame of contradictions that would be better left off to
someone with less investment, but it's been too late for that for so
long. It's difficult to remember what it was like to not live fearing
the day he would not hate his brother but simply look for him and
realize he wasn't there, and while it's true we all die in time, the
fact remains, this man standing above him has been responsible for so
many early deaths that it seems worse, feels worse.

"I felt bad for you!" He can tell that he's yelling but it's not like
it matters how loud he is, or how quiet. Nothing will change. "As sick
and twisted, and...and screwed up as you are, somehow, I ended up..."
and his laugh crafts itself a bitter picture, fragmented and pieces
all scattered beneath the carpet. "...what a waste of time." Peter
doesn't remember using this tone with anyone, not ever before now.
Somewhere in the subtlety of caustic inflection is Angela Petrelli,
the manipulative powerhouse who would do anything to save her sons and
then anything to save a lie, and somewhere beneath all that he's sure
there's an echo of Arthur Petrelli, the monster that he doesn't even
like to think of as 'dad', much less call him as such. They
make for something dolomite reminiscent, tougher than Peter's ever
wanted or tried to be, and it says something that it's easier in a
blink to become this way when one feels like everything else is
hollow.

At odds with the cold is all the heat made from friction of skin to
stone and the sheer tension of fighting against what holds him in
place.

"I can't even ask you if you understand. How could you? Someone who
killed his own mother."

It's the lowest blow he's dealt before, possibly to anyone. He just
doesn't tend to let his mind break through those unfair vantages of
what a person's done and what they might do, but all bets are off as
of over twenty-four hours ago. Nothing is certain, and worst of all
the feeling building is that he should have been able to see this one
coming.

Should have. Would have. Could have.

Pathetic really.

Sylar frowns at Peter’s assertion of prior sympathy. It’s too bad, but he knew that one was coming. He takes it stoically, knowing that it would never happen again- that in all those lines he crossed, he finally passed the unforgivable line for the most caring person he’d probably ever met.

It’s easy to harden against the expected verbal assault, but his eyes flick up as Peter blames him for Virginia’s death. That one haunted him- sometimes literally- and no one seemed to understand how it happened. Of course, out of all the ones he’d committed, that was the only one the cops had enough evidence for. If they ever caught him again, it’d be what he’d be convicted for. And that would be poetic, wouldn’t it? The one he didn’t actually mean to cause…

After a long pause, he says shortly, “It was an accident. She attacked me and it just-” He stops himself from talking about his mother and lets out a deep breath. The fire in his eyes will tell Peter that his blow hits home. “You think I wanted this to happen?” he asks, loudly, accusing. He takes a couple steps toward Peter. “You think I wanted to do this to you? It was the only way I could get to the President.”

He’ll never admit that he was following the advice from a twelve-year-old, but Micah seemed to understand how to start towards something meaningful. He had wanted to be the one to save everyone- in some respects, that never changed. He thought he could manage it all, follow other people’s wishes, and his mother’s wishes, and he’d gain the trust of people again. But it doesn’t work out that way. It never works out that way, and it was damn annoying.

As if that's any excuse. At this point Peter can't tell if he's made
sicker by his Sylar or himself, but the combination proves enough to
have him spiraling beyond what on another day he might have been able
to perceive as sensible or something worth anchoring to, worth holding
on for.

"How was it an accident? No, don't even...I don't want to hear it." He
changes his mind in mid accusation, mid everything, nothing allowed to
complete in the space left between them. "Even if some of the things
you've ever admitted were true, plenty of them were lies too. You're
not sorry any of this happened. You started out wanting power, and you
got it, and you wanted to be special, and you got that, and now...now
you want everything so I guess that's what you're going after. But you
know what, you're alone."

The ache in the back of his head from before has a tension splitting
through his skull that seems to foster a ringing sound he knows no one
else can hear, and he tries not to flinch, tries only to move, to get
out of this forced stasis even a little, all to no avail. Peter's
never been good at hurting people with words. That was always Angela's
strength, is, really, but it's the only thing he has to fight with
when reduced like this, making it clearer all the more to him how
sorry this entire thing has become, but he won't back down. He can't.

At the very least his gaze does not waver, not once, from the other
man's eyes, as if to say: I'm not afraid of you.

