Chapter Text
It was coming up on 4 am; the horizon to the East was tinged ever so slightly with the gray that signaled that dawn was approaching. On the third floor of a building in Manhattan, two men didn’t notice.
“Christ,” Peter breathed, sitting up. He spat blood onto the floor as he felt the lacerations down his back heal. He had been thrown into the wall, his spine broken.
On the other side of the room, another body stirred. “Such tenacity,” Sylar called as he stood. “I’m sure it’ll be a comfort to all your friends to know that you fought valiantly.” He limped forward a few steps, large amounts of blood staining the left leg of his jeans and matting down his hair.
“Don’t you dare talk about my friends,” Peter snarled, pushing himself to his feet. “I will do everything I can to keep you away from them.”
“I thought it was you they needed protecting from, Peter,” Sylar said smoothly. “A man unable to control his powers. Nearly blew up New York. But settled for his brother, instead.”
“Shut up!”
“After I kill you, they won’t have to worry about that,” Sylar taunted. “What you’re too weak to control, I will.”
“SHUT UP!”
In a fit of guilt, anger and panic, Peter sent a lightening bolt straight at Sylar’s chest, knocking him back several feet into the door, its handle hitting at the base of the man’s skull.
What little Sylar had been able to see in the dark was now indistinct and being obstructed by blackness seeping in from all sides. He tried to get up, to speak, but found he couldn’t. The pain tingling through his body felt transcendent.
Something very bad had happened, he realized.
~~~
Sylar rang the doorbell and took a step back, his hands in front of him, holding the two envelopes. After a moment, the door opened and a middle-aged woman stood before him.
“Can I help you?”
“Mrs. Petrelli, my name is Gabriel Gray. Your son, Peter, asked me to deliver a letter to you.”
“Peter?” Angela repeated. She hesitated for a second, then stepped aside. “Come in.”
Sylar entered the house. “Thank you. Is you son Nathan around, by any chance?” he asked as he handed her the envelope labeled ‘Mom.’ “I have a letter for him, too.”
“Nathan? No, I’m sorry, he’s back home with his wife and children,” she said, accepting the letter. “What is this all about?”
“Just doing a favour for a friend, is all. Why don’t you sit down and open it?” He gestured to the sitting room off the foyer.
Angela eyed him suspiciously before heading into the room and taking a seat. She tore open the side of the envelope with one of her fingernails and shook out the paper inside. Opening it up, she began to read.
Sylar didn’t need his powers to hear her scream as he passed back through the door and started down the sidewalk. “Monster,” she called him.
~~~
He decided it would be best to phase through the door while invisible to gain entry to Nathan’s residence. If the wrong person answered the doorbell, this could start on a very bad note.
Sylar found him alone in his office, sitting at his desk. He made himself visible as he extended the envelope labeled ‘Nathan’ in front of the man’s face.
Nathan looked up with a start, then, realizing who he was looking at, he jumped out of his chair entirely, backing up against the wall.
“If you’re here to hurt my wife and children because you think they might-“
“I have a letter from Peter,” Sylar interrupted, holding the envelope out again.
Nathan paused. “Peter? What?”
Sylar placed the envelope on the desk and stepped back. “He’s asked me to deliver some letters for him. I think you should read yours.”
Nathan didn’t move.
“I’m not here to hurt you or your family,” Sylar told him.
After considering for a moment, Nathan stepped tentatively forward and picked up the envelope. He ripped it open quickly and pulled the paper from inside. After a moment of reading, he staggered back against the wall again, eyes wide.
“This…” He looked up at Sylar. “This can’t…” He looked down at the letter again. “Peter…”
The next time he looked up, Sylar had vanished.
~~~
There was no way around the confrontation at the Bennet household, Sylar knew, so he simply rang the doorbell and waited with his arms in the air, the two envelopes held aloft in his right hand.
As it was summertime, it was Claire who answered the door. Seeing Sylar, she froze, her breath catching in her throat.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Sylar tried to tell her, but she had already started backing away slowly before turning and breaking into a flat-out run.
“DAD!!”
Sylar decided to enter the house, since having the neighbors see what was about to transpire would be rather sloppy and troublesome. He heard Bennet coming but didn’t bother to turn around before being shot twice in the back. He fell forward, blood pooling on the floor, the envelopes labeled ‘Claire’ and ‘Noah’ still in his hand.
~~~
When Sylar came to, he was somewhere else. Looking around, he realized that it was Isaac’s loft, still dressed up as a laboratory, but that he was in the bathroom. Sylar started to wonder why he had been placed there, but he was interrupted by a sudden wave of overpowering nausea. He scrambled for the toilet bowl before being violently sick. After a couple of minutes, the convulsions died down, and he heard footsteps approaching.
“Sorry about that,” Bennet said as he entered the bathroom. “We had to use the drugs we had around to keep you unconscious on the trip to New York. They can have… unpleasant side effects.”
“Really?” Sylar asked sardonically. “Well, I’m sure you only did what you had to.”
“Right…” Bennet said dismissively. “Anyway, we found the other letter, Gabriel.”
At that, Sylar realized that he was now clad in sweatpants and a t-shirt, rather than the slacks and shirt he had been wearing when he arrived at Bennet’s home. The last envelope had been in the inside pocket of his jacket.
“And you delivered it for me, how nice.”
“Those were the instructions in my letter.”
Sylar’s eyebrows rose at this piece of information. He hadn’t realized that any of the letters contained instructions. Peter’s contingency plan, he supposed.
“I was told to bring you and the letter to Mohinder at the same time,” Bennet informed him. “Apparently, it had to be me who told him about everything. I’m not sure why, though; Mohinder may be the only one left whose moral compass is pointing straight enough for him to have simply killed you.”
Sylar stood up and turned on the tap, cupping his hands under the flow for water to rinse out his mouth. Once the bitter taste of bile had been toned down, he turned to face the other man. “I figured there was a reason I was supposed to come here last. He’d either not believe me and kill me, or he’d consider believing me and I’d have to stay put.”
“Well, I don’t think he particularly wants to consider believing you,” Bennet replied, “but you’re definitely going to have to stay put.” He nodded towards the bathroom door. “He wants to talk to you.”
Sylar nodded and followed the older man out into the main room of the loft. The maze of desks and tables that had replaced the maze of paintings remained, and they wove through it on their way to the back, where Mohinder sat at a desk, facing away from them.
Sylar considered saying something—a greeting, a joke—but the tension seemed too thick to risk provoking the man. Finally, he turned around in his chair, holding his letter. Sylar noticed that the envelope labeled ‘Mohinder’ was sitting on the desk.
“I’m not doing this for your sake,” Mohinder said.
“Fair enough,” Sylar replied.
“Peter was far too trusting an individual. I don’t know quite what he thought would come of this, but I’m not going to let his sacrifice be for nothing.” Mohinder paused for a minute, seeming to pull himself together. Sylar shifted his weight between his feet. “How about we hear it in your own words, then? What fundamentally changed in you when you killed Peter Petrelli?”
Sylar gave a little shrug. “My DNA?”