let there be peace on earth
Jan. 23rd, 2010 01:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
black_hatTitle: let there be peace on earth
Word Count: 9, 711
Rating: PG-13.
Prompt from the fic fest: " Five times Sylar and Elle are puzzled by little Noah kind,pacific nature along the years they watch him grow up: their boy is actually a healer, a social activist,a buddhist and whatever else...
Warning: Unbetaed!! And a little angsty. I might try this theme again, a little more humorously.
1)
“I’m worried...”
This statement did not come from Elle. It came from Gabriel. This was not a good sign. She couldn’t tell him off because she was currently having a baby. Instead, she made her body go as limp as she could with muscle contractions, trying to cause trouble.
He was carrying her. They were also fleeing through the woods. A footnote to that was they were being chased. Gabriel was in no-kill mode (for now), but he was moving pretty fast.
She squeezed his shoulder, drawing blood through his sweater. He caught her eye and grinned. “About your water breaking on my new shirt.”
Elle squeezed harder. It was night, so it wasn’t hard to hide. But she was going to sound like a train. He set her down where the ground sloped and formed a small hole. She laid her head back and saw green in between the pulsing red behind her eyes.
“God,” she hissed. She wanted to unleash her lightning so bad. She could barely control it. Hence Gabriel’s presence. He was helping her hold it back with one of his new snazzy powers, but dammit, he could do something about the pain. The PAIN.
Oh and unfortunately he was the father.
“It’ll be over soon enough. It’s what every normal, mundane woman goes through. A universal state, for women.”
“Rarrr,” she growled.
“Some women even die during childbirth,” he commented, and cut a slit down her nice dress pants. They fell apart, two black strips. She didn’t much care. She didn’t want to reach for him so she clutched at the ground and found a rock. It cut into her hands, but it was something to hold.
She felt vulnerable, like a beached whale surrounded by (whale-eating) wolves. She’ll never have sex again. Yes, it seemed like a long shot, but ohmygod…suddenly she can’t even mentally joke with herself anymore. She was here before: on her back, with all this light, and just pulsing pain.
“Elle.” His face swam above her. Something was being pushed in her mouth—what now?…but it was a stick. “Bite it. Good girl.
Reflectively, she did. She has seen movies. She’d figure—
Gabriel started to move her into place. She let him, reflexively. It was just like biting the stick. She was going to snap it in two later. She felt him put a warm hand on her knee, and the pain started to ebb. That made just as much sense as his mysterious lack of stubble.
She had told him that it was over. That he couldn’t have her. He could have her body (as evidenced) but never her. Now, he wouldn’t leave her alone. She could sense the desperation in his touch, the way he seemed to want to grab something deeper inside of her.
All she cared about was that her bare feet were ankle-deep in cold, serpentine mud.
In the distance, she could hear them coming, and for a weird minute, she could see them. Not just their skin and ugly faces, but them. It was a weird overlay, of foreign images and places she had have been before, and when the pain got into a scary white level, she felt something through Gabriel’s touch.
She was standing in a parking lot with a woman dead, bleeding from the head.
She was a child in a confessional booth for five hours.
She was afraid to leave when her mother threatened suicide.
She was what they fought about when he finally left one night for cigarettes.
She watched the world pass by with so much wrong that it hurt to go outside.
She saw herself holding out a watch and felt such a drowning, clinging need of salvation and home and love that it scared the living fuck out of her. She had never loved herself like that, and it was impossible to accept. It was easier to accept that need to cut open her head to finally understand.
To know everything there was to know about her. Like the goose that laid the golden egg, the only problem with that approach was…
This was completely different from the rooms inside of her, and it was strange and dusty, frames of pictures of everyone else. She had reinvented herself and wanted out, even if the Company had been the only thing she had known.
This was Gabriel, something so wholly personal that it shocked her. His feeling were hers, his skin was hers…She’d have never been able to get this close.
Then the pain hit again, and she let out a high-pitched noise from behind the stick.
“He’s upside down,” Gabriel observed. “Hold on, I’ll flip him.”
Dear shitting what the how is-----she was about to pass out.
“Keep pushing, Elle. You can do it.”
She was seven years old going on seven years old for the rest of her life, and if he wanted her to push and be tough, she’d do it.
She pushed and felt a whole world come out of her. (kind of gross) Her head fell back and she was spent. Done. She couldn’t move. And who was screaming?
Oh. That little red raisin in Gabriel’s hands. Oh that.
Looking at his still and careful face, this was his new thing. Elle was confident that he’d mess it up again, so she didn’t care beyond just laying down and going to sleep. There were dogs barking in the distance. Someone should shut those dogs up.
“Well. You’re too important for them to allow the luxury of death. I hope they furnish the cell with a window for you.”
She’s ten years old handing flowers to a girl who tripped her in response. She’s wishing they had been able to have a Christmas tree and invite more people into the house even if she’d never understand people, not really. She’s holding her mother’s hand while she cries, and even together, she was so alone. No one else was like her, you see…it needed to stop.
He would have killed her rather than let anyone else have her, but now….he did have something of his own. So she could wait for him in a cell until he came back from her.
“Leave, then,” she hissed, not wanting to know more about him.
“Goodbye, Elle.”
She closed her eyes, listening to the sounds of the baby’s crying starting to fade behind the trees. When it all fell apart for him (as it always does), he’d be back. Yet he was still here, echoes of him, as images kept dripping through her head. She wanted to claw him out of her.
Unused to this kind of pain, she gritted her teeth, steeling herself against anymore of this freakishly unpleasant…caring when—
Naturally, Elle had expected Gabriel to walk right at the men with their little dogs and their little guns, and basically, toss them into the air without a second thought. Instead, she heard a strangled cry from Gabriel, not the men.
“Don’t move, or I’ll shoot.”
She heard the baby still wailing. She thought about Gabriel being killed. And there was that feeling. It wasn’t entirely foreign to her, but the earlier sensations were like a trickle of air compared to a waterfall of rushing water.
She got to her feet, feeling the blood between her thighs, and peered over the edge of the soil into the clearing. Gabriel was on his knees, one hand held out towards the men with the guns. Only he wasn’t pushing them away or killing him. His face was a picture of agony.
For some reason, that got her into action. She unleashed her fury upon the men, and they didn’t have time to scream, let alone realize what had happened to them.
They were lucky. Cause she was still hurting and she wanted to kill him deader than dead, and there he was on the ground, but she couldn’t. Couldn’t. But something else was wrong. She didn’t want to leave without him.
(Live without—oh scratch that thought.)
Gabriel stared up at her, horror-stricken.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “There’s no one to lock me up. Go on and kill me.
“…I felt him die,” Gabriel said, looking at a charred corpse. He held the small, mewling thing in his arms up in awe. Forget the fact that he was pale and sweating. “I saw his whole life. Felt things that I thought only I experienced.”
Elle stared at him. In hatred, of course.
“So I take it you’re not going to kill me?”
Gabriel glared at her. Oh so wanting to.
“Well, shit,” she said.
***
Elle had to hand it to him. Gabriel was stubborn. Single-minded.
Her son caused him so much pain. Gabriel thought the baby was his, but obviously not. He could hardly bear to touch him without wincing. Elle on the other hand was fine. Disregarding her feelings for Gabriel (that were completely out of her control), she could hold Noah. Could take care of him. And last but certainly not least—Gabriel suddenly couldn’t kill. AKA: couldn’t defend himself.
Therefore, Gabriel had to take her along with him. Her presence hurt him too. With Noah, the previous wounds were even worse. (Elle had the intuition that that was also why he had taken her with him, the masochist.)
Elle stayed because a single flinch from him was the purest reaction she had ever gotten from anyone. She had a place now, since he needed her so much.
And he had to put up with her, so there.
***
Elle bounced Noah on her lap. They were in the latest hotel room, killing time, and there was nothing good on TV. He was asleep on the second bed besides them.
Ironically, Gabriel was good with babies. He couldn’t hold Noah but he told her how to bath him. What the proper position was for him to sleep. Got the best little baby supplies and toys for him. Reminded her to feed him. (always from across the room)
She got up slowly, lifting Noah up above Gabriel…and lowered the squirming baby down on his father’s chest. Gabriel’s peaceful expression started to grow stormy, and then he clenched his teeth. He opened his eyes in horror.
“Noah doesn’t like you,” she informed him before taking the baby away. “Why don’t you just leave?”
“I won’t leave my son with you,” he choked out.
“Guess you’re trapped then.”
“He doesn’t need either of us. We’ll only hurt him,” Gabriel argued. “I don’t want him to be me.”
“Do you want to put him up for adoption?” she offered.
Gabriel looked stricken.
“Because he’s yours, you won’t. So stop talking about it. Goodnight,” she chirped, and went to bed, cradling Noah and kissing him on the cheek.
***
For several months, it was fun. Torturing Gabriel with Noah.
But then it started to grow stale. Gabriel wasn’t so bad: he had gotten her the Bennets’ old house to raise a family in. Besides, not even her daddy screamed at her every time he saw her.
So, one night, she hunted Gabriel up. He was asleep on the couch.
“Be nice to Daddy. Let him uh….forgive himself.” How cheesy. But Noah wiggled and seemed to understand.
She set Noah down on his chest. The little baby held out his small hands and touched his father’s face. At first, the same wince was there, but then…there was an expression she had never seen on his face. Ever. As Gabriel. As Sylar. As some weird hybrid of the two. Ever.
An expression of peace.
***
Now Gabriel didn’t leave because he knew the difference between how he felt there and how he felt outside.
He was hers. But he might have been Noah’s a bit more.
She could live with the terms.
2)
Milo the Cat was in deep shit.
Or in just really deep water. The wooden box bobbed and bounced in the torrents of the river.
Elle had been surprised by Gabriel’s choice of entertainment. He was slumped on the couch, with his arms crossed. Their baby boy, four years old now, wearing a blue sponge-bob shirt, was propped against his long legs, his dark eyes taking in the scene playing out on the TV.
She had walked in during the baby chicken scene.
“Gross. But now I’m really hungry for some reason.”
“Paradox,” Gabriel said with a smirk.
“What’s up, buttercup?” Elle asked. “Why are you watching baby chickens? Do they make you hot?”
He tilted his head back, closing his eyes. “Noah likes it. He cries every time I try and change the channel.”
“You big softie.”
His expression was one of great pain. Elle snuggled up against him, looping her arm in his, and laid her head on his shoulder.
The movie was actually very funny. Anyway, Milo was in deep shit.
“That rope is going to break,” Elle whispered, giggling. “That cat is going to sink like a stone.”
She imagined, oh so clearly, the remains of the cat being nibbled on by the fishies at the bottom in a dramatic twist of fate. Since Gabriel liked fate and all that jazz, she shared her insight.
“That’s so wrong, even for you,” Gabriel whispered back, but his smile was dark and devilish now. Ohh.
“Bye-bye, puddie cat.”
“He honestly has no survival skills.”
“Here it goes,” Elle breathed in excitement, watching the rope start to fray and the knot start to give.
“Going, going…” Gabriel began, his body shaking with laughter.
“Gone!” Elle cackled as the box was tossed by the waves, the wet cat meowing helplessly at the bottom of the crate. The dog, Otis (cute name for a dog, right), was running along side the back, sick with worry and fear for his friend.
They were in hysterics, the pair of them, and so they didn’t notice their son wandering towards the TV, his small hands stretched out towards the cat.
“Now this is what I call quality entertainment,” Elle praised. At that moment, Noah fell to the ground, crying and curling up into a ball. It was as if he was having a seizure.
“Oh my god,” Elle gasped. Gabriel was already on his feet. She watched him scoop of their screaming child and rush into the kitchen.
“What’s wrong with him?” Elle demanded, following suit, and saw that he had placed Noah on the kitchen table, studying him intensely. Noah’s poor little face was tomato red and tears were streaming from his eyes.