What he doesn't say, not yet is: you look like you're afraid of yourself.

It was everything that he’d told his own father. Everything. He never wanted to be alone, not at all. He’d done all this to try and impress someone, to make somebody proud of him, or to admire him. Fear never cut it, but it made a temporary substitute.

That wasn’t fair. He hadn’t wasted his life, not yet. He still had a chance. He always did here. Maybe he had lost it with Peter, but-

Wasn’t he always alone? The truth was, he never had that connection, and he never would.

“My father was right,” he says, after a very long moment. He raises his hand and swipes it to the side- this simultaneously picks Peter up off the ground and slams him into the wall nearest the edge of the roof. He keeps Peter still, attached to the wall. “I’m a predator, a hunter. I was never anything else, and it was foolish to try.”

He curls three fingers in his right hand under, until he’s pointing at Peter’s head. With a sneer, he addresses the man on the concrete. “Tell me, Pete. If I open your head up and take your brain, if I had your power, would I be able to understand? Would I be able to connect with people? Maybe I should have done this ages ago and ended it, saved a lot of people a lot of trouble…”

His hand trembles very slightly.

It's difficult for Peter to answer the question, vision swimming
together to do nothing good for the way this whole situation makes him
feel sick to begin with. His hands curl just barely and he can feel
the shivers right down into each individual fingertip, as if the small
shakes could pull him apart. Survival instinct has part of him in a
panic, but it's distant, locked away in a room all contained and
acting like a stranger he doesn't know how to talk to, doesn't know
how to reach.

Months ago, when he first arrived, no, a little after that, after
curses, after he had time to see where things had come from and where
they might have otherwise gone, Sylar's words might have had another
effect, almost definitely in fact, but as things stand now, Peter
barely registers them at all. Some notion of being seen as better than
he is seeps in through the cracks, but only to hit the imperfection of
knowing he's not anything to be modeled after, to be striving for. He
isn't this man before him, but he's come a long way from the dream he
thought he could become. It seemed like it was in their hands--his,
and Nathan's--all that time ago above Kirby Plaza, when things were
safe and everything Peter had ever believed in felt justified.

That one moment. He wouldn't give it away for anything, but knowing
there's no hope of feeling that way again drags him down without a
breath to spare.

"No one," his voice rasps, uneven and strained from cold, from
exertion, from the pathetic truth of having to swallow back tears
because at the center of all of this is Nathan, Nathan who isn't
really anywhere anymore, and beside it a mother he doesn't know what
to make of and a world that will always need fixing...and Peter finds
himself scared of no longer knowing if he has what it takes to press
on with only trying. "No one's going to be able," it's hard to
breathe. "...be able to fix you or..." and he has to pause again,
shuddering. "...or what you've turned into." It's the only scrap of
admission that maybe he wasn't always like this, but it pales compared
to the overlying message.

No one's going to forgive you or make it better.

Not me, not even you.

It was this reply, what Sylar had expected, that had caused his hand to shake before. It was a door slamming in his face, any hope he might have had was lost. And worse than that, it was the final door, because this was the man who always had hope, even when it was so very foolish to. This was what Sylar had done to him, and it was what Sylar does. He’s broken so he breaks. What a turn around from the quiet, unsatisfied watchmaker. It figured that eventually a wheel would fly out of place, bring everything else to a screeching halt.

He’d had so many chances, and he didn’t even know he was throwing them away. He’d always been so picky- everything had to be perfect or not at all. Perhaps it was time to compromise. He couldn’t be a good person and he couldn’t be admired and he couldn’t die, so he really only had one option left. He’d do what he was good at.

“Fine,” he spits out, flicking the outstretched finger to the right. “If I can’t be fixed, then I guess I’ll just keep going. After all, I am a killer. Might as well take out the whole family, leave no mourners….well, other than Claire, but there’s not much we can do about that right now, is there? I’m sure we’ll find some way to kill each other, eventually.”

By this point, Peter’s body had sailed back to him, and he held Peter by the throat, dangling the man off the edge. He leans in and stares Peter in the eyes. “Maybe, in the grand scheme of things, it’s better to take the Petrellis out of commission, don’t you think? I’d bet your folks have hurt a lot more lives than even I’ve managed.” He stops to think about it for a moment, and the smirk leaves his face, leaving a blank expression.. “So far, anyway.”

