Plane Between
Written by Anakin McFly
« Chapter 1–4
« Chapter 5–7
« Chapter 8–10
XI: the problem is choice.
Moonlight spills through the window, pooling gently on the floor and settling on the covers of his bed, Adam gazing idly at its silver as he tries to fall asleep.
He glances over at Leo's bed and briefly meets his eyes. Still awake. Adam looks back at the moonlight and wonders why he's not panicking. He feels resigned, almost. The thirst is a dull scratch at the back of his throat, the hunger a distant rumble.
This is normal life now, he knows. He'd never get true normalcy back, even if he did return home one day. Normalcy now is lying in bed in a house with no doors, tentacle monsters outside, and, on the inside, people who look like him. Or he like them; he has no more or less right over his form than they do.
He hears Leo roll over in bed.
He wonders about Zach, whom Tony cheerily agreed to room with. Zach hasn't said much or done much. Adam doesn't know if he's just still in shock or if he's trying to defer to their strange power hierarchy.
Power hierarchy. He has no idea when that came about, and when he became any kind of leader. He hadn't even been aware he was one. He's used to being a follower. Insignificant. Taking orders. Doing his job. Letting other people make the decisions. But here, there weren't any of those other people around. Sasan and Smudge were content in their self-rule; Tony was his own person; and Leo… Leo would never order anyone around. That just left him, in the end, and Adam doesn't really want that responsibility. He just wishes that everyone were a little less incompetent and paid more attention to the gravity of their situation-
"What happens tomorrow?" he hears Leo murmur from the other bed.
Adam turns back over, but Leo is lying on his back and staring straight at the ceiling. There's still that tiny jolt, even now, seeing his own face and then catching the subtle differences and recognising it as someone else: a specific someone else. Adam wonders briefly at that time, long ago, when he didn't think he would be able to tell them apart. It's so obvious now. Leo, Smudge, Sasan, Tony, Zach… new guys…
All right, so he still had some work to do there.
"I don't know," he says in reply, and his tongue is dry in his mouth.
"Why is Zach here?" Leo asks.
Adam wonders if Leo expects him to have these answers or if he's just in a rhetoric mood.
"I don't know… he knows us," Adam says, not really answering the question. "If some of us need to die to save the others-"
"-he'll know which ones to choose?" Leo finishes.
Silence.
"This is so messed up," Adam mutters. "How did we even get here-"
"Maybe everyone does," Leo says vaguely in the blur of near-sleep. "All those people with normal lives… maybe one day they end up somewhere like this and no one ever knows any better. In the end we have no control. We just go wherever life takes us and try to make the best of it."
"Yeah, and how do we make the best of this?"
Leo rolls onto his side to face him, familiar brown eyes steady with a calmness that Adam wants to know the origin of. He wants some for himself.
"We live until we die," Leo says. And then, sincerely: "It's been good knowing you. And all the others."
"…Thanks."
Silence.
And then a bloodcurdling scream from outside rudely jerks them out of the moment, throwing aside the covers and rushing out of their beds as incoherent yelling shatters the quiet of the night.
Adam shoves the door open and stumbles out, Leo coming after-
"GET OFF HIM!"
Three figures, a tumbled mess in the corner.
Smudge pulls Louis to the ground by the collar of his unbuttoned shirt and screams into his face.
"WHAT WERE YOU DOING?"
"I-"
Smudge rams a fist in Louis' face, his nose breaking into blood; and then another fist, furiously following the first-
Sasan stumbles off the ground, struggling to pull his pants back on. "Smudge! Don't-"
"HOW DARE YOU?" Smudge hollers at Louis, the latter now frightened and struggling to get up, Smudge roughly shrugging off Sasan's hand. "HOW DARE YOU TOUCH HIM?"
With an effort, Louis pushes Smudge off, stumbling to his feet in a wild panic before Smudge grabs his legs and trips him and Louis falls back to the ground and they hear a crack; and Louis feels the jolt of pain through his neck and tastes blood in his mouth but Smudge is over him again, now with a chair, screaming as he brings it down on his head as Louis' hands raise to block the blow-
"SMUDGE!"
The chair crashes down in an explosion of blood and pain.
Possession fought over the chair; someone yanking it out of Smudge's hands, and Smudge giving way briefly before his hand grabs tight in a stranglehold around Louis' neck, and he wants to push him off and loosen the grip because it's hard to breathe; but his arm hurts when he lifts it;
Smudge, screaming as the others arrive to pry him off Louis while he struggles against them in incoherent rage, the others shouting things that Louis cannot make out; and he tries to roll over and get up but he can't feel his legs he can't feel his legs-
But the dread is lost in the fog and pain and the thick wetness – blood? – where his head meets the floor, and there's someone bending over him, looking horrified but trying to hide it…
"Louis…" Zach breathes out, and there's a curse at the tip of his tongue that never quite makes it out.