“I’m checking for internal bleeding,” Gabriel informed her, infuriatingly calm, hands on Noah’s sides, searching for something she couldn’t detect.
“Oh great, he’s dying,” Elle declared, calling it. She knew this had been a terrible idea. She had had no idea how much this would bother her, if it were to happen, but she figured it out soon enough. “Thanks a lot, Gabriel.”
“What?” he demanded, hackles raised.
“You get me pregnant and it dies, you asshole! What the fuck do you think?”
“Shut. Up!” he roared, and Noah screamed and screamed. She walked over. Or tried to. Elle felt invisible hands push her back. She wanted to stare him down, but all his attention was on Noah, his head tilted as though listening.
All she heard was the tick of the clock in the living room and the drone of the movie.
Noah wheezed. Gabriel had a tick himself, right above his eye.
“You can’t figure it out,” Elle whispered.
“Hey buddy,” Gabriel said, ignoring her. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
She crossed her arms.
“C-cc…”
They waited, hanging on his words.
“Cat go bye-bye.” Then he burst out crying again. Gabriel had never really looked shocked: not even when she was actually shocking him .Oh, he looked many things: in agony, angry, and aroused. But this time, he went perfectly still, looming over the small figure on the table. Then he took Noah into his arms, gently.
And Noah buried his face into his father’s chest and sobbed.
Elle still didn’t know what the hell was going on.
“He’s upset,” Gabriel translated.
“What would I do, without you to tell me that?” Elle mocked. “Seriously, no shit, Sherlock. What cat? An invisible cat? I don’t-.”
Gabriel, balancing Noah carefully, moved one finger to point into the room.
“…From the movie. Are you kidding me?”
“Let’s be quiet for a minute,” Gabriel said and walked past her. Sitting back on the couch, he rocked Noah back and forth, back and forth. How nice, she thought, unaware of source that the spark of irritation had emerged from. “Can you turn the TV off?”
She shot a bolt of lightning that knocked that sucker dead. Gabriel would have to fix it. The glare he gave her would have killed her if he had had that power.
“Well, I couldn’t ask about the technicalities,” she griped, sitting cross-legged on the floor. She definitely wasn’t going up to the couch. No matter what she felt.
After thirty minutes of rocking back and forth and no lull in the crying, Elle sighed.
“That’s obviously not working.”
“This technique is what all the books say to do in this situation,” Gabriel said, in a tone of utter sweetness. It meant he was really angry and being condescending.
“Then you’re doing it wrong? As in there’s something wrong with you? I’m glad you clarified.”
For some reason unbeknownst to her, her remark hit home. He didn’t say a word. Now things were getting serious. He flat-out ignored her while he rocked back and forth, back and forth. Kind of like a clock, come to think of it.
And it wasn’t hard to think of. In the den, the antique clock went ticktockticktock, and it began to needle at her. Noah wasn’t crying anymore but he was staring off into space, glassy –eyed.
Elle didn’t like to feel useless.
“You know, his reaction isn’t even a part of my reality,” Elle said. “Are you sure he isn’t sick? Do your empathy thing.”
Gabriel didn’t answer. That’s fine. She stood up, stretched dramatically, and waved goodnight. Elle felt his eyes burning a hole into her back all the way up the stairs.
***
Elle’d like to say that she slept like a baby but truth is, she didn’t.
She was up all night, waiting for her chance to snub him back. Eventually, she dozed off at four in the morning. She woke up at noon with no Gabriel in the bed besides her.
Well, it was noon. She wandered down the stairs, half-awake…to see her husband still rocking back and forth. She’d seen this before at the Company. It’s funnier when it’s not her husband.
She approached him slowly and noticed his eyes were still open. The one factor constant between Gabriel and Sylar was the dedication and stubbornness and endurance. Okay, several factors. But this was overkill.
Elle held out her palm and pushed against his forehead, stopping his motion.
He stopped, blinking owlishly behind his glasses. His forehead was hot.
“You did that. All night long.”
Noah was the sleeping figure among the three, his little hands clutching his father’s arms.
“Well, not exactly. There was an incident.”
Elle waited, curious despite herself. He seemed too tired to put up a fight today: pale with purple circles under his eyes. Soaked with sweat. Time to pry.
“Noah st…” Gabriel paused when Noah stirred in his arms restlessly. He resumed his statement in a whisper. Afraid of a little kid? Hah. “…Started to ask me what happened to the cat. I didn’t know what happened to the cat.”
“Why didn’t you lie?” she whispered, mockingly. Because she certainly wasn’t afraid of a little kid. Nope. Not one bit.
“I don’t want to lie to our son. No. I wasn’t going to lie, and I said I didn’t know. Then he wanted to know. Had to know. Then I had to know. And I turned back on the show.”
She gaped at him. “Uh. I don’t need to take a college course to know that was a bad idea, Mr. Intuitive Aptitude.”
“It wasn’t a bad idea,” he hissed, not quite tired enough after all. Then he slumped. She could tell he wanted to rock back and forth yet again so she didn’t move her hand. “It wasn’t a good idea either. The need to know is something Noah and I can understand. So, we watch it. The cat is alive, and therefore, Noah is happy. I convince myself that they wouldn’t actually kill the cat or the dog. I’m safe right?”
“What happened? Did they cut off the cat’s paw? Did he get blinded for life?”
Gabriel muttered something into Noah’s hair. Elle ‘ahem’ed.
“In a move completely irrelevant to the plot, an owl swooped down and killed a mouse. Don’t laugh.”
Too late. She laughed deep in her throat, struggling not to just burst out cackling. Then something occurred to her.
“I didn’t hear any soul-searing screams.”
“It was worse than that. Silent sobbing. All down the front of my shirt.”
“And you went with that old fail-safe. Rocking back and forth.”
“I want to turn off the show. But I know to him, that’ll be worse. I’m trapped. Trapped by a kid’s show. Then there’s a deep freeze. The animals are freezing in the show. Noah starts to shiver.”
“Cause he saw it on TV?”
“It’s like he is in the snow with them. Now, I’m scared.”
‘Scared’ she mouthed.
“Yes. I admit it. I didn’t know what was coming. What next? An air-raid? Will someone suddenly gas them? Are there landmines around? What about a plain old animal trap? Caught in barbed wire? I can’t control a-.”
Noah stirred, and Gabriel lowered his voice again, having gotten dramatic.
“Finally. The film ended.”
“Happily, I take it.”
“For the cat and the dog. The ideal for them. For us, there’s a kid with a fever.”
That snapped her into action. She bent down to look. Yes, his breathing was heavy and his face, just flushed red.
“And you just sat here, doing your stupid technique.”
“I wanted him to get some rest. Some kind of rest. It’s what I knew to do.”
“I’ll ask again. Is he sick?”
“Yes. But not from anything but his emotions.” At her look. “I did the empathy touch thing. It’s…”
“This is silly. Come on, snot-nose.” Noah blinked awake, whining slightly. “Mommy is here to save the day. Let’s get you away from mean ol’ Daddy.”
She added the last bit purely as a barb. Well-aimed. His mouth fell open and she quickly took Noah into her arms.
“Breakfast time for my sick little boy.”
Gabriel came to glare at her from the doorway. Ominous. Hell, she even thought she might have almost, just nearly, hurt his feelings.
“You don’t rock the snotty look as much as you think,” she teased, bouncing Noah on her hip.
“I stayed up all night.”
“You didn’t let me help.”
“There was nothing you could have done.”
“Yeah, and you did such a good job yourself,” she challenged. Noah actually seemed to be getting hotter in her arms, squirming as he seemed to take in his parents’ exchange.
“There…was little I could myself. That shows how delicate the situation was.”
“And the situation is-.”
“His emotions are huge. Like-.”
“Don’t get poetic on me, here,” Elle said, narrowing her eyes. Feeling a bit of dread in her stomach.
“All right. His emotions can affect him physically. When he does calm down, I know he’ll be fine. And if you don’t mind, I’m going to go change my shirt.”
Elle looked down at Noah.
Who didn’t calm down until his father came back, temper apparently appeased, and kissed him on the forehead. And kissed her on the forehead too.
Only then did his temperature go down.
3)
At the age of ten, Noah manifested his powers to their full extent.
Empathy. Oh great. Not surprising, but oh great. He had also picked up every power from his father. Gabriel had tears in his eyes when he gave up every clock in the house. Gabriel was sillier over things than people. She felt the same way about shopping.
But Noah was trouble. At age six, he was sent to preschool and took his shirt off his back to give to someone else. Literally.
He couldn’t go outside without becoming strange. His personality would shift, spread out everywhere, becoming a piece of everyone. He’d also cry out if there were too many people around. He was a very emotional child as well. One wrong move, and they could end up in a nuclear hole.
Elle had told Gabriel to go ask Peter what to do. Gabriel didn’t want to, fearing that good old Uncle Peter would lock Noah up, a danger to himself and others.
Over the years, Elle had been as understanding as she could be. When Noah kept having nightmares and making Gabriel sleep on the floor besides the little tyke’s bed, she’d smile while she dug her fingernails into the palms of her hand. She had laughed about the little incidents over dinner conversations.
“Can’t I turn things to gold so everyone can be happy, Daddy?”
Elle had tensed, her mood darkening.
“Well, maybe you can. You can do anything you want.”
And Noah actually took his father up on it. They had gone together to turn a dumpster into gold in the back of an alley. Leaving her out of course. And it was her father’s damn power. She’d laid in bed and hear them come in at three in the morning. Oh yeah, Noah could only go out when no one else was really awake.
He’d get bring home every sick animal that they found. He couldn’t stop himself from helping. And Gabriel just tried to help accomplish goals like he always did, in a neat little list.
Gabriel was an enabler.
It was stupider and stupider, and she saw the pattern emerging. Elle wasn’t stupid. Noah could stay in the house with them because they…didn’t feel things as other people did. Well, she didn’t know about Gabriel, but Noah could tolerate her the best.
So, it kinda sucked that he didn’t like her that much.
***
One time, they did ask Peter for help.
To his credit, Peter tried and tried to nullify Noah’s powers while he was unconscious upon their kitchen table. It turned out that due to Claire’s power of regeneration, power nullification wasn’t an option. Noah was stuck with what he had.
After Peter left, she killed Gabriel more times than she could count.
***
, Elle had been watching the birds gathering outside their home. They wanted to get closer to Noah. Therefore, it was a highly colorful migration, with all those birds sitting on the windowsill.
Watching her watch them. With their beady, little eyes. She sipped her coffee and imagined zapping them. It’d be like a miniature Fourth of July, with feathers exploding everywhere like fireworks.
“I see they haven’t given up.”
Gabriel wandered into the kitchen and tapped his fingers on the glass. The birds seemed to flutter harder, and one bird pecked the glass where his fingers were.
He scowled and pulled up a chair besides her. “That’s filthy. Guess who has to clean that up?”
“I could begin to like the birds,” she smirked. He unfolded his newspaper and prepared to ignore her. Ten minutes later, the emboldened bird tapped on the window with its beak. Gabriel narrowed his eyes at the little thing.
“Hmm. That’s weird. Doesn’t seem to like you much. Hey, didn’t Doc Suresh believe in reincarnation?”
“No, he was agnostic,” Gabriel muttered, distracted by the bird fluttering against the glass.
“They’re coming to get you, Gabbrrieell.”
He gaped at the window.
“Oh stop.” She rubbed his arm. “You take things a little too seriously, you know?”
“I’ve never heard that accusation before in my life. I’ve heard neurotic, anal, as adjectives, and hermit and kook as nouns.”
“Was needlessly self-effacing one of them?”
“I’ll add it to the list,” he said, but oh, he looked back at the paper. She got up and stood besides his chair, waiting for him to notice her. He didn’t, so she just moved closer and pressed the side of his face against her stomach gently. He didn’t move, just let her run her fingers through his hair. Lift some strands of his hair and letting them fall.
