Work Text:
With Claire still not speaking with him and Sylar trying to provoke him the whole journey, Noah wanted nothing more than to come home as soon as possible.
So, he was not very amused when the car suddenly slowed down on its own accord.
“Stop that”, he glared at Sylar.
The killer didn´t even look at him: “I was here before,” he exclaimed, and let the car come to a stop before an abandoned rest station.
With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Noah recognized it.
“Stay in the car”, he told Claire, which was the wrong thing to say, of course. His daughter immediately got up, so Noah had no other choice but to follow the two of them into the house, praying his worst fears wouldn´t come true. It couldn’t be really the place, could it?
But obviously, it wasn´t wish-granting day for him.
“I was here before”, Sylar repeated, “when it was still open. I must have been little, because I couldn´t look over the tables. My Dad is with me – he talks to a couple – the woman, who brought me up. They talk about money – he sells – he sold me to them!”
Noah watched how Claire´s idle curiosity turned against her will into deep concentration and guessed that she probably thought about her own birth parents.
“But my mom comes in”, Sylar´s face contorted with the pain of the memory, “she is angry. She wants me back. But he just pulls out of the house – to her car. There, he just raises one finger and telekinetically cuts her skull open. He kills her – and I can´t do anything to help her.”
Sylar broke down on his knees, shuddering. Claire knelt beside him, having for a moment forgotten her burning hate over this agonizing story.
“Why couldn´t I help her?” Sylar rocked for and back, hitting his head against the wooden doorframe. “Why?”
Claire sent a helpless look to her father, who was not as unmoved as he would like. This man might be one of the worst monsters he has ever met, but still, he shouldn´t have gone through that.
So, he knelt down in front of the killer, grabbing his shoulders to stop the motion and catching his eye. “Gabriel, look at me. You were five years old. You couldn´t have helped her.”
Sylar stared at him with wide eyes, and the next moment Noah found himself with an armful of the still shuddering killer.
He could do nothing but pull him close and hold him like he would hold Lyle. Claire was rubbing the shivering back, but other than the shellshocked killer, she was already putting two and two together.
“You knew all this”, in her voice was no doubt, as she looked up to her father.
“I read in his file how Samson Grey killed his wife,” he felt Sylar flinch and automatically tightened his hold, “I just didn´t know he was there and saw it.”
A moment they sat in silence, then Sylar spoke for the first time again: “When you read my file, you know, that Angela Petrelli lied when she told me she was my mother.”
Noah had feared this moment, had feared Sylar´s wrath when he finally looked through Angela´s lies.
But yet he thought wrath would have been better than the forlorn tone in Sylar´s voice.
“Angela always was a master manipulator,” he carefully combed through the black hair.
“Yeah, she is,” Claire added with disgust. “She wanted Peter to explode in order to have Nathan become president.”
“You must have had a good laugh,” Sylar sounded tired. “She never saw me as a human being, only as a weapon.”
“You are no weapon, you are a person.” Claire was pale, and Noah knew that the words were hitting too near home for her.
“But that is what I am for you. A weapon, a living gunia pig. After my first murder, I wanted to kill myself. Don´t tell me that Elle wasn´t sent by the company to hold me back and bring me in contact with other evolved humans to see how I worked.”
The words triggered a memory in Clair, something Elle had told her when she had tried to kidnap her a few months ago.
“You were there, “she accused her father.
Noah knew it was too late for lying: “We needed to know how you could absorb powers.”
“And then you let me loose on the world. You created the monster that hunted your own family.” In Sylar´s laugh was no hint of humor, “even when you caught me after my attack on Claire´s homecoming, you didn´t kill me. You just put through another round of experiments.”
Noah could feel Claire´s accusing glare. He was not proud of his behavior. And he never had imagined to discuss the whole affair like this, kneeling on the shabby floors of an abandoned road house, Sylar still shivering in his arms, seeking comfort instead of revenge.
“If you had killed me, Virginia would still be alive,” the killer added forlornly.
“Virginia?” Claire prompted.
“The woman who brought me up, the woman I believed to be my mother. When I thought I was the bomb, I was afraid. She always wanted me to be more than I was. Special. I thought that when I could convince her that I was enough, I could become Gabriel again, could go back to my old self. Instead, she freaked out when she saw my powers. She attacked me with scissors. And when I tried to fight her, she stumbled into them. I killed her.”
“I would rather call at an accident,” Noah admonished.
“You didn´t want to, “Claire added comfortingly.
“That doesn´t change the result. I´m a monster. I´m a killer. And I will kill again. Remember the bank – the hunger is too strong. If I see evolved humans, I have to know how they think, how they work. I feel like a drug addict needing a fix. You should have let me die when I was still human enough to die. I don´t want to be a monster like my father.”
And Noah suddenly realized that, despite all the talk about being special, Sylar longed nearly as much as Claire for a normal life.
“You tried to kill me today,” Sylar interpreted his thoughts. “There is a place on the back of my head. The place where I wounded Peter in the fight in Mohinder´s apartment. I think here. You should be able to kill me if you shot me here.”
Sylar took Noah´s hand and put it on the spot. Not an hour ago, Noah would have given anything for this opportunity, Sylar now offered freely. But he didn´t have to look at Claire to know that this was the wrong way. Or hear Claude´s words in his ear, how wrong they were concerning evolved humans.
So, he just caressed the black hair. “No, Gabriel, I won´t kill you.”
“And what do you want to do with me then? Lock me in forever or turn me into a weapon?”
“I think we will take you home. There you can rest and heal.
“You? But why?” Sylar was throughout shocked.
“Because I owe you. Because you need it. Because we are partners.”
“But the hunger…”
“You will have to fight it.”
“You can´t trust me.”
“I will trust you. You wanted a chance.”
“You are really sure about this?”
“We are sure,” Claire told him. “Come, Gabriel, let´s go home.”
When they went back to the car, Noah reflected that his life had just become a lot more complicated than just an hour ago – alone to explain the whole affair to Sandra - but somehow, he felt still more at ease.