Behind Zach, Smudge fights against Adam and Leo's combined attempts to hold him back; Tony looking on uncertainly; Sasan torn between shock and guilt and glancing between Smudge and where Louis lies in a bloody mess on the ground-
"Let me GO!"
Leo shakes him. "Smudge, no. NO."
"He was… he was…"
"Smudge-" Sasan tries, and instantly Smudge's eyes swivel to face him, full of pain and accusation, and he wonders why he said anything.
"I trusted you," Smudge says, his voice shaking through his tears. "I TRUSTED YOU!"
"Smudge, I'm sorry…I didn't mean to… Smudge?"
Smudge looks away, trembling with anger and betrayal, Leo holding him tight, stroking his back with forceful gentleness, exchanging looks with Adam, who goes over to join Zach by Louis' side-
"…he's not going to make it," Adam says.
I can hear you, Louis thinks groggily.
Zach doesn't reply.
"…There's the gun," Adam adds. "If we need to-"
I can STILL hear you, Louis thinks.
"Zach?" Adam asks.
Zach looks at him, frightened in the way most actors would be after watching one of their characters beat another one inches from death with a chair.
Jason drops down next to them. "…Hey," he greets uncertainly. "Do we clean him up or…"
Zach moves a hand to Louis' forehead.
Mitchell rushes over with a handful of towels from the bathroom. He glances perfunctorily at Adam and Zach, then drops the towels on the floor and crouches down by Louis' side.
"That guy is psycho," Mitchell mutters to Jason. He eyes Adam. "And you're friends with him."
"Hey-" Adam starts, then stops himself, with effort. They should be in this together. Not fighting.
"Uh, people?" Tony asks, and a few of them look up.
There's a doorway flickering in the wall. It's right next to the number – now flickering unstably between 9 and 8, the door growing more solid as the 8 grows more solid, only to fade again as the 9 grows stronger…
"It's the trigger," Adam says.
"…Eight people," Leo murmurs, and then he steps forward, pulling Smudge along, glancing at the group clustered around Louis. "Eight people, that's the trigger! We can still save him! Get through the door while it's there or someone will have to die before it opens again-"
No, Louis thinks, not wanting to move, because moving hurts in the parts of his body that he can still feel, but Mitchell and Jason and Zach are grabbing hold of him and lifting him off the ground and he can't find the ability to protest-
"What if it's worse in that next place?" Tony asks, snatching up the shotgun nonetheless.
"Then we'll deal with it," Leo says. "We can't stay here."
The doorway is still flickering, insubstantial. Through it they see what seems to be an extension of the house: a wide, furnished hallway lined with doors and glimpses of a couch by an expensive-looking rug.
"What if it cuts out when we're walking through?" Tony asks. "We might get spliced or someth-"
Smudge breaks free from Leo and runs through the door. He comes out on the other side, turns, looks at them wordlessly, and then goes on down the hallway and vanishes around the corner.
"…Let's go!" Zach shouts.
#
"Louis, Louis, Louis."
He's on the carpet, vision a blur, aware that time suddenly seems to have stopped and that strange guy is back, regarding him with a painfully patronising look and smile.
"You," Louis manages.
"You don't look too good," Q comments, surveying his Smudge-battered form. "I don't think you'll ever walk again."
"You promised," Louis says, his voice weak and pathetic to his own ears.
"Why, yes, I did. And it looks like I was right after all." Q hops over, standing behind Jason's time-frozen form and looking down at Louis. "You're a selfish little bastard, aren't you?"
"Please," Louis whispers, voice shaking with oncoming tears. "I broke them up… you said… you said you'd send me back-"
"Oh, I could do that," Q agrees. "Send you right back home and leave you whimpering pathetically on the floor. Maybe someone will hear you if you scream for help. Maybe you'll be able to drag your half-dead corpse to the telephone and call an ambulance. Or maybe you're going to just lie there in the dark until death finally comes to put an end to your miserable, miserable existence."
Louis cries quietly, tears mixing with blood and slipping down the side of his face.
"Or," Q says, looking contemptuously at the tears, "I have another offer. You die, as you're going to anyway. There aren't any medical professionals around, as you can see. Even if there were, not many people can survive a blow to the head with a chair wielded by a very angry bisexual guy who evidently did not like watching you fuck his boyfriend. Then all your little friends here can go home and be happy."
Q bends in close, reaching out a finger to trace the line of tears down Louis' face. "But it's going to be a very… painful… death."
Louis squeezes his eyes shut, still shaking with sobs.