He set down the paper, and she felt a sudden pressure on her stomach as he pushed eagerly into the touch.
“Add sensitive to the list too,” she observed.
“Sensitive how?”
“We’ll have to do further research.”
“I’m assuming I’m the test subject?”
She felt his lips through her shirt. Well.
“I know you’re the test subject.”
“I’m all yours, then.”
The window blinds moved suddenly, snapping off the lights.
“You don’t want the birds to watch.” She rolled her eyes.
He ran his warm hands up and down the side of her legs, searching for the hemline of her skirt. At that moment, they heard Noah’s footsteps on the stairs, and Gabriel took his hands off of her so quickly one would have thought she had shocked him.
Noah didn’t even look at them. He just rushed outside and began to heal sick birds.
Really boring stuff, if you asked her. But no one ever did ask her.
***
They ate together that night. Noah was pale and tired.
His hands had turned yellow that afternoon because one bird had a broken wing. As a result, a lot more birds had dropped dead. Noah had passed out. It was this big thing. Gabriel had forbid her to talk about it. So, they were all quiet.
No unpleasant conversations here, no siree…bob.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of your powers in no time,” Gabriel said, looking guilty.
“Or we’ll just get rid of them, champ,” Elle said, toasting them with her glass.
“You could do that? I could go outside?” Noah asked, his whole body going rigid. His mouth dropped open. He whirled towards his father, eyes pleading.
Gabriel looked like he wanted to kill her.
And then it happened. Noah leapt to his feet and knocked his chair over in the process. It crashed against the ground. It was if he had seen them for the first time. He gaped at his father, turning paper white, and staggered from the room.
“…That was an overreaction,” Elle said, secretly not knowing what had just taken place.
Gabriel didn’t move. He closed his eyes, a mixture of relief and fear. Relief that something had finally ended, and fear of what was ahead.
“Uh, want to clue me in?”
“Noah just read my mind. He knows everything.”
***
That early morning, when most normal families were asleep, Noah tried to kill himself.
But first he tried to kill her. He burst into their bedroom, his hands sparking, and she was barely awake when Gabriel, half asleep himself, dove on top of her. She screamed out of fear when she smelt his burning flesh and his spasming body.
When it was over, Gabriel lifted his head, his clothes destroyed. Elle laid there, not knowing either to be mad, happy…and ended up being puzzled. They stared at Noah, who was breathing heavily in his little pajamas.
“You do still love Mommy,” he said and then sat down on the floor, hard.
She had nothing to say to this declaration. She didn’t know how to feel about it. Gabriel went to Noah and picked him up. Took him somewhere for two weeks, just the two of them. Probably somewhere completely isolated.
He wrote her. Didn’t say a word about Noah’s observation. Said Noah never meant to harm her. It would have driven him crazy if Elle had actually died. But Elle knew better.
That’s what Noah had wanted. To be driven crazy. It had almost tipped the scales firing a jolt of electricity that was meant to miss. He was so empathetic that he couldn’t be violent against himself.
He had wanted his father to kill him.
Elle had nothing to say about that except how empathy and the complete opposition ended up at the same place: hanging by a rope.
4)
For some reason, all the big fights happened in the kitchen. Right next to the silverware.
Temptation ensues. The fight over Noah’s decision to go fight a war (when he couldn’t stand to see an old lady in a wheelchair glide backwards down a flight of stairs—what the hell was up with that?!) had been epic.
And very quiet. They had all sat at the table, Noah naturally sitting nearer to his father. The suck-up. Elle kept her hands in sight, folded demurely at the wooden surface and purely ready to spark.
“I never expected this request. To buy hippy clothes and live out in a tent under a bridge singing kumbuyah…yeah, I was expecting it. To let kittens eat your dead-dying flesh for their life…sure. BUT this.”
Noah’s face was irritating. Truly irritating. He was reminiscent of her with that attitude. She carried it so much better.
“Gabriel,” she coaxed, changing tracks and pouted. “You can’t be serious about letting him go over there. He can’t manage down the street.”
“I’ve trained. I’ve got perfect control now,” Noah said. “I need to help them.”
“Just turn off the radio.”
“We don’t have a radio,” Gabriel said mildly, cleaning his fake-glasses with his shirt.
“Yes, we got rid of it because of the emotions in the singer’s voices,” Elle sang (herself), looking at her son significantly.
“Seven years ago, yeah! I’m not going to be a shut-in.” Noah’s chiseled jaw was clenched. He would have been a catch for another person but she doubted he could handle them. “If I just stay in, I’ll get worse. Right Dad?”
Gabriel cleaned and cleaned those glasses.
“You’re wearing down the lenses to sand,” Elle said, sweetly. She kicked him from underneath the table.
“I’ve worked so hard, Dad. I want to have a chance to be my own person. I can handle this. Please.” Noah’s eyes shone with sincerity, and he furrowed his eyebrows (and considering his father, that was one hell of a furrow)
She wanted to mock ‘please’ instinctively but she didn’t. Gabriel’s answer would be enough. Gabriel would-
“You can go,” Gabriel said. Her mouth dropped. “Under the condition you’ll wear a signal tracer that Micah was so kind to donate to me. And you’ll check in a least three times a day.”
Noah’s mouth twitched at this restriction but nodded, not testing his luck.
“Thank you,” he said, and Gabriel lowered his eyes.
That night, she just unleashed. Frying him with a sock in his mouth wasn’t that much fun (can’t bother the neighbors), but she couldn’t fry Noah. He’d just cry. A little pain would have done him some good. Gabriel had ruined the guy before he even was past the age of sixteen.
…And of course, Noah was already gone by then. He, in fact, couldn’t have been quickly transporting away.
“I have a feeling you’re angry.”
Only it came out, ‘E ‘ave a weeling u’r angri’
She took the sock out of his mouth and threw it away. “What gave it away?”
“Just some intuition,” he panted, a slight smile on his face. “I can’t tell this from a hint that you want to sleep with me.”
“So you can send another kid off into a war between normal, weak people?” Elle returned.
He stood up off the ground, balancing on the bed for good measure. He still just smiled at her.
“Don’t you think I have a plan?”
Elle tilted her head and put her hands on her hips. “Noah never fits into the plan. He can’t fit anywhere. That’s the problem, or so I’ve had to hear for way too long. For fucks sake, he can’t kill! He can’t defend himself!”
“There are things worse than death, you know. So many things.” She saw a ghost of Sylar there and he laid back on the bed, clothes burnt off. He crossed his arms behind his head, looking like a cat that swallowed a bird house. With some splinters there along with the feathers.
“Gabriel, if we’re honest—rare of times as they are—murder is not creative. But if he can’t even do that, why would he think of a fate worse than death? Enlighten me.”
He motioned for her to come lay besides him, and after a moment of drawing it out, finally went to him.
“You taste toasty,” she said, kissing his forehead (always ironically). “I’d love to put cinnamon on you.”
“Since we have the time for that now…”
“You got him out of the house to fuck me. Did you start the war with this in mind? Aww.”
“I’ve got it figured out,” he said, his face a bastion of calm and control. He reached up to touch her face, gripping her hair roughly to bring her closer. “He’ll have such a bad time that’ll he’ll come home instantly.”
“It’ll…break his mind, wouldn’t it?” she asked. Not feeling one way or the other. Or she didn’t think so.
“No. He’s under control, I promise. He can control all his powers, he’s controlling his emotions now with the techniques I’ve shown him. I fixed him. But he’s anxious to get away. Well, I’ll give him what he wants. The world itself is a naturally unpleasant place. He’ll be home tomorrow, give or take. He’ll make it until the afternoon if he’s lucky.”
“Sounds cruel. You’re throwing him in the swimming pool.” And you know how I feel about water, she thought. She zapped him in the middle of his heart-shaped chest hair.
He hissed and didn’t let her go. “I’m letting him evolve. He needs to understand the world, and find himself. But he’ll find himself closer to home. It’s important, however, that he confronts this head on. If he doesn’t, he’s right…he’ll get worse. He needs to know his own mind.”
“Do you really think he can ever exist outside our house?”
Gabriel froze. “…Yes,” he said finally. “More impossible things have happened. Us, for instance.”
Elle felt the night outside, felt the largeness of the world outside her home, and thought he had a point. But still…
“All right. I’ll even be nice tomorrow when he comes home.”
Gabriel smiled at her, darkly, and turned off the light without moving a finger. They took their time.
***
It had been three weeks, and still, no Noah.
Oh, he had checked in, but his method was purely by texting ‘ok’. Not wasting any personal touch, that’s for sure. Gabriel wouldn’t move from the bed, watching the small, red dot on his cell phone that blinked with Noah’s life.
Still.
“Which tomorrow were you talking about, exactly?”
He gritted his teeth.
“Maybe he’ll prove us both wrong. Obviously everything is under control. We could consider this a vacation,” Elle offered, turning out the light on him. The red dot glowed in the dark, illuminating Gabriel’s worried, haggard features.
***
Two months later, and the red dot disappeared.
Chaos ensured. It was eleven o’clock when she was woken up by the sound of Gabriel dressing. She knew instantly.
“Stay here,” he ordered, when she got up as well.
“I’m going whether you like it or not.”
Elle stood her ground, noticing that he had found his old black jacket and his old jeans. It was like armor to him.
If he spontaneously grew stubble, she’d fry him on principle.
“All right. But let me talk to him.”
“By all means. You break it, you buy it,” Elle snapped, rolling her eyes. He hesitated before taking her arm. They transported together, leaving the empty room behind.
***
Never go to a warzone in heels.
However, it was like the old days. She plunged all the lights into darkness as she walked (staggered) across the uneven streets, breathing in dust and blood and oil. There were planes overhead, and she would be worried if she didn’t have Sylar here. And he was Sylar again, stalking along like a shadow.
They didn’t say a word. She’d aim some signals to mess up their equipment and he’d knock any vehicles out of the way. Any of them. Trunks, tanks, no diff.
“He was in this city before the signal disappeared.”
“Blown up?” she asked bluntly, eyes burning. From the sand.
In this ghost town, they looked at each other. The heavy sound of the tanks were far away now after they had forced their way through. She kept her sparks in her hands, out of comfort.
“Or underground.”
“Bur-.”
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t.”
“I’m not. You’re the one who started talking. Let’s dig him out, and go home. I’m not a fan of this sand treatment.”
He looked like he almost wanted to hit her. Not pin her or shock her back. Just hit her.
She followed him into the empty sounds, wondering if they’d search until she’d die: wander around this hellhole. Then he’d take up the mantle and keep it up. Of course they would. She couldn’t think of anything else.
“Noah was here.”
She blinked and looked at the empty desert.
“I don’t see any rubble,” she stated, rubbing her arms. Her legs ached.
“That’s because there was nothing to destroy,” he muttered. “At least not on the surface.”
Her eyes widened, and she stepped back, watching him start to move the sands, digging it aside quickly. It was almost cool. Almost. The ground disappeared until they were standing on a metal roof.
“Huh,” Elle commented. He took her arm and they went through the metal with ease. Inside, they just stood in an empty hallway but they could hear the voices further down.
Turning the corner, they were in for a surprise. There was a mini-forest under the sand. The forest was made of edible food that was red and yellow and green, and it made her eyes try to take in too much—this place was huge and humid and frankly, a little freaky.
A blue bird flew past them. Sylar turned in place to give it a long, fascinating stare.
Elle, however, had noticed the people. First, there were children near the back of this forest, girls and boys, of all ages that were considered kid-like and cute. If being beaten up and looking sick was your cute. They particularly loved the apple trees.
Then women, most of them sitting down and sleeping. Men with guns but no one shot at them. Yet. There was this resigned air about everyone down here.
But she didn’t care about them.
“Gabriel,” Elle said. He was already ahead of her, not bothering to look at another soul around him. He seemed like he knew exactly where Noah was.
And he did know.
Behind this oasis was a small, locked room.