The honest to God truth about Peter's own opinion on his family in
general--and this is just having to do with Arthur and Angela--is that
it's low, very low, and he couldn't find the words to refute Sylar's
words if he tried, but Peter doesn't try, not right now, hands closing
around the wrist he can barely make out in the dark, but it's not the
dark that has him struggling so much as his own vision, swimming and
doing him no favors to say the least. It snaps back to something
vaguely resembling a coherent focus, glaring, a distant narrowing of
the eyes when, slower than he should, he registers that Claire's name
has gotten dragged into the melee of things that Peter knows--knows
better than he knows a thousand other things-- for the umpteenth time
she never should have been involved with in the first place.

And for a moment he hates himself. He's chosen a bad time to lose his
mind, those vestiges of rationality tell him. She's going to be upset.
Understatement. With him.

I deserve it.

For doing this. For apparently not saving Nathan at home. For everything.

What's left to defend?

The remaining strings snap off, staccato pinches of sound in air that
crackles with everything unpleasant.

"Fuck you," and he sounds like a stranger, even to himself, especially
to himself, as he musters all the leverage of his body weight and a
pull of hands down on the arm holding him, enough that he could swing
himself toward the roof, the trouble being that with as little control
as he has, it's more likely to go the other way around, sending them
both over the edge.

It really hasn’t been long since Sylar found himself falling off a building- this one is much higher, of course, but there was only so fast one could fall. He’ll survive. He’ll survive and Peter will die, just as he had supposedly intended.

But what a waste that would be, really. And something in Sylar just can’t let that happen- it isn’t Nathan, as Nathan was dead and gone. But there’s a protectiveness that still held firm, ridiculous but ever-present even so. He can’t let Peter die.

Telekinesis would slow their fall, but not enough. There were too many variables for Sylar to compensate for. He needs to fly—unfortunately, with Nathan gone, that’s harder than it used to be. Apparently the ability was impossible to control without the man it belonged to rattling around in Sylar’s head.

He shifts before he even notices, jaw squaring out and old scars he’s never earned coming to the surface. It feels right, his mind clicking with certainty over to a completely new set of memories. And he flies, overcompensating as he pulls Peter closer to him. They’re above the building in no time, looking down at the rooftop they’d just been fighting on. Once he realizes that they’re both safe from splattering on the sidewalk, he lowers them down towards it slowly. “I’ve got you, Pete,” slips out without him even noticing, the encouragement an echo of memories long past.

In the moment that he thinks he's really going to die, he curses
himself seven ways to Hell and back for not being more of everything
he ought to have been, some of those things being the factors that
would have kept him from this situation in the first place. His vision
is spotty again at best and he can't tell if it's from injury or cold
or both that it's hard to breathe, but whatever discomfort he's in he
knows he's earned it, deserves it. Selfish. Stupid. Impulsive. And if
he has to answer 'what were you thinking?' the truth of the matter is
that he wasn't, and he knows that too. The struggle in the air with
gravity, with Sylar, with everything building up into this sad, sorry,
excuse for a moment, has him slipping between knowing precise reality
from something more like a nightmare, so when he hears that
voice, forcing his own eyes to clear again, he shakes through every
bone in his body, shivers and reaches, his fingers clutching at
familiar shoulders and his sight anchoring to a familiar face.

Speechless at first, he can't find anything to say at all until he
feels the soles of his shoes hitting the roof, and he'd be ashamed
either way to feel stinging behind his eyes that leads to hot tears
over ice-cold cheeks, making him feel five. He'd be ashamed, whether
it was Sylar, whether it was Nathan, whether he was home, whether he
was here. He is ashamed, rather, and though every logical point
left to him says let go, it's as if his hands aren't responding
to the cues in his brain.

How can he look away?

It turns out, after everything, he still doesn't know how.

"Nathan...?" his voice cracks like frozen glass, but if it cuts anyone
it's only him when it falls back into his throat.

He wants to be. Despite all the stupid, self-absorbed, and misguided things Nathan had done in his life, he still had people with him. He still had family. He still had a brother. And for a brief moment, Sylar thinks that maybe he should go ahead with his old place and just take Nathan’s life. It hadn’t been so bad, being him. And he had done a better job of it, trying to fix the wrongs Nathan had unknowingly committed.