"Option three," Q says, his voice maddeningly calm and quiet. "You live. You get healed, you'll walk again. But one of the others dies in your stead. Perhaps he would die anyway. It might even look natural. But you're going to know that it's all… because… of you."
And Louis hates himself as the tears run down his face; and he wants to die, and thinks he should die, but still that part of him clings on ever so obstinately to life and health and he doesn't even know those other people and why should he care about them and he never asked to be put into this place and all he ever wanted to do was to go home, not be caught up in some bizarre morality game and dig himself deeper and deeper into a hole he knows he would never get out of-
"What's it going to be, Ironson?" Q asks, standing back upright. "Home and a slim chance of survival? Sacrificing yourself for the greater good? Or sacrificing someone else for your own insignificant, worthless self snivelling on the floor?"
Louis draws his arm over his head, engulfed in shame and wishing Q would go away.
And he thinks about home, and arriving on his floor in the night with the lights all off, still bloody and barely mobile and trying to grope his way in the darkness and drag the weight of his unresponsive legs over to find the telephone to call someone, anyone, and then maybe getting to end up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life-
Or to die, so that others may live, but no… he doesn't want it to end this way. It shouldn't end this way, it shouldn't-
And maybe all those other people weren't even real. Because how could they be; he owns this face, this body, and it's all just a cruel, cruel trick, and he just wants to live, and maybe, if he lives, he could atone for his sins one day, because how could he do that if he died, and they had to understand that, they had to know that he's not a terrible person, he just-
"What do you want, Louis?" Q asks, borderline impatient.
Louis mumbles something from behind his arm, and is overwhelmed by a fresh flood of tears.
Q twirls a pen he picks up from the table. "I can't hear you."
Louis pulls his arm away, eyes swimming in distress. "I want to live," he rasps out.
Q raises an eyebrow. "At the expense of someone else?"
Louis swallows, and gives a trembling nod.
Q smiles. "I thought so." He catches the pen and puts it back on the table.
And then Q vanishes, and the world is alive once more, and Louis feels something snap into place and he jerks involuntarily; and his legs can move again, and he hates himself.
#
Smudge hurtles down the hallway, tears stinging at his eyes; he angrily brushes them away and keeps on, turning the corner into an open area and pausing, briefly, to take in the sight of the large room, a great marble staircase winding its way up from the centre. Doors curve around the rest of the room; and, ahead, the opening of another hallway. This place is huge.
Smudge pushes on to the staircase. Behind him he hears running footsteps and Sasan calling his name, and his heart pangs for him. Sasan's voice draws fresh tears from his eyes; but he remembers, and so he keeps running, grabbing hold of the banister and ascending the marble steps upward. His footsteps echo.
"SMUDGE!"
He pauses just long enough to look down from his ascent, eyes brimming with tears.
"GO AWAY!" he yells.
"No… no, Smudge, please, I'm sorry-" Sasan reaches the bottom of the stairs and climbs after him, but Smudge has the head start and he rushes on, fuelled by the fury of betrayal.
"Smudge! I'll do anything-"
"Is that what you told him?"
"Smudge…"
He's at the top of the stairs now, shoes pushing off against dark crimson carpet and into the enveloping gloom of a new hallway. Wooden doors loom up from shadows on both sides of him. He falls against one, forcefully wiping tears from his eyes, and tugs at the doorknob.
"Please…"
Smudge turns, hand on the doorknob. Sasan stands at the start of the hallway, looking completely dejected.
Smudge swallows back tears. He wants him. He wants him back. So much.
Sasan takes a cautious step forward. "Smudge…"
"I trusted you," Smudge chokes out. "You said you loved me-"
"I do," Sasan says, taking more steps towards him, speeding up. "Smudge, I did a stupid, stupid thing-"
"What was he like?"
"Not you. Nothing like you, he was no one, he means nothing to me-"
Sasan grabs Smudge's free hand, peering pleadingly into his eyes, and he sees that he's different from Louis; because Sasan knows him, so strongly, and cannot push him away and minimise him into some strange narcissistic fantasy, because he's Smudge, a whole person of his own, not some weak copy from a truer original… and Sasan loves him.
"…Smudge. I'm sorry."
Smudge is silent, trembling, muted by his gaze.
"Smudge… We've survived my death, please let us survive this…"
A tear slides down Smudge's face.
Sasan hugs him; Smudge falling into his embrace, crying into his shirt: "Don't you EVER do that AGAIN-"
"I won't," Sasan promises, holding on tight, kissing his head. "I won't, I won't…"
And for that moment of time, there's just them, again, and everything else ceases to matter.
#
The flickering wall solidifies. All nine are alive.
"Where do we put him?" Jason asks.
Mitchell nods towards the couch. "There."
The two of them and Zach carry Louis over, relinquishing their load onto the couch.