Inside, her kid was shirtless lying on the metal floor, skeletally thin. His skin was unmarred and the only reason he wasn’t dead was because of Claire Bennet. He was sitting in a chair linked up to thousands of tubes and wires, with needles in his arms, constantly bruising and healing.
It felt as if she were watching a movie. She hovered by the doorway while Gabriel was the one to step up, slowly…and kneel down in front of Noah, reaching out a cautious hand to cup his son’s cheek.
Noah flinched and looked up at his father. Gabriel made a low, strangled sound in his throat, and Elle only saw the back of his head.
“This will hurt,” Gabriel said, unsteady in his voice, and pulled out all the I.V.’s out of Noah’s chest and neck.
Noah hissed in pain. Elle just stood there, her hands hanging by her side.
“Shh, it’ll be all right.” Gabriel placed a comforting hand on the back of Noah’s neck. Shh. I’ll get them for this, I’ll kill them-.”
“No,” Noah said more strongly, looking up from underneath his eyelashes with determined fire. “I let them. I asked them.”
Gabriel froze in mid-telekinetic tug, holding his hand up stupidly.
“…What?”
“I asked them to let me help.”
There was a long silence, and her eyes focused on the mountains of blood bags in the corner. It was so dark in here that there might have been more. Gabriel was silent a moment too long, still as a statue, his broad shoulders hardly even moving with his breathing.
“Dad, say something. Please.”
“I’m taking you home.”
Noah’s expression broke. “I can’t leave them,” he gasped. “You don’t understand. The pain, the anger, the hate. I can’t leave.”
“And this is what you consider to be a good idea. This.”
“Yes,” Noah growled, his teeth bared and eyes wild. She noticed the sweat that had gathered on his body. Another reason he was shaking. “It is. You and your little contract made this approach my only option, and I’m sticking with it.”
Ah. Yes. Gabriel’s contract. He had made Noah promise not to use his powers to fight (duh, no brainer there) but also not use other more passive powers either. The healing blood had gotten to stay, and obviously…
“You can’t just sit here and-.”
“Why not? I have forever. They don’t.”
“But the pain here can drive you out of your mind, Noah.”
“It is anyway. I can still fucking sit here if I’m insane.” He tilted his head up defiantly.
“Don’t…”
Use that kind of language, young man.
“Try and make me move. I’ll never forgive you for it. Never.”
“Not if I make you forget.”
“Won’t work on me.”
Gabriel continued to kneel there. Not going to do a thing. She could already see it. And she could already see the quick fix, the easy ready-made solution. It was a mother’s right to hurt those who hurt their children.
She had read that in a book, too.
Her hands came alive, sparking and biting, and she was out the door before either of them could realize it.
“Elle!” Gabriel screamed over and over again, through the echoes of this place—stuck because he was afraid to leave his son. She hit that little magical forest like the fist of an angry…well.
Everything burned.
***
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Elle whispered outside Noah’s room. He had gone unconscious for some reason, and hadn’t woken up yet. She’d cook a big dinner for him, she decided. Thrown in a little extra dessert.
Gabriel offered no illuminating answers. He was quiet, listening for a sign of life. There was a rustle of the bedcovers and they both jerked. Elle smiled. See? Everything was all better.
“You’d better stay here.”
“Tell him to pick his poison. Strawberry syrup or chocolate?”
“…And now you decide to listen about staying put.”
Elle winked.
Gabriel closed the door and she waited, humming to herself. She’d gladly kill everyone in the world for Noah. It was such an obvious solution she was half-mad at herself for not thinking of it sooner.
It’d prove that, hey, she was a pretty good mom.
Gabriel came out, ducking his face a little. His eyes looked strange, kind of shiny for some reason.
“Don’t be sad if he’s pouting; he’s just-.”
“He doesn’t want to see you again.”
Her face froze in a big smile, not processing it.
“And me,” he added, sounding as if he were reciting a line from a movie. “Either of us…ever again.”
She looked at the door.
“I’m going to help him get set up on a remote area. It’ll be as distant as I can make it from other people,” Gabriel said, mechanically. “I better get started.”
He walked past her, and she heard him leave after a little while.
She waited, still staring at the door. It never opened.
5)
Killing them with kindness.
It was a method Gabriel had used but had never really believed in. Killing them with subtle control. Yet he was fair. Gabriel—or Sylar—always let his victims know all about the truth. Ignore the man behind the curtain—until the big reveal. It was very important to him, to show them the real him and watch them…
Well. It used to be important to him.
But this was something entirely different. It wasn’t something he agreed with. What his grown-up son was doing had no balance.
Now, it wasn’t that he was offended by Noah’s secrecy. To be fair, a trait that he always prized in himself, he and his wife had kept out of the loop of the herd outside.
So, it wasn’t Noah’s fault that he was completely surprised when Claire Bennet appeared on his doorstep with a freshly baked pie in one hand and some flowers with small teddy bears in the ribbons.
Blocking the way into their home, he eyed the weird pie. Oh great. The pie was covered in pink ruffles. Guess what it resembled.
“Funny. But I took arsenic out of my diet so…run along home.”
“You don’t like it?” she asked, seeming hurt. “I spent all day on it after hearing a song on the radio. It made me think of you guys and all the bad blood and hate and…well, I just started to cry. I wanted to make it all better.
…So are we friends?”
Claire beamed at him.
He stared at her, honestly confused.
“What’s going on out there?” Elle called from the kitchen.
“A midget ran away from the circus. I’m showing her out.”
“Oh you’re so clever,” Claire praised and pushed her way inside, shoving the grotesque treat in his hands. Upon further study, he saw it was not a brain-cake. It was a badly shaped heart. This did not make him feel any better.
“Elle!” Claire called out and ran opened armed towards his wife as she stepped out of the kitchen. He cried out, with his hands full of cake, and realized too late that—
Claire leapt in the air and hugged Elle tightly around her waist.
“I love you so much.”
“How long has this been going on?” he asked, angry.
“The last thirty seconds,” Elle mocked, over Claire’s head. Then she patted her awkwardly. They stood there in shock while Claire hung on for dear life, her flowers forgotten on the floor.
“Well, something’s going on,” he resumed, putting the cake aside.
“Definitely. I’ve got a new slav...I mean, maid to help around the house.”
“I’d love to help,” Claire said.
“And so enthusiastic.”
“Elle, can you get her into the car? I’m driving her back.”
“Damn,” Elle cussed and then tried to pry Claire off. “Okay, we’re going for a ride, Cheerleader.”
“Thank you for including me.”
“Right.”
***
Outside scared the hell out of him, his mind halting at how wrong it was.
He just didn’t understand.
Driving was slow, in danger of hitting negative numbers. His fists tightened on the steering wheel as he snarled at the crowd. People were out and about, holding hands and crossing the street as if assuming he wouldn’t run them down.
He would if he had a good reason.
In the rear view mirror, a group was starting to form to donate their groceries to their neighbor. And their clothes.
…that were on their bodies.
“What. Is. This? It’s a complete regression of the human race.” He looked to Elle for an answer who was sitting with her hands shaking and her lips pursed.
“I’m so sorry, Gabriel,” she blurted out.
He almost ran off the road.
“And Claire. All I want is for us to love each other and take care of each other in a considerate manner.”
Gabriel sputtered. Claire leaned forward to take Elle’s hand.
“This is madness. This is insane. This is….distracting,” he muttered, watching them. Then he heard it. Coming from the radio. Underneath the music. He slowed down to listen. It wasn’t affecting him, but he heard the off-center, foreign power in the music. No, more than that.
In the air. Electric signals flying through the air, inescapable. He did stop the car then, not bothering with the sobbing coming from the two women beside him. He stared out into the sun, and knew, intuitively, that there was only one person left alive who could control a power at this range.
His son.
***
“So this is what you’ve been up to. Most kids just go to college or get a job.”
Noah frowned at him with a very Elle-ish expression. It lacked her bite, of course, and it was mirror of how she could have been. He was unsure which version was scarier.
“No, you just decide to take over the world.”
“Hi, Dad,” Noah said, not bothering to get up from the seat in front of the rows and rows of computers. “How’d you find me?”
“Your friends told on you.”
He motioned towards the computers. There was a long silence, as Noah turned his back on him. Refusing to acknowledge him.
There was always this struggle.
“Noah,” he finally said, holding out his arms in a beseeching gesture. “What are you doing?”
“Fixing everything.”
“By making the entire world a nudist colony? That’s creative but completely unnecessary. I know your mother and I didn’t raise you like that.”
World conquest, sure. But nudity? At least he hadn’t encouraged it.
“I caught that flaw earlier. Before you told me,” Noah hissed, his eyes fixated on the screen. He could see all around the world through every computer. But he had other powers too. From Gabriel, and other people he had met throughout his life.
“I eased up a little. The average human being can’t apparently handle genuine goodwill.”
“Spoken like a true empathy,” Gabriel said and then flinched at the sneer in his voice. He moved forward slowly and put a hand on Noah’s shoulder. His son was bone thin. Having gotten Claire’s power from him, he could survive here without water or food.
Then the power that gave the user freedom from the restraints of sleep.
What had he done to his child?
“Why?” he asked, not able to see Noah’s face clearly through the ghostly light of the computer screen.
“It hurt me. All the pain in the world. I had to make it better. I had to help them see the way.”
Gabriel saw his mirror version. And it was much more frightening. What he had seen outside had been a joke. But now, what he saw all around him were Hindu cows. Evolution had been written out of the equation. They were sleepwalking.
“Noah. This is wrong.”
“You’re one to talk. I have to make up for you too.”
Gabriel swallowed hard. He knew what he had to do. What he must do. Noah was completely immersed into this system of power. He leaned down to bury his face in Noah’s hair.
His hands knew the rest.
***
“Gabriel, what’s wrong?”
He had his forehead pressed against the steering wheel. He did not want to cry. Elle put her hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently.
“I couldn’t do it. What have I done?”
“What have you not done?” Elle asked.
“I’m giving him a year to learn. I’m giving our child a year to learn. If he doesn’t, I’ll have to come back here.”
“What’s happened? Can’t we just…”
It started to rain. That was him, and that delicious weather control power. Now he was giving himself away. The back door of the car was open and the inside burnt to a crisp. It was obvious what had happened. Claire had snapped out of the coma, just as Gabriel had requested. She deserved the truth.
As was balanced.
Elle was out of the spell too, of course. Of course. And all around them were living Zombies.
“He’s done all this. All of it.”
“…Wow...the whole world is his toy…”
But this time, they were on the same page. Her initial smile started to fade.
“…How boring.”
He closed his eyes, and now he wasn’t going to smile.
“I’m giving him a year.”
“I could, if you can’t. I-.”
“He’s mine,” Gabriel hissed. Meaning each word. Meaning that word. Excepting to be fried.
Because at the end of it all, she’d do what he couldn’t…because she loved Noah enough to let him go. She loved him enough to put him out of his misery. In the end, maybe it was more than Gabriel’s love.
So, why he was holding the car door’s shut….he knew why. That was the worse part.
After a moment of silence, Elle squeezed his shoulder. He expected her to protest and kill him several times for the suggestion. Or in the flipside, kill him for being so weak. He was selfish after all. He wanted his son more than this world. His son was the world…but inside, that part of him was already screaming to fix it. The integrity of the system, the mechanics of the design, demanded it.
“Let’s go home, Gabriel. We never needed the rest of them anyway.”
He nodded and turned the key, starting up the car.
“I am mad at you, you know,” Elle said quietly, through the drum of the rain on the roof.
“I’m mad at me too.”
“You lost me good help.”
Gabriel had to laugh a little. They went back home, lying besides each other in the dark, in a quiet world. The dead quiet of peace.
Because that was the balance Noah had found. Besides basic instincts of keeping alive, no one was…if he'd just learn. (Gabriel knew the answer, knew the ending already but...)
It’s just for a year.
He hoped that year would never come…
But he already felt it inching closer.