But that wasn’t him, then. The real part of him was stuck inside of Matt Parkman. Sylar would never have a chance to replace a real person for more than a short while, not even with all of his abilities. Nothing was going to be able to fix him and he was always going to be alone. The man standing before him with hope in his eyes was right- there was nothing for him here, no matter how much he wanted it.

He pushes Peter sharply away at the chest, telekinesis assisting him. His face shifts back into his own shocked visage as he stumbles backwards himself. “No. Nathan is dead,” he spits out angrily. “And you’re lucky you aren’t dead yourself, after that.”

Peter’s going to yell at him next, spit out insults that would surpass even Claire’s and probably attack him again. Sylar really didn’t want to deal with it anymore. He’d given Peter his chance, Peter did his best and failed…like anyone did against him. He’d continue on, as he always did.

So he raises his hand up and cuts off the man’s air with telekinesis once more, glaring at him until he loses consciousness.

As it turns out, Peter doesn't have anything to say to him, anything
that words will constitute better than actions anyway, and the action
he would like to take against Gabriel Sylar places itself not only out
of his hands but out of his ability. It kills him twice over to know
Nathan is dead, to have felt that remnant presence only to know he's
truly gone and understand, at the end of the line in this place, he
hasn't got what is required to exact the first and last vengeance he's
ever really felt set upon.

Logically, stepping back, the only proof he has is Sylar's word and a
zero sense that Peter believed in before superhuman abilities ever
came into the picture, that of family. That brief period of time, when
Gabriel and Nathan came to odds and one couldn't assert himself while
the other had no life leftover to dispute the lie of it all, Peter
didn't know the difference, but it wasn't just because of the same
skin and the same voice, not even the same memories, the same place of
emotional departure that had him angry more than anything else, and
beneath that, fearful. No, it had something to do with that missing
beat, that scratch off a letter that said something was off. He just
didn't know what at the time.

Unconsciousness is a bizarre thing, able to happen without one knowing
it and able to happen with excruticating slowness to the point that a
person knows nothing else except those thoughts sharpened and shoved
through to the surface before the darkness. In Peter's mind, there is
Kirby Plaza. There is Claire, crying, Claire who should never have
been given such terrible and justifiable reasons to cry in the first
place, Claire who he loves, Claire who he owes, Claire who he
sometimes guesses has that intangible fear of each death being another
stone step along her path of immortality. He tries to think of an
apology and each one of them in split second intervals is worse than
the other. Aside from Claire, there is Nathan, and everyone else seems
to disappear.

This is the Nathan that Peter wants to remember, the man who came
through in the end, the man who saved New York. And more than that,
his brother. Someone Peter loved, and someone who loved Peter in
return. Family.

All of Nathan's trespasses on trust seem to dull in the face of his
death, something that can't be rectified but as a result has the
neverending potential to have had it, as if the possibility of
redemption might be enough. No one is perfect, no one is even close
really, and Peter knows this, always knew it. Trying to fit Nathan
into the stained glass of a saint is laughable, and neither does he
fit the boxes and spreads of a comic book, but he has facets that
remind Peter of things far more specific than that. Good and bad, but
it's a well known fact that shadows can't be cast without light.

Their dad never thought much of Peter, and Peter couldn't care less
anymore about Arthur Petrelli. Their mom has never been easy to read
as far as any of her thoughts go, and Peter has started to believe he
can't trust her, could never trust her as a result. But Nathan, Nathan
was reachable, not as a role model, but as a strong shoulder, as the
idea of blood calling to blood, as that person who would stand by him
when it came down to the wire, and while he has enough history
attesting to both sides of that, it's Peter's choice to be angry not
for any of the wrong choices Nathan made, but for the right ones he'll
never get to make.

The worst thing is to find out how much of a dreamer he still is, to
have thought, at the end of the day, things would be okay.

And it's not fair, to mount everything onto one man's death, not when
there are still people worth protecting, worth loving, but this moment
crowds itself in around him like a storm and his rationality hasn't
been in play for over forty-eight hours. When he lets go, he doesn't
even know what he's letting go of, not specifically, but it hurts.

It's telling that when Peter wakes up, the first thing he'll think
will be I'm sorry.