"Think he's going to make it?" Jason asks.
"The wall closed," Mitchell points out. "Looks like he's not dying yet…" He peters off, looking up suspiciously as Leo comes forward. "What do you want?"
"We got off to a bad start," Leo says quietly. "It shouldn't be like this…"
"Two of us are dead, and look at him," Mitchell says, gesturing at Louis. "You don't care about the new guys, huh?"
Adam joins Leo's side. "It's not our fault-"
Leo holds out a hand to Mitchell, mutely silencing Adam. "I'm Leo."
Silence. Tony wanders over to see what's up.
Mitchell finally takes the proffered handshake. "Mitchell."
Jason lifts a hand in a cautious wave. "Jason."
"Adam."
"Tony."
"…Zach."
Awkward silence.
Tony wanders off to escape the tension.
Adam looks at Louis. "What do we do about him?"
Tony pops back around the corner. "Hey," he announces, munching on a piece of chicken. "There's food here."
They forget about Louis.
They tear hungrily into the food and drinks, Adam and Leo and Jason and Mitchell and Tony and Zach demolishing the spread that had been set out in the next room (beside a note saying "IF YOU DIE TOO SOON, IT WON'T BE FUN").
Leo wonders aloud where Smudge and Sasan are. Tony says they ran off but they'd probably be back.
Louis lies pathetically on the couch, mouth watering at the thought of food, but still hurting too much to get up. Zach comes by with a plate and cup. He puts them down, goes back to get his own food, drags a chair over to Louis' side, and sits down.
"Here," he says, holding out the cup, and Louis finds Zach's eyes deeply unnerving when he looks at them. He struggles to sit up and takes the cup; desperately gulps down its contents, the water rushing down his throat in overwhelming relief.
He's aware that Zach is watching him, and continues watching him as he eats; and he can't tell if it's love or pity or both that he sees in his face, but at the moment all he can care about is feeding the hunger and feeling the pain slide slowly away with each mouthful of food…
For an odd moment or two, Louis looks at Zach and feels like he's looking at himself. He thinks it should be expected; but somehow it's different with Zach than with the others. It's almost like Zach could be him, completely and fully, and no one would ever be able to tell otherwise.
Or that Zach could be any of them, in fact. Louis takes to returning Zach's gaze while munching on a piece of turkey (his own face contorted into an appropriate expression of pain lest anyone forget his cruel beating at the hands of that psycho bisexual guy), and in the tiniest expressions on Zach's face he sees fleeting glimpses of the others. Zach seems… more. More than one person, home to a myriad personalities, a myriad people…
Louis feels suddenly vulnerable and doesn't know why.
#
When Jay comes to, he's standing on the edge of the earth and gazing down into a bottomless pit. He turns around: and there is light, like the fresh dawn of a new day, golden-white skies and bright saturated colours bursting from the grass and the flowers and the trees and the sketchy outlines of buildings.
There's someone else standing a short distance away, staring down into the same pit. A slightly older man, with his face, clad in a rumpled white shirt. Jay remembers him. He walks over, trying warily to catch his eye.
"Hey," Jay says.
The other gives a small start and looks up, eyes searching Jay's face in that confusion of recognition and not-quite-recognition. "Hi…"
"You're Peter. Right?"
He nods. "I remember you…"
"Jay."
Silence. A flock of birds takes off from a tree and vanishes into insubstantiality with a final, echoing tweet.
"Are we dead?" Peter asks, worried. "Where are we?"
The place is changing, losing colour.
"Did you get the feeling of being dragged here?" Jay asks in response. There's something about this world that has him on alert.
"…Yeah."
They're staring now at the row of short buildings, one of which has taken on a sharper focus than the others, and is ever so subtly drawing them towards it.
"It's a watchmaker's shop," Jay states in unasked reply, stepping forward. "Funny kind of afterlife."
Peter follows hesitantly behind.
Gray and Sons, say the words printed on the glass. Jay peers through into the shop's confines, almost quaint, almost familiar in a dark, haunting way.
"I don't think we should go in," Peter says, arrested by a sudden unexplained fear.
Jay looks at him. "We're here for a reason," he says, and opens the door.
The colours extinguish in a burst of silence.
The world is grey beneath a sepia sky; at least, that's what they would see if they turned around, but they are both in the shop, immersed in the ticking of innumerable clocks, and there's someone who looks like them sitting at the counter, hands steepled at his chin, a faintly evil grin beneath a piercing gaze as he watches them approach.
The door closes with a thud.
"Is that the serial killer?" Peter whispers at Jay.
Sylar stands, a smooth liquid motion from behind the counter. His gaze passes from Peter to Jay, and his grin deepens.
"It's always nice to have company," he says.
Peter subconsciously sidles a little closer to Jay.