Word Count: 9, 711
Rating: PG-13.
Prompt from the fic fest: " Five times Sylar and Elle are puzzled by little Noah kind,pacific nature along the years they watch him grow up: their boy is actually a healer, a social activist,a buddhist and whatever else...
Warning: Unbetaed!! And a little angsty. I might try this theme again, a little more humorously.
1)
“I’m worried...”
This statement did not come from Elle. It came from Gabriel. This was not a good sign. She couldn’t tell him off because she was currently having a baby. Instead, she made her body go as limp as she could with muscle contractions, trying to cause trouble.
He was carrying her. They were also fleeing through the woods. A footnote to that was they were being chased. Gabriel was in no-kill mode (for now), but he was moving pretty fast.
She squeezed his shoulder, drawing blood through his sweater. He caught her eye and grinned. “About your water breaking on my new shirt.”
Elle squeezed harder. It was night, so it wasn’t hard to hide. But she was going to sound like a train. He set her down where the ground sloped and formed a small hole. She laid her head back and saw green in between the pulsing red behind her eyes.
“God,” she hissed. She wanted to unleash her lightning so bad. She could barely control it. Hence Gabriel’s presence. He was helping her hold it back with one of his new snazzy powers, but dammit, he could do something about the pain. The PAIN.
Oh and unfortunately he was the father.
“It’ll be over soon enough. It’s what every normal, mundane woman goes through. A universal state, for women.”
“Rarrr,” she growled.
“Some women even die during childbirth,” he commented, and cut a slit down her nice dress pants. They fell apart, two black strips. She didn’t much care. She didn’t want to reach for him so she clutched at the ground and found a rock. It cut into her hands, but it was something to hold.
She felt vulnerable, like a beached whale surrounded by (whale-eating) wolves. She’ll never have sex again. Yes, it seemed like a long shot, but ohmygod…suddenly she can’t even mentally joke with herself anymore. She was here before: on her back, with all this light, and just pulsing pain.
“Elle.” His face swam above her. Something was being pushed in her mouth—what now?…but it was a stick. “Bite it. Good girl.
Reflectively, she did. She has seen movies. She’d figure—
Gabriel started to move her into place. She let him, reflexively. It was just like biting the stick. She was going to snap it in two later. She felt him put a warm hand on her knee, and the pain started to ebb. That made just as much sense as his mysterious lack of stubble.
She had told him that it was over. That he couldn’t have her. He could have her body (as evidenced) but never her. Now, he wouldn’t leave her alone. She could sense the desperation in his touch, the way he seemed to want to grab something deeper inside of her.
All she cared about was that her bare feet were ankle-deep in cold, serpentine mud.
In the distance, she could hear them coming, and for a weird minute, she could see them. Not just their skin and ugly faces, but them. It was a weird overlay, of foreign images and places she had have been before, and when the pain got into a scary white level, she felt something through Gabriel’s touch.
She was standing in a parking lot with a woman dead, bleeding from the head.
She was a child in a confessional booth for five hours.
She was afraid to leave when her mother threatened suicide.
She was what they fought about when he finally left one night for cigarettes.
She watched the world pass by with so much wrong that it hurt to go outside.
She saw herself holding out a watch and felt such a drowning, clinging need of salvation and home and love that it scared the living fuck out of her. She had never loved herself like that, and it was impossible to accept. It was easier to accept that need to cut open her head to finally understand.
To know everything there was to know about her. Like the goose that laid the golden egg, the only problem with that approach was…
This was completely different from the rooms inside of her, and it was strange and dusty, frames of pictures of everyone else. She had reinvented herself and wanted out, even if the Company had been the only thing she had known.
This was Gabriel, something so wholly personal that it shocked her. His feeling were hers, his skin was hers…She’d have never been able to get this close.
Then the pain hit again, and she let out a high-pitched noise from behind the stick.
“He’s upside down,” Gabriel observed. “Hold on, I’ll flip him.”
Dear shitting what the how is-----she was about to pass out.
“Keep pushing, Elle. You can do it.”
She was seven years old going on seven years old for the rest of her life, and if he wanted her to push and be tough, she’d do it.
She pushed and felt a whole world come out of her. (kind of gross) Her head fell back and she was spent. Done. She couldn’t move. And who was screaming?
Oh. That little red raisin in Gabriel’s hands. Oh that.
Looking at his still and careful face, this was his new thing. Elle was confident that he’d mess it up again, so she didn’t care beyond just laying down and going to sleep. There were dogs barking in the distance. Someone should shut those dogs up.
“Well. You’re too important for them to allow the luxury of death. I hope they furnish the cell with a window for you.”
She’s ten years old handing flowers to a girl who tripped her in response. She’s wishing they had been able to have a Christmas tree and invite more people into the house even if she’d never understand people, not really. She’s holding her mother’s hand while she cries, and even together, she was so alone. No one else was like her, you see…it needed to stop.
He would have killed her rather than let anyone else have her, but now….he did have something of his own. So she could wait for him in a cell until he came back from her.
“Leave, then,” she hissed, not wanting to know more about him.
“Goodbye, Elle.”
She closed her eyes, listening to the sounds of the baby’s crying starting to fade behind the trees. When it all fell apart for him (as it always does), he’d be back. Yet he was still here, echoes of him, as images kept dripping through her head. She wanted to claw him out of her.
Unused to this kind of pain, she gritted her teeth, steeling herself against anymore of this freakishly unpleasant…caring when—
Naturally, Elle had expected Gabriel to walk right at the men with their little dogs and their little guns, and basically, toss them into the air without a second thought. Instead, she heard a strangled cry from Gabriel, not the men.
“Don’t move, or I’ll shoot.”
She heard the baby still wailing. She thought about Gabriel being killed. And there was that feeling. It wasn’t entirely foreign to her, but the earlier sensations were like a trickle of air compared to a waterfall of rushing water.
She got to her feet, feeling the blood between her thighs, and peered over the edge of the soil into the clearing. Gabriel was on his knees, one hand held out towards the men with the guns. Only he wasn’t pushing them away or killing him. His face was a picture of agony.
For some reason, that got her into action. She unleashed her fury upon the men, and they didn’t have time to scream, let alone realize what had happened to them.
They were lucky. Cause she was still hurting and she wanted to kill him deader than dead, and there he was on the ground, but she couldn’t. Couldn’t. But something else was wrong. She didn’t want to leave without him.
(Live without—oh scratch that thought.)
Gabriel stared up at her, horror-stricken.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “There’s no one to lock me up. Go on and kill me.
“…I felt him die,” Gabriel said, looking at a charred corpse. He held the small, mewling thing in his arms up in awe. Forget the fact that he was pale and sweating. “I saw his whole life. Felt things that I thought only I experienced.”
Elle stared at him. In hatred, of course.
“So I take it you’re not going to kill me?”
Gabriel glared at her. Oh so wanting to.
“Well, shit,” she said.
***
Elle had to hand it to him. Gabriel was stubborn. Single-minded.
Her son caused him so much pain. Gabriel thought the baby was his, but obviously not. He could hardly bear to touch him without wincing. Elle on the other hand was fine. Disregarding her feelings for Gabriel (that were completely out of her control), she could hold Noah. Could take care of him. And last but certainly not least—Gabriel suddenly couldn’t kill. AKA: couldn’t defend himself.
Therefore, Gabriel had to take her along with him. Her presence hurt him too. With Noah, the previous wounds were even worse. (Elle had the intuition that that was also why he had taken her with him, the masochist.)
Elle stayed because a single flinch from him was the purest reaction she had ever gotten from anyone. She had a place now, since he needed her so much.
And he had to put up with her, so there.
***
Elle bounced Noah on her lap. They were in the latest hotel room, killing time, and there was nothing good on TV. He was asleep on the second bed besides them.
Ironically, Gabriel was good with babies. He couldn’t hold Noah but he told her how to bath him. What the proper position was for him to sleep. Got the best little baby supplies and toys for him. Reminded her to feed him. (always from across the room)
She got up slowly, lifting Noah up above Gabriel…and lowered the squirming baby down on his father’s chest. Gabriel’s peaceful expression started to grow stormy, and then he clenched his teeth. He opened his eyes in horror.
“Noah doesn’t like you,” she informed him before taking the baby away. “Why don’t you just leave?”
“I won’t leave my son with you,” he choked out.
“Guess you’re trapped then.”
“He doesn’t need either of us. We’ll only hurt him,” Gabriel argued. “I don’t want him to be me.”
“Do you want to put him up for adoption?” she offered.
Gabriel looked stricken.
“Because he’s yours, you won’t. So stop talking about it. Goodnight,” she chirped, and went to bed, cradling Noah and kissing him on the cheek.
***
For several months, it was fun. Torturing Gabriel with Noah.
But then it started to grow stale. Gabriel wasn’t so bad: he had gotten her the Bennets’ old house to raise a family in. Besides, not even her daddy screamed at her every time he saw her.
So, one night, she hunted Gabriel up. He was asleep on the couch.
“Be nice to Daddy. Let him uh….forgive himself.” How cheesy. But Noah wiggled and seemed to understand.
She set Noah down on his chest. The little baby held out his small hands and touched his father’s face. At first, the same wince was there, but then…there was an expression she had never seen on his face. Ever. As Gabriel. As Sylar. As some weird hybrid of the two. Ever.
An expression of peace.
***
Now Gabriel didn’t leave because he knew the difference between how he felt there and how he felt outside.
He was hers. But he might have been Noah’s a bit more.
She could live with the terms.
2)
Milo the Cat was in deep shit.
Or in just really deep water. The wooden box bobbed and bounced in the torrents of the river.
Elle had been surprised by Gabriel’s choice of entertainment. He was slumped on the couch, with his arms crossed. Their baby boy, four years old now, wearing a blue sponge-bob shirt, was propped against his long legs, his dark eyes taking in the scene playing out on the TV.
She had walked in during the baby chicken scene.
“Gross. But now I’m really hungry for some reason.”
“Paradox,” Gabriel said with a smirk.
“What’s up, buttercup?” Elle asked. “Why are you watching baby chickens? Do they make you hot?”
He tilted his head back, closing his eyes. “Noah likes it. He cries every time I try and change the channel.”
“You big softie.”
His expression was one of great pain. Elle snuggled up against him, looping her arm in his, and laid her head on his shoulder.
The movie was actually very funny. Anyway, Milo was in deep shit.
“That rope is going to break,” Elle whispered, giggling. “That cat is going to sink like a stone.”
She imagined, oh so clearly, the remains of the cat being nibbled on by the fishies at the bottom in a dramatic twist of fate. Since Gabriel liked fate and all that jazz, she shared her insight.
“That’s so wrong, even for you,” Gabriel whispered back, but his smile was dark and devilish now. Ohh.
“Bye-bye, puddie cat.”
“He honestly has no survival skills.”
“Here it goes,” Elle breathed in excitement, watching the rope start to fray and the knot start to give.
“Going, going…” Gabriel began, his body shaking with laughter.
“Gone!” Elle cackled as the box was tossed by the waves, the wet cat meowing helplessly at the bottom of the crate. The dog, Otis (cute name for a dog, right), was running along side the back, sick with worry and fear for his friend.
They were in hysterics, the pair of them, and so they didn’t notice their son wandering towards the TV, his small hands stretched out towards the cat.
“Now this is what I call quality entertainment,” Elle praised. At that moment, Noah fell to the ground, crying and curling up into a ball. It was as if he was having a seizure.
“Oh my god,” Elle gasped. Gabriel was already on his feet. She watched him scoop of their screaming child and rush into the kitchen.
“What’s wrong with him?” Elle demanded, following suit, and saw that he had placed Noah on the kitchen table, studying him intensely. Noah’s poor little face was tomato red and tears were streaming from his eyes.
“I’m checking for internal bleeding,” Gabriel informed her, infuriatingly calm, hands on Noah’s sides, searching for something she couldn’t detect.
“Oh great, he’s dying,” Elle declared, calling it. She knew this had been a terrible idea. She had had no idea how much this would bother her, if it were to happen, but she figured it out soon enough. “Thanks a lot, Gabriel.”
“What?” he demanded, hackles raised.
“You get me pregnant and it dies, you asshole! What the fuck do you think?”
“Shut. Up!” he roared, and Noah screamed and screamed. She walked over. Or tried to. Elle felt invisible hands push her back. She wanted to stare him down, but all his attention was on Noah, his head tilted as though listening.
All she heard was the tick of the clock in the living room and the drone of the movie.
Noah wheezed. Gabriel had a tick himself, right above his eye.
“You can’t figure it out,” Elle whispered.
“Hey buddy,” Gabriel said, ignoring her. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
She crossed her arms.
“C-cc…”
They waited, hanging on his words.
“Cat go bye-bye.” Then he burst out crying again. Gabriel had never really looked shocked: not even when she was actually shocking him .Oh, he looked many things: in agony, angry, and aroused. But this time, he went perfectly still, looming over the small figure on the table. Then he took Noah into his arms, gently.
And Noah buried his face into his father’s chest and sobbed.
Elle still didn’t know what the hell was going on.
“He’s upset,” Gabriel translated.
“What would I do, without you to tell me that?” Elle mocked. “Seriously, no shit, Sherlock. What cat? An invisible cat? I don’t-.”
Gabriel, balancing Noah carefully, moved one finger to point into the room.
“…From the movie. Are you kidding me?”
“Let’s be quiet for a minute,” Gabriel said and walked past her. Sitting back on the couch, he rocked Noah back and forth, back and forth. How nice, she thought, unaware of source that the spark of irritation had emerged from. “Can you turn the TV off?”
She shot a bolt of lightning that knocked that sucker dead. Gabriel would have to fix it. The glare he gave her would have killed her if he had had that power.
“Well, I couldn’t ask about the technicalities,” she griped, sitting cross-legged on the floor. She definitely wasn’t going up to the couch. No matter what she felt.
After thirty minutes of rocking back and forth and no lull in the crying, Elle sighed.
“That’s obviously not working.”
“This technique is what all the books say to do in this situation,” Gabriel said, in a tone of utter sweetness. It meant he was really angry and being condescending.
“Then you’re doing it wrong? As in there’s something wrong with you? I’m glad you clarified.”
For some reason unbeknownst to her, her remark hit home. He didn’t say a word. Now things were getting serious. He flat-out ignored her while he rocked back and forth, back and forth. Kind of like a clock, come to think of it.
And it wasn’t hard to think of. In the den, the antique clock went ticktockticktock, and it began to needle at her. Noah wasn’t crying anymore but he was staring off into space, glassy –eyed.
Elle didn’t like to feel useless.
“You know, his reaction isn’t even a part of my reality,” Elle said. “Are you sure he isn’t sick? Do your empathy thing.”
Gabriel didn’t answer. That’s fine. She stood up, stretched dramatically, and waved goodnight. Elle felt his eyes burning a hole into her back all the way up the stairs.
***
Elle’d like to say that she slept like a baby but truth is, she didn’t.
She was up all night, waiting for her chance to snub him back. Eventually, she dozed off at four in the morning. She woke up at noon with no Gabriel in the bed besides her.
Well, it was noon. She wandered down the stairs, half-awake…to see her husband still rocking back and forth. She’d seen this before at the Company. It’s funnier when it’s not her husband.
She approached him slowly and noticed his eyes were still open. The one factor constant between Gabriel and Sylar was the dedication and stubbornness and endurance. Okay, several factors. But this was overkill.
Elle held out her palm and pushed against his forehead, stopping his motion.
He stopped, blinking owlishly behind his glasses. His forehead was hot.
“You did that. All night long.”
Noah was the sleeping figure among the three, his little hands clutching his father’s arms.
“Well, not exactly. There was an incident.”
Elle waited, curious despite herself. He seemed too tired to put up a fight today: pale with purple circles under his eyes. Soaked with sweat. Time to pry.
“Noah st…” Gabriel paused when Noah stirred in his arms restlessly. He resumed his statement in a whisper. Afraid of a little kid? Hah. “…Started to ask me what happened to the cat. I didn’t know what happened to the cat.”
“Why didn’t you lie?” she whispered, mockingly. Because she certainly wasn’t afraid of a little kid. Nope. Not one bit.
“I don’t want to lie to our son. No. I wasn’t going to lie, and I said I didn’t know. Then he wanted to know. Had to know. Then I had to know. And I turned back on the show.”
She gaped at him. “Uh. I don’t need to take a college course to know that was a bad idea, Mr. Intuitive Aptitude.”
“It wasn’t a bad idea,” he hissed, not quite tired enough after all. Then he slumped. She could tell he wanted to rock back and forth yet again so she didn’t move her hand. “It wasn’t a good idea either. The need to know is something Noah and I can understand. So, we watch it. The cat is alive, and therefore, Noah is happy. I convince myself that they wouldn’t actually kill the cat or the dog. I’m safe right?”
“What happened? Did they cut off the cat’s paw? Did he get blinded for life?”
Gabriel muttered something into Noah’s hair. Elle ‘ahem’ed.
“In a move completely irrelevant to the plot, an owl swooped down and killed a mouse. Don’t laugh.”
Too late. She laughed deep in her throat, struggling not to just burst out cackling. Then something occurred to her.
“I didn’t hear any soul-searing screams.”
“It was worse than that. Silent sobbing. All down the front of my shirt.”
“And you went with that old fail-safe. Rocking back and forth.”
“I want to turn off the show. But I know to him, that’ll be worse. I’m trapped. Trapped by a kid’s show. Then there’s a deep freeze. The animals are freezing in the show. Noah starts to shiver.”
“Cause he saw it on TV?”
“It’s like he is in the snow with them. Now, I’m scared.”
‘Scared’ she mouthed.
“Yes. I admit it. I didn’t know what was coming. What next? An air-raid? Will someone suddenly gas them? Are there landmines around? What about a plain old animal trap? Caught in barbed wire? I can’t control a-.”
Noah stirred, and Gabriel lowered his voice again, having gotten dramatic.
“Finally. The film ended.”
“Happily, I take it.”
“For the cat and the dog. The ideal for them. For us, there’s a kid with a fever.”
That snapped her into action. She bent down to look. Yes, his breathing was heavy and his face, just flushed red.
“And you just sat here, doing your stupid technique.”
“I wanted him to get some rest. Some kind of rest. It’s what I knew to do.”
“I’ll ask again. Is he sick?”
“Yes. But not from anything but his emotions.” At her look. “I did the empathy touch thing. It’s…”
“This is silly. Come on, snot-nose.” Noah blinked awake, whining slightly. “Mommy is here to save the day. Let’s get you away from mean ol’ Daddy.”
She added the last bit purely as a barb. Well-aimed. His mouth fell open and she quickly took Noah into her arms.
“Breakfast time for my sick little boy.”
Gabriel came to glare at her from the doorway. Ominous. Hell, she even thought she might have almost, just nearly, hurt his feelings.
“You don’t rock the snotty look as much as you think,” she teased, bouncing Noah on her hip.
“I stayed up all night.”
“You didn’t let me help.”
“There was nothing you could have done.”
“Yeah, and you did such a good job yourself,” she challenged. Noah actually seemed to be getting hotter in her arms, squirming as he seemed to take in his parents’ exchange.
“There…was little I could myself. That shows how delicate the situation was.”
“And the situation is-.”
“His emotions are huge. Like-.”
“Don’t get poetic on me, here,” Elle said, narrowing her eyes. Feeling a bit of dread in her stomach.
“All right. His emotions can affect him physically. When he does calm down, I know he’ll be fine. And if you don’t mind, I’m going to go change my shirt.”
Elle looked down at Noah.
Who didn’t calm down until his father came back, temper apparently appeased, and kissed him on the forehead. And kissed her on the forehead too.
Only then did his temperature go down.
3)
At the age of ten, Noah manifested his powers to their full extent.
Empathy. Oh great. Not surprising, but oh great. He had also picked up every power from his father. Gabriel had tears in his eyes when he gave up every clock in the house. Gabriel was sillier over things than people. She felt the same way about shopping.
But Noah was trouble. At age six, he was sent to preschool and took his shirt off his back to give to someone else. Literally.
He couldn’t go outside without becoming strange. His personality would shift, spread out everywhere, becoming a piece of everyone. He’d also cry out if there were too many people around. He was a very emotional child as well. One wrong move, and they could end up in a nuclear hole.
Elle had told Gabriel to go ask Peter what to do. Gabriel didn’t want to, fearing that good old Uncle Peter would lock Noah up, a danger to himself and others.
Over the years, Elle had been as understanding as she could be. When Noah kept having nightmares and making Gabriel sleep on the floor besides the little tyke’s bed, she’d smile while she dug her fingernails into the palms of her hand. She had laughed about the little incidents over dinner conversations.
“Can’t I turn things to gold so everyone can be happy, Daddy?”
Elle had tensed, her mood darkening.
“Well, maybe you can. You can do anything you want.”
And Noah actually took his father up on it. They had gone together to turn a dumpster into gold in the back of an alley. Leaving her out of course. And it was her father’s damn power. She’d laid in bed and hear them come in at three in the morning. Oh yeah, Noah could only go out when no one else was really awake.
He’d get bring home every sick animal that they found. He couldn’t stop himself from helping. And Gabriel just tried to help accomplish goals like he always did, in a neat little list.
Gabriel was an enabler.
It was stupider and stupider, and she saw the pattern emerging. Elle wasn’t stupid. Noah could stay in the house with them because they…didn’t feel things as other people did. Well, she didn’t know about Gabriel, but Noah could tolerate her the best.
So, it kinda sucked that he didn’t like her that much.
***
One time, they did ask Peter for help.
To his credit, Peter tried and tried to nullify Noah’s powers while he was unconscious upon their kitchen table. It turned out that due to Claire’s power of regeneration, power nullification wasn’t an option. Noah was stuck with what he had.
After Peter left, she killed Gabriel more times than she could count.
***
, Elle had been watching the birds gathering outside their home. They wanted to get closer to Noah. Therefore, it was a highly colorful migration, with all those birds sitting on the windowsill.
Watching her watch them. With their beady, little eyes. She sipped her coffee and imagined zapping them. It’d be like a miniature Fourth of July, with feathers exploding everywhere like fireworks.
“I see they haven’t given up.”
Gabriel wandered into the kitchen and tapped his fingers on the glass. The birds seemed to flutter harder, and one bird pecked the glass where his fingers were.
He scowled and pulled up a chair besides her. “That’s filthy. Guess who has to clean that up?”
“I could begin to like the birds,” she smirked. He unfolded his newspaper and prepared to ignore her. Ten minutes later, the emboldened bird tapped on the window with its beak. Gabriel narrowed his eyes at the little thing.
“Hmm. That’s weird. Doesn’t seem to like you much. Hey, didn’t Doc Suresh believe in reincarnation?”
“No, he was agnostic,” Gabriel muttered, distracted by the bird fluttering against the glass.
“They’re coming to get you, Gabbrrieell.”
He gaped at the window.
“Oh stop.” She rubbed his arm. “You take things a little too seriously, you know?”
“I’ve never heard that accusation before in my life. I’ve heard neurotic, anal, as adjectives, and hermit and kook as nouns.”
“Was needlessly self-effacing one of them?”
“I’ll add it to the list,” he said, but oh, he looked back at the paper. She got up and stood besides his chair, waiting for him to notice her. He didn’t, so she just moved closer and pressed the side of his face against her stomach gently. He didn’t move, just let her run her fingers through his hair. Lift some strands of his hair and letting them fall.
He set down the paper, and she felt a sudden pressure on her stomach as he pushed eagerly into the touch.