Jay seems unperturbed, still looking suspiciously at Sylar, watching as he ambles forward right up to Peter – who flinches visibly but tries to stand his ground.
"Yes," Sylar agrees. "I am the serial killer. And I have a name."
Sylar crooks his finger, and Peter's hands leap to his neck as his tie tightens around it, gasping, terror in his eyes as Sylar leans in close:
"It's Sylar."
And his palms raise and slam the two of them against the wall, the sound of their own laughter ringing distantly in their ears.
XII: supererogation.
Eventually they break the embrace, Sasan sliding one arm away from Smudge but leaving the other there in a comforting hold.
Smudge blinks, not meeting his gaze; for a moment trembling with raw vulnerability until his defences kick in again, gradually, and the fear fades from view in a few deep breaths. He brushes a hand almost absently across his face to wipe off the rogue lingering tears.
"What's on the other end of this hallway?" he asks, and some of his brash bravado is back. Not all the way; not when he's with Sasan, although Sasan remembers a time when Smudge was even more unguarded around him. Some of that unfailing trust is gone.
"I don't know," Sasan says, a perfunctory reply to a rhetorical question, but seeing it as a good sign that Smudge doesn't seem to mind his hand on his shoulder as they start walking slowly down the hallway.
It gets darker the further in they go, and Sasan tries to ignore the first pricks of panic as the light from the stairway grows fainter. There's something about the velvet darkness that feels like it's smothering him; and the carpet seems to be getting softer beneath his feet, sucking him in...
His hand tightens around Smudge's shoulder, more for his own comfort than anything else.
"Do you… really think we should go this way?" he finally manages to articulate, hoping he doesn't sound as nervous as he feels.
Smudge slows to a halt and looks at him; and Sasan has no idea what he's thinking, no matter how deep or searchingly he gazes into his eyes, now with a strange faraway look to them.
Then Smudge gives a half-shrug. "I was just curious, that's all. You don't need to come with me if you don't want to."
Sasan wonders if this is supposed to be some test, here in the increasingly suffocating darkness (is the hallway narrower than before? he wonders) and a gnawing sense of foreboding creeping at the edges of his mind; but he knows that there is no way he's going to leave Smudge here on his own to face whatever unknown horrors this place might hold.
"I'm not leaving you," he says, and hopes his conviction carries through. "I just… this place…" He takes a breath and gives a weak smile. "It's a bit scary, don't you think?"
Silence.
"…but if you want to go on, I'll go with you-"
"Nah," Smudge says quietly, gazing distantly down the hall. "It's okay then."
"Smudge."
When he doesn't respond, Sasan reaches out his other hand and gently cups Smudge's face towards him. "We're… all right, right?" he asks.
Smudge's eyes dip down. Another shrug. "I guess." Half-hearted. "I just don't know if I still know you anymore."
"Smudge-"
"I want to," Smudge says, and looks straight at him. "It's just not the same anymore, okay?"
The faraway look is gone, for the moment, and it's just Smudge again, like he was moments ago when he cried into Sasan's arms and begged him never to do that again, and his eyes are scared and pleading…
"I love you," Sasan says, and he means it.
Silence. The words hang in the air.
Sasan hesitantly reaches out a hand and trails it lightly through Smudge's hair.
Smudge catches his hand, holds it, looks at it, tries to use it to fill that void in his heart; tries to make himself believe that nothing ever happened with Louis, and things were as they'd always been between them; hating himself for ever having trusted Sasan that much, and yet yearning for that same unbounded faith, too afraid now to make that leap…
It could never be the same again. The ache cuts deep into him, into an ancient loneliness he'd thought he'd never feel again.
You never deserved Sas in the first place, Smudge tells himself fiercely. You never deserved anyone. If you didn't look like him he wouldn't even have given you a second glance.
His other hand clenches into a fist.
…It might have been better if he'd stayed dead.
But that thought chokes his heart and he gasps out a tear.
"Smudge, talk to me…"
Sasan's hand leaves his shoulder and cradles Smudge's face, desperate for some hint at what was going on in his head, yearning to see beyond the eyes that have since glazed over again. His thumb brushes the tear away.
You're alone again, Smudge thinks. You're always going to be alone. No one can ever truly love you.
Sasan hugs him tightly, whispering his name. Smudge trembles in his hold.
And you can never trust anyone again.
"It's going to be okay," Sasan murmurs into his ear. There's a tightness in his voice, choked with suppressed tears and cutting guilt. "We're… We're going to be okay."