“Add sensitive to the list too,” she observed.
“Sensitive how?”
“We’ll have to do further research.”
“I’m assuming I’m the test subject?”
She felt his lips through her shirt. Well.
“I know you’re the test subject.”
“I’m all yours, then.”
The window blinds moved suddenly, snapping off the lights.
“You don’t want the birds to watch.” She rolled her eyes.
He ran his warm hands up and down the side of her legs, searching for the hemline of her skirt. At that moment, they heard Noah’s footsteps on the stairs, and Gabriel took his hands off of her so quickly one would have thought she had shocked him.
Noah didn’t even look at them. He just rushed outside and began to heal sick birds.
Really boring stuff, if you asked her. But no one ever did ask her.
***
They ate together that night. Noah was pale and tired.
His hands had turned yellow that afternoon because one bird had a broken wing. As a result, a lot more birds had dropped dead. Noah had passed out. It was this big thing. Gabriel had forbid her to talk about it. So, they were all quiet.
No unpleasant conversations here, no siree…bob.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of your powers in no time,” Gabriel said, looking guilty.
“Or we’ll just get rid of them, champ,” Elle said, toasting them with her glass.
“You could do that? I could go outside?” Noah asked, his whole body going rigid. His mouth dropped open. He whirled towards his father, eyes pleading.
Gabriel looked like he wanted to kill her.
And then it happened. Noah leapt to his feet and knocked his chair over in the process. It crashed against the ground. It was if he had seen them for the first time. He gaped at his father, turning paper white, and staggered from the room.
“…That was an overreaction,” Elle said, secretly not knowing what had just taken place.
Gabriel didn’t move. He closed his eyes, a mixture of relief and fear. Relief that something had finally ended, and fear of what was ahead.
“Uh, want to clue me in?”
“Noah just read my mind. He knows everything.”
***
That early morning, when most normal families were asleep, Noah tried to kill himself.
But first he tried to kill her. He burst into their bedroom, his hands sparking, and she was barely awake when Gabriel, half asleep himself, dove on top of her. She screamed out of fear when she smelt his burning flesh and his spasming body.
When it was over, Gabriel lifted his head, his clothes destroyed. Elle laid there, not knowing either to be mad, happy…and ended up being puzzled. They stared at Noah, who was breathing heavily in his little pajamas.
“You do still love Mommy,” he said and then sat down on the floor, hard.
She had nothing to say to this declaration. She didn’t know how to feel about it. Gabriel went to Noah and picked him up. Took him somewhere for two weeks, just the two of them. Probably somewhere completely isolated.
He wrote her. Didn’t say a word about Noah’s observation. Said Noah never meant to harm her. It would have driven him crazy if Elle had actually died. But Elle knew better.
That’s what Noah had wanted. To be driven crazy. It had almost tipped the scales firing a jolt of electricity that was meant to miss. He was so empathetic that he couldn’t be violent against himself.
He had wanted his father to kill him.
Elle had nothing to say about that except how empathy and the complete opposition ended up at the same place: hanging by a rope.
4)
For some reason, all the big fights happened in the kitchen. Right next to the silverware.
Temptation ensues. The fight over Noah’s decision to go fight a war (when he couldn’t stand to see an old lady in a wheelchair glide backwards down a flight of stairs—what the hell was up with that?!) had been epic.
And very quiet. They had all sat at the table, Noah naturally sitting nearer to his father. The suck-up. Elle kept her hands in sight, folded demurely at the wooden surface and purely ready to spark.
“I never expected this request. To buy hippy clothes and live out in a tent under a bridge singing kumbuyah…yeah, I was expecting it. To let kittens eat your dead-dying flesh for their life…sure. BUT this.”
Noah’s face was irritating. Truly irritating. He was reminiscent of her with that attitude. She carried it so much better.
“Gabriel,” she coaxed, changing tracks and pouted. “You can’t be serious about letting him go over there. He can’t manage down the street.”
“I’ve trained. I’ve got perfect control now,” Noah said. “I need to help them.”
“Just turn off the radio.”
“We don’t have a radio,” Gabriel said mildly, cleaning his fake-glasses with his shirt.
“Yes, we got rid of it because of the emotions in the singer’s voices,” Elle sang (herself), looking at her son significantly.
“Seven years ago, yeah! I’m not going to be a shut-in.” Noah’s chiseled jaw was clenched. He would have been a catch for another person but she doubted he could handle them. “If I just stay in, I’ll get worse. Right Dad?”
Gabriel cleaned and cleaned those glasses.
“You’re wearing down the lenses to sand,” Elle said, sweetly. She kicked him from underneath the table.
“I’ve worked so hard, Dad. I want to have a chance to be my own person. I can handle this. Please.” Noah’s eyes shone with sincerity, and he furrowed his eyebrows (and considering his father, that was one hell of a furrow)
She wanted to mock ‘please’ instinctively but she didn’t. Gabriel’s answer would be enough. Gabriel would-
“You can go,” Gabriel said. Her mouth dropped. “Under the condition you’ll wear a signal tracer that Micah was so kind to donate to me. And you’ll check in a least three times a day.”
Noah’s mouth twitched at this restriction but nodded, not testing his luck.
“Thank you,” he said, and Gabriel lowered his eyes.
That night, she just unleashed. Frying him with a sock in his mouth wasn’t that much fun (can’t bother the neighbors), but she couldn’t fry Noah. He’d just cry. A little pain would have done him some good. Gabriel had ruined the guy before he even was past the age of sixteen.
…And of course, Noah was already gone by then. He, in fact, couldn’t have been quickly transporting away.
“I have a feeling you’re angry.”
Only it came out, ‘E ‘ave a weeling u’r angri’
She took the sock out of his mouth and threw it away. “What gave it away?”
“Just some intuition,” he panted, a slight smile on his face. “I can’t tell this from a hint that you want to sleep with me.”
“So you can send another kid off into a war between normal, weak people?” Elle returned.
He stood up off the ground, balancing on the bed for good measure. He still just smiled at her.
“Don’t you think I have a plan?”
Elle tilted her head and put her hands on her hips. “Noah never fits into the plan. He can’t fit anywhere. That’s the problem, or so I’ve had to hear for way too long. For fucks sake, he can’t kill! He can’t defend himself!”
“There are things worse than death, you know. So many things.” She saw a ghost of Sylar there and he laid back on the bed, clothes burnt off. He crossed his arms behind his head, looking like a cat that swallowed a bird house. With some splinters there along with the feathers.
“Gabriel, if we’re honest—rare of times as they are—murder is not creative. But if he can’t even do that, why would he think of a fate worse than death? Enlighten me.”
He motioned for her to come lay besides him, and after a moment of drawing it out, finally went to him.
“You taste toasty,” she said, kissing his forehead (always ironically). “I’d love to put cinnamon on you.”
“Since we have the time for that now…”
“You got him out of the house to fuck me. Did you start the war with this in mind? Aww.”
“I’ve got it figured out,” he said, his face a bastion of calm and control. He reached up to touch her face, gripping her hair roughly to bring her closer. “He’ll have such a bad time that’ll he’ll come home instantly.”
“It’ll…break his mind, wouldn’t it?” she asked. Not feeling one way or the other. Or she didn’t think so.
“No. He’s under control, I promise. He can control all his powers, he’s controlling his emotions now with the techniques I’ve shown him. I fixed him. But he’s anxious to get away. Well, I’ll give him what he wants. The world itself is a naturally unpleasant place. He’ll be home tomorrow, give or take. He’ll make it until the afternoon if he’s lucky.”
“Sounds cruel. You’re throwing him in the swimming pool.” And you know how I feel about water, she thought. She zapped him in the middle of his heart-shaped chest hair.
He hissed and didn’t let her go. “I’m letting him evolve. He needs to understand the world, and find himself. But he’ll find himself closer to home. It’s important, however, that he confronts this head on. If he doesn’t, he’s right…he’ll get worse. He needs to know his own mind.”
“Do you really think he can ever exist outside our house?”
Gabriel froze. “…Yes,” he said finally. “More impossible things have happened. Us, for instance.”
Elle felt the night outside, felt the largeness of the world outside her home, and thought he had a point. But still…
“All right. I’ll even be nice tomorrow when he comes home.”
Gabriel smiled at her, darkly, and turned off the light without moving a finger. They took their time.
***
It had been three weeks, and still, no Noah.
Oh, he had checked in, but his method was purely by texting ‘ok’. Not wasting any personal touch, that’s for sure. Gabriel wouldn’t move from the bed, watching the small, red dot on his cell phone that blinked with Noah’s life.
Still.
“Which tomorrow were you talking about, exactly?”
He gritted his teeth.
“Maybe he’ll prove us both wrong. Obviously everything is under control. We could consider this a vacation,” Elle offered, turning out the light on him. The red dot glowed in the dark, illuminating Gabriel’s worried, haggard features.
***
Two months later, and the red dot disappeared.
Chaos ensured. It was eleven o’clock when she was woken up by the sound of Gabriel dressing. She knew instantly.
“Stay here,” he ordered, when she got up as well.
“I’m going whether you like it or not.”
Elle stood her ground, noticing that he had found his old black jacket and his old jeans. It was like armor to him.
If he spontaneously grew stubble, she’d fry him on principle.
“All right. But let me talk to him.”
“By all means. You break it, you buy it,” Elle snapped, rolling her eyes. He hesitated before taking her arm. They transported together, leaving the empty room behind.
***
Never go to a warzone in heels.
However, it was like the old days. She plunged all the lights into darkness as she walked (staggered) across the uneven streets, breathing in dust and blood and oil. There were planes overhead, and she would be worried if she didn’t have Sylar here. And he was Sylar again, stalking along like a shadow.
They didn’t say a word. She’d aim some signals to mess up their equipment and he’d knock any vehicles out of the way. Any of them. Trunks, tanks, no diff.
“He was in this city before the signal disappeared.”
“Blown up?” she asked bluntly, eyes burning. From the sand.
In this ghost town, they looked at each other. The heavy sound of the tanks were far away now after they had forced their way through. She kept her sparks in her hands, out of comfort.
“Or underground.”
“Bur-.”
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t.”
“I’m not. You’re the one who started talking. Let’s dig him out, and go home. I’m not a fan of this sand treatment.”
He looked like he almost wanted to hit her. Not pin her or shock her back. Just hit her.
She followed him into the empty sounds, wondering if they’d search until she’d die: wander around this hellhole. Then he’d take up the mantle and keep it up. Of course they would. She couldn’t think of anything else.
“Noah was here.”
She blinked and looked at the empty desert.
“I don’t see any rubble,” she stated, rubbing her arms. Her legs ached.
“That’s because there was nothing to destroy,” he muttered. “At least not on the surface.”
Her eyes widened, and she stepped back, watching him start to move the sands, digging it aside quickly. It was almost cool. Almost. The ground disappeared until they were standing on a metal roof.
“Huh,” Elle commented. He took her arm and they went through the metal with ease. Inside, they just stood in an empty hallway but they could hear the voices further down.
Turning the corner, they were in for a surprise. There was a mini-forest under the sand. The forest was made of edible food that was red and yellow and green, and it made her eyes try to take in too much—this place was huge and humid and frankly, a little freaky.
A blue bird flew past them. Sylar turned in place to give it a long, fascinating stare.
Elle, however, had noticed the people. First, there were children near the back of this forest, girls and boys, of all ages that were considered kid-like and cute. If being beaten up and looking sick was your cute. They particularly loved the apple trees.
Then women, most of them sitting down and sleeping. Men with guns but no one shot at them. Yet. There was this resigned air about everyone down here.
But she didn’t care about them.
“Gabriel,” Elle said. He was already ahead of her, not bothering to look at another soul around him. He seemed like he knew exactly where Noah was.
And he did know.
Behind this oasis was a small, locked room.
Inside, her kid was shirtless lying on the metal floor, skeletally thin. His skin was unmarred and the only reason he wasn’t dead was because of Claire Bennet. He was sitting in a chair linked up to thousands of tubes and wires, with needles in his arms, constantly bruising and healing.
It felt as if she were watching a movie. She hovered by the doorway while Gabriel was the one to step up, slowly…and kneel down in front of Noah, reaching out a cautious hand to cup his son’s cheek.
Noah flinched and looked up at his father. Gabriel made a low, strangled sound in his throat, and Elle only saw the back of his head.
“This will hurt,” Gabriel said, unsteady in his voice, and pulled out all the I.V.’s out of Noah’s chest and neck.
Noah hissed in pain. Elle just stood there, her hands hanging by her side.
“Shh, it’ll be all right.” Gabriel placed a comforting hand on the back of Noah’s neck. Shh. I’ll get them for this, I’ll kill them-.”
“No,” Noah said more strongly, looking up from underneath his eyelashes with determined fire. “I let them. I asked them.”
Gabriel froze in mid-telekinetic tug, holding his hand up stupidly.
“…What?”
“I asked them to let me help.”
There was a long silence, and her eyes focused on the mountains of blood bags in the corner. It was so dark in here that there might have been more. Gabriel was silent a moment too long, still as a statue, his broad shoulders hardly even moving with his breathing.
“Dad, say something. Please.”
“I’m taking you home.”
Noah’s expression broke. “I can’t leave them,” he gasped. “You don’t understand. The pain, the anger, the hate. I can’t leave.”
“And this is what you consider to be a good idea. This.”
“Yes,” Noah growled, his teeth bared and eyes wild. She noticed the sweat that had gathered on his body. Another reason he was shaking. “It is. You and your little contract made this approach my only option, and I’m sticking with it.”
Ah. Yes. Gabriel’s contract. He had made Noah promise not to use his powers to fight (duh, no brainer there) but also not use other more passive powers either. The healing blood had gotten to stay, and obviously…
“You can’t just sit here and-.”
“Why not? I have forever. They don’t.”
“But the pain here can drive you out of your mind, Noah.”
“It is anyway. I can still fucking sit here if I’m insane.” He tilted his head up defiantly.
“Don’t…”
Use that kind of language, young man.
“Try and make me move. I’ll never forgive you for it. Never.”
“Not if I make you forget.”
“Won’t work on me.”
Gabriel continued to kneel there. Not going to do a thing. She could already see it. And she could already see the quick fix, the easy ready-made solution. It was a mother’s right to hurt those who hurt their children.
She had read that in a book, too.
Her hands came alive, sparking and biting, and she was out the door before either of them could realize it.
“Elle!” Gabriel screamed over and over again, through the echoes of this place—stuck because he was afraid to leave his son. She hit that little magical forest like the fist of an angry…well.
Everything burned.
***
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Elle whispered outside Noah’s room. He had gone unconscious for some reason, and hadn’t woken up yet. She’d cook a big dinner for him, she decided. Thrown in a little extra dessert.
Gabriel offered no illuminating answers. He was quiet, listening for a sign of life. There was a rustle of the bedcovers and they both jerked. Elle smiled. See? Everything was all better.
“You’d better stay here.”
“Tell him to pick his poison. Strawberry syrup or chocolate?”
“…And now you decide to listen about staying put.”
Elle winked.
Gabriel closed the door and she waited, humming to herself. She’d gladly kill everyone in the world for Noah. It was such an obvious solution she was half-mad at herself for not thinking of it sooner.
It’d prove that, hey, she was a pretty good mom.
Gabriel came out, ducking his face a little. His eyes looked strange, kind of shiny for some reason.
“Don’t be sad if he’s pouting; he’s just-.”
“He doesn’t want to see you again.”
Her face froze in a big smile, not processing it.
“And me,” he added, sounding as if he were reciting a line from a movie. “Either of us…ever again.”
She looked at the door.
“I’m going to help him get set up on a remote area. It’ll be as distant as I can make it from other people,” Gabriel said, mechanically. “I better get started.”
He walked past her, and she heard him leave after a little while.
She waited, still staring at the door. It never opened.
5)
Killing them with kindness.
It was a method Gabriel had used but had never really believed in. Killing them with subtle control. Yet he was fair. Gabriel—or Sylar—always let his victims know all about the truth. Ignore the man behind the curtain—until the big reveal. It was very important to him, to show them the real him and watch them…
Well. It used to be important to him.
But this was something entirely different. It wasn’t something he agreed with. What his grown-up son was doing had no balance.
Now, it wasn’t that he was offended by Noah’s secrecy. To be fair, a trait that he always prized in himself, he and his wife had kept out of the loop of the herd outside.
So, it wasn’t Noah’s fault that he was completely surprised when Claire Bennet appeared on his doorstep with a freshly baked pie in one hand and some flowers with small teddy bears in the ribbons.
Blocking the way into their home, he eyed the weird pie. Oh great. The pie was covered in pink ruffles. Guess what it resembled.
“Funny. But I took arsenic out of my diet so…run along home.”
“You don’t like it?” she asked, seeming hurt. “I spent all day on it after hearing a song on the radio. It made me think of you guys and all the bad blood and hate and…well, I just started to cry. I wanted to make it all better.
…So are we friends?”
Claire beamed at him.
He stared at her, honestly confused.
“What’s going on out there?” Elle called from the kitchen.
“A midget ran away from the circus. I’m showing her out.”
“Oh you’re so clever,” Claire praised and pushed her way inside, shoving the grotesque treat in his hands. Upon further study, he saw it was not a brain-cake. It was a badly shaped heart. This did not make him feel any better.
“Elle!” Claire called out and ran opened armed towards his wife as she stepped out of the kitchen. He cried out, with his hands full of cake, and realized too late that—
Claire leapt in the air and hugged Elle tightly around her waist.
“I love you so much.”
“How long has this been going on?” he asked, angry.
“The last thirty seconds,” Elle mocked, over Claire’s head. Then she patted her awkwardly. They stood there in shock while Claire hung on for dear life, her flowers forgotten on the floor.
“Well, something’s going on,” he resumed, putting the cake aside.
“Definitely. I’ve got a new slav...I mean, maid to help around the house.”
“I’d love to help,” Claire said.
“And so enthusiastic.”
“Elle, can you get her into the car? I’m driving her back.”
“Damn,” Elle cussed and then tried to pry Claire off. “Okay, we’re going for a ride, Cheerleader.”
“Thank you for including me.”
“Right.”
***
Outside scared the hell out of him, his mind halting at how wrong it was.
He just didn’t understand.
Driving was slow, in danger of hitting negative numbers. His fists tightened on the steering wheel as he snarled at the crowd. People were out and about, holding hands and crossing the street as if assuming he wouldn’t run them down.
He would if he had a good reason.
In the rear view mirror, a group was starting to form to donate their groceries to their neighbor. And their clothes.
…that were on their bodies.
“What. Is. This? It’s a complete regression of the human race.” He looked to Elle for an answer who was sitting with her hands shaking and her lips pursed.
“I’m so sorry, Gabriel,” she blurted out.
He almost ran off the road.
“And Claire. All I want is for us to love each other and take care of each other in a considerate manner.”
Gabriel sputtered. Claire leaned forward to take Elle’s hand.
“This is madness. This is insane. This is….distracting,” he muttered, watching them. Then he heard it. Coming from the radio. Underneath the music. He slowed down to listen. It wasn’t affecting him, but he heard the off-center, foreign power in the music. No, more than that.
In the air. Electric signals flying through the air, inescapable. He did stop the car then, not bothering with the sobbing coming from the two women beside him. He stared out into the sun, and knew, intuitively, that there was only one person left alive who could control a power at this range.
His son.
***
“So this is what you’ve been up to. Most kids just go to college or get a job.”
Noah frowned at him with a very Elle-ish expression. It lacked her bite, of course, and it was mirror of how she could have been. He was unsure which version was scarier.
“No, you just decide to take over the world.”
“Hi, Dad,” Noah said, not bothering to get up from the seat in front of the rows and rows of computers. “How’d you find me?”
“Your friends told on you.”
He motioned towards the computers. There was a long silence, as Noah turned his back on him. Refusing to acknowledge him.
There was always this struggle.
“Noah,” he finally said, holding out his arms in a beseeching gesture. “What are you doing?”
“Fixing everything.”
“By making the entire world a nudist colony? That’s creative but completely unnecessary. I know your mother and I didn’t raise you like that.”
World conquest, sure. But nudity? At least he hadn’t encouraged it.
“I caught that flaw earlier. Before you told me,” Noah hissed, his eyes fixated on the screen. He could see all around the world through every computer. But he had other powers too. From Gabriel, and other people he had met throughout his life.
“I eased up a little. The average human being can’t apparently handle genuine goodwill.”
“Spoken like a true empathy,” Gabriel said and then flinched at the sneer in his voice. He moved forward slowly and put a hand on Noah’s shoulder. His son was bone thin. Having gotten Claire’s power from him, he could survive here without water or food.
Then the power that gave the user freedom from the restraints of sleep.
What had he done to his child?
“Why?” he asked, not able to see Noah’s face clearly through the ghostly light of the computer screen.
“It hurt me. All the pain in the world. I had to make it better. I had to help them see the way.”
Gabriel saw his mirror version. And it was much more frightening. What he had seen outside had been a joke. But now, what he saw all around him were Hindu cows. Evolution had been written out of the equation. They were sleepwalking.
“Noah. This is wrong.”
“You’re one to talk. I have to make up for you too.”
Gabriel swallowed hard. He knew what he had to do. What he must do. Noah was completely immersed into this system of power. He leaned down to bury his face in Noah’s hair.
His hands knew the rest.
***
“Gabriel, what’s wrong?”
He had his forehead pressed against the steering wheel. He did not want to cry. Elle put her hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently.
“I couldn’t do it. What have I done?”
“What have you not done?” Elle asked.
“I’m giving him a year to learn. I’m giving our child a year to learn. If he doesn’t, I’ll have to come back here.”
“What’s happened? Can’t we just…”
It started to rain. That was him, and that delicious weather control power. Now he was giving himself away. The back door of the car was open and the inside burnt to a crisp. It was obvious what had happened. Claire had snapped out of the coma, just as Gabriel had requested. She deserved the truth.
As was balanced.
Elle was out of the spell too, of course. Of course. And all around them were living Zombies.
“He’s done all this. All of it.”
“…Wow...the whole world is his toy…”
But this time, they were on the same page. Her initial smile started to fade.
“…How boring.”
He closed his eyes, and now he wasn’t going to smile.
“I’m giving him a year.”
“I could, if you can’t. I-.”
“He’s mine,” Gabriel hissed. Meaning each word. Meaning that word. Excepting to be fried.
Because at the end of it all, she’d do what he couldn’t…because she loved Noah enough to let him go. She loved him enough to put him out of his misery. In the end, maybe it was more than Gabriel’s love.
So, why he was holding the car door’s shut….he knew why. That was the worse part.
After a moment of silence, Elle squeezed his shoulder. He expected her to protest and kill him several times for the suggestion. Or in the flipside, kill him for being so weak. He was selfish after all. He wanted his son more than this world. His son was the world…but inside, that part of him was already screaming to fix it. The integrity of the system, the mechanics of the design, demanded it.
“Let’s go home, Gabriel. We never needed the rest of them anyway.”
He nodded and turned the key, starting up the car.
“I am mad at you, you know,” Elle said quietly, through the drum of the rain on the roof.
“I’m mad at me too.”
“You lost me good help.”
Gabriel had to laugh a little. They went back home, lying besides each other in the dark, in a quiet world. The dead quiet of peace.
Because that was the balance Noah had found. Besides basic instincts of keeping alive, no one was…if he'd just learn. (Gabriel knew the answer, knew the ending already but...)
It’s just for a year.
He hoped that year would never come…
But he already felt it inching closer.
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Date: 2010-01-24 06:12 am (UTC)