#
It's like some kind of awkward family reunion. Like Christmas dinner with relatives you'd prefer you never saw: a few loudly dominating the conversation with updates on what's been going on in everyone's life, crude jokes, awkward laughter, lips silently pursing, kids running around the place…
Well, so it isn't completely like that. It's quieter, for starters; each of the five of them seated at the table are too hungry to talk. But the awkwardness is there, at least, and Jason wonders if he's the only one who feels it so strongly. It's possible. Adam and his friends seem to have long ago attained a level of easy comfort around each other, as though there's nothing particularly strange about being surrounded by people who look almost exactly like you. Since they'd first met, Jason hasn't seen another face.
It unnerves him when he thinks too much about it. So he just eats quietly and tries not to be too conspicuous; lest people remember that he was the one who'd tried to hide food from them. And it unnerves him when he thinks about Peter and his death and realises how, after the initial shock, it hasn't seemed to impact him that much. They didn't exactly know each other that well. They'd met for barely hours. Jason doesn't expect to have particularly strong feelings for the death of any passing acquaintance, but what disturbs him is the way that he's losing his hold on who Peter was; like he was just another face, another one of them, his personality and essence blurring against the rest of them into something insubstantial, indistinguishable…
He wonders if he seems the same way to everyone else here.
Everyone else. It's almost a cruel joke. Sometimes he gets the sense that they're all the same person, spread thin over several incarnations, fighting itself, cooperating with itself, and that at any moment the illusion of individuality is going to shatter and they – he? – would be all alone. Trapped. With no one else who knows that he's here.
Jason tries to keep his calm exterior as he reaches out for more broccoli. The food is quickly going. He wonders where the excess food ends up, if they're all really one person. Or if it's just him, and the others all figments of his imagination…
Adam is staring at nothing as he chews.
"How long before the next thing happens?" Tony asks, a bit too enthusiastically, as he scoops out more unidentifiable but extremely delicious mushy purplish food onto his plate. It was the best thing he had ever tasted, ever.
"Nothing happens," Adam predicts darkly, still staring at nothing, his mind half elsewhere. "We're trapped here, like in the last place. And then we die. After another series of unfortunate events."
Adam finally lowers his eyes back to his plate, and stabs at a piece of potato. "They're picking us off one by one."
"Giving up, huh?" Mitchell asks.
Adam gives him a look.
"It's just a sucky attitude, that's all."
Adam goes back to his food. He briefly looks over to where Zach and Louis are, then decides that nothing interesting is going on there. He prefers Zach being far over there, anyway. Zach disturbs him every time Adam remembers who he is.
"The question is… why do you care, Adam?"
He looks up from his plate, and Dem is perched on the table munching on a cinnamon stick, the rest of them frozen in time-
-no, not all of them. Leo is there with him, just the two of them and Dem active in their little bubble of time.
Adam grits his teeth. "Here to gloat?"
"Oh, I could do that whenever I want," Dem says, dismissing his question with a wave of the cinnamon stick. "The thing is… people die all the time in senseless, pointless ways. You and your friends aren't so special. Is your human worldview so narrow and self-centred that you're only affected when you're forced to face it? Why aren't all of you in a constant state of agony over all the suffering that's going on all the time? Oppression, discrimination, hate crimes, children starving, people wasting away, gruesome murders, natural disasters, diseases, torture…"
"There's a limit to how much we can acknowledge in order to function," Leo says, and Adam is suddenly grateful for his presence.
"In that case," Dem says, "why not ignore all of it? You'd be so much happier then. How is acknowledging a comfortable amount of suffering any less selfish?"
"Is there a point to your questions?" Adam asks testily.
Dem shrugs and chews on his cinnamon stick.
"We do what we can," Leo says. "So maybe it's selfish. But no one's perfect. And, yeah, maybe personal interests get in the way, but we're just human-"
Dem jabs his cinnamon stick in Leo's face. "Aha," he says. Leo flinches. "But what do you consider personal interests? A bunch of strangers getting skewered isn't exactly that personal, is it?"
"It is when we're the ones supposed to stop it," Leo says.
Dem bends in close. "But think of all the many other horrors you could stop if only you tried. By selling all you have and giving it to the poor… by hunting down criminals in your spare time… by speaking up every time someone does something that isn't very nice… Or do you only do good when there's a huge sign explicitly telling you that you have ten minutes to save a bunch of guys who happen to look exactly like you?"
"We'd have done the same no matter what they looked like," Adam says irritably.
Dem stops staring Leo down and turns his attention to Adam. "Really?" he asks. "Well, maybe. But I'm guessing you wouldn't have felt as bad about it if they had died. History has shown time and again that humans favour people they perceive to be like them. Whom they sense a connection with. Newspapers reporting on disasters in other countries always pay special attention to any of their own citizens who happened to be caught. Maybe just one or two of them, but hey, they get the spotlight amidst the thousands of faceless natives. How many parents do you think would willingly let their child die if it meant five strangers would be saved?"
Dem twirls the cinnamon stick. "You know it yourself, Adam. I know that Smudge and Sasan and Tony annoy the hell out of you, and yet you still care about them. Because of that bond. Without it I doubt any of you would have become this close. You're all strangers, you know that. You don't know any more about each other than a random collection of people on the street. Or do you forget that, and just assume? Filling in the blanks with your own assumptions of what the others are? Why did you trust Sylar the first time you met him? Would you have done the same if he had looked different? Would you have been more on alert?"
"Do you keep seeking out humans to blame us for being human?" Adam asks.
"I'm just trying to help you rise above it." Dem lifts the cinnamon stick into the air to demonstrate.
"…" says Adam, suddenly wanting that cinnamon stick.
"…which you're evidently not very good at," Dem says, putting the cinnamon stick back into his mouth. "There are lessons to be learnt among these people. If you can see them as family, there's no reason why you can't do the same for anyone else. Appearances are deceiving. Neighbours, beggars, politicians, annoying co-workers…" – Dem gave Adam a look – "…if they were like the people here, would you be kinder? If you assumed that they too were like you and felt the same, hurt the same way, saw the world through eyes not that different from yours… would you care more? Would you be more willing to understand?"
"You're a bit of a hypocrite, aren't you?" Adam says. "Talking about kindness while you torture us."
"I'm not human," Dem says lightly. "I don't count. And it's called tough love. Sometimes death is involved," he admits. "But it's for your own good. I think."
"Why us?" Adam retorts. "Jealous of our eyebrows or something?"
Dem looks momentarily sad, as if Adam has touched a nerve. Then that expression fades. "You're a completely random group of people," he says. "All strangers, remember? Look past the surface, Adam. You've all got nothing in common. Some of you aren't even the same race. You and Louis are Jewish, Sasan is Iranian, Smudge is bisexual…"
Leo puts his hand to his forehead in a subtle facepalm.
"…the odd thing is," Dem continues, "If I were to get enough of you together – say a hundred – the differences are going to become even clearer. Humans always find a way to oppress others. If you can't discriminate on the basis of phenotypical appearance, there's always religion, class status, age, sexual orientation… you'd be a nice little society in no time, full of the privileged oppressing the unprivileged as they fight for their right to exist." Dem shrugs. "You could start a city. Quintopolis."
Leo's other hand joins his first in a second subtle facepalm.
"You know I'm right," Dem says, with a surreptitious look of envy at Adam's eyebrows.
"So what's next?" Adam asks. "It's not very useful learning things if we're all going to die, is it?"
"Oh, I don't know," Dem says. "I'm not in charge of this game. That's up to Q to decide. I'm just here to enjoy the show and subject you to monologues about the human condition. Cheers. Do you want this cinnamon stick?"
"…No," Adam lies.
"All right then." Dem promptly vanishes.
Jason gives them a double take when time starts going again.
"What?" Adam asks, seeing him staring.
"You… moved," Jason says, looking uncomfortable. He'd seen the same thing earlier before when they'd carried Louis in.
"…Yeah. I'm not dead."
"It's not… it's like you… Never mind." Jason meekly returns to his food.
Adam is about to press further, when Leo picks up a piece of card from the table that hasn't been there before.
"What's that?" Tony asks, leaning over for a better look.
It's a detailed plan of the house: several floors worth, a red dot cheerily marked 'You Are Here!'; and, at the end of a maze of hallways, an arrow marked 'Exit'.
"…It's a map," Adam says.
#
Smudge untangles himself from the embrace, slipping away like air beneath Sasan's hold and turning away, pushing absently at one of the doors in the hallway and following its path as it opens up into a room, Sasan trailing behind, helpless, devoted, sunk in regret and wanting him back.
Smudge half-turns, meets his gaze, and there's still some of that old connection there that Sasan clings on to… but then Smudge turns back and continues walking into the gloom of the strange large room they've found themselves in. It's half-furnished, as though someone had been moving in and gave up unpacking. Boxes lie scattered on the grey concrete floor, shoved up against unpainted walls or lying in the way. There's a vague outline of a kitchen counter on one side; an unremarkable door near it; scraps of peeling half-done wallpaper. Ceiling high metal-frame windows line the opposite wall. Sunlight shines in: a dead, whitish glow that flows mutely through the glass. An ornate iron staircase winds its way up the centre, its structure tinged with the dull green of oxidisation.
The door shuts behind them. Smudge meanders around the boxes in childlike absentmindedness, thoughts elsewhere, and Sasan can do nothing but follow after.
Smudge slows down by the window, gazing silently out.
"I don't think this is part of the house," he says, and Sasan is just glad to hear him speak. He goes forward to join him, placing a hesitant arm around his shoulder – becoming less hesitant when Smudge does not resist – and looks out with him.
He makes out some semblance of foliage. Green, but with an ancient, crumbly quality… tired plants, left too long to live.
"Perhaps there's a way out," Sasan suggests.
Smudge shrugs. "Maybe."
Sasan looks at him, and with hesitant affection tousles Smudge's hair and brings his head close.
Smudge leans against him, but doesn't say anything.
"I'll always be here," Sasan murmurs. "I'll always be here."
#
Louis is in no state to walk, and no one knows where Smudge and Sasan have run off to, so Zach agrees to stay there while the others check out whatever that map claims the exit is and report back.
"It could be a trap," Mitchell says as the five of them start making their way down one of the plush hallways, Adam leading the way.
"I don't think we have a choice," Leo says. "If that's the exit, I doubt there'd be any other way out."
"…What if we can't get back?" Jason asks.
"Does it matter?" Adam asks curtly, not looking at him.
"We can't leave them-"
"You barely know them," Adam continues tersely, forging on ahead. "We're probably all going to die anyway."
Jason wishes he wouldn't say that.
Leo steps up to Adam's side in silent support as they walk. Adam swallows; relaxing his shoulders a little.
Leo holds out his hand for the map. "I could take over-"
"It's ok."
Leo puts his hand back down.
Bringing up the rear, Tony munches on an apple he took from the dining table. Adam likes how this means he's too busy chewing to talk.
Jason glances with passing interest at the doors as they go by, and wonders for the moment about breaking away and going into one of those rooms… through the occasional open door he sees more doors, or stairways, or hallways, and wonders how huge this place is; and if some of those doors lead to other worlds, perhaps his own, or just an infinite series of other places that one can spend forever exploring in an unending architectural journey through scenes since deserted by whoever once lived there.
Adam leads them through one of those doors. This room is tiny, clean and square, its smooth walls reflecting a pastel orange from some omnipresent light. It opens up in a corner into a similar corridor, just wide enough for single-file, and they go through.
They pass through more interior vistas: some are recognisably of human origin, some definitely furnished by IKEA, others strange and alien with eerie walls knitting up towards impossibly high ceilings; and, always, there are no people, although sometimes the rooms seem to hold echoes of previous lives.
After ten or fifteen minutes of eternity, they emerge in a wide wooden panelled corridor that grows narrower and lower towards the end. It terminates in a simple, functional wooden door.
Adam draws slowly to a halt before it.
"We're here," he states simply.
Tony steps forward and places a hand on the door handle. He glances at them for guidance; seeing no objection, he pushes it down and opens it.
It looks like a perfectly normal alleyway in some city or other. Concrete walls, dirty ground, bits of junk tossed here and there, the sound of traffic. Cars pass by in whooshing blurs of colour in the distance. Strains of conversation in the distance. People.
The familiarity is reassuring.
"Whose world is this?" Leo asks, as they step out.
"What do you think 'exit' meant?" Mitchell counters. "Did you think we'd all magically end up back in our own homes?"
Tony kicks absently at a can. It bounces off the wall and falls back down. He tosses his apple core aside to join the rest of the junk.
None of them particularly care when the door shuts behind them. None of them notice when it vanishes into the wall.
"We can't all go out at once," Jason ventures. "It might attract too much attention-"
Adam has gone on ahead, Leo a short distance behind, and the others are about to ignore Jason and follow him; when Adam suddenly comes to an abrupt halt.
"What-"
Then Leo sees the same thing, and falls silent.
Adam finally turns around, his face completely ashen. "...We… we've gotta go back," he says. He pulls at Leo, who has gone semi-paralysed in shock. "Leo. Go back."
"Uh, the door is gone," Tony points out helpfully, wandering towards them. "What's going on? Nuclear apocalypse? Zombie apocalypse?"
Jason is staring at where the door used to be. There's a message there now, scratched on in chalk.
YOU HAVE 30 MINUTES BEFORE YOUR EXIT CLOSES.
CORNER OF WELLS AND LAKE
DOOR TO ROOM #29-64
P.S. DO NOT FALL INTO THE LAKE.
He has a bad feeling about this.
#
Frightened eyes meet on the floor, sharing a moment's solidarity, lips moving wordlessly in silent sentiments amidst their trembling breaths. Jay cautiously extends his arm across the grey concrete of the floor; finds Peter's hand, grasps hold of it-
- and then loses his grip as Peter is swept off the ground and into the air, Sylar's telekinetic grasp firm around his neck.
Sylar approaches and circles his prey, slow, deliberate steps across the floor.
"What's your name?" he asks, an amused lilt to his voice.
"Peter," he gasps out, and wonders at the grin that spreads across Sylar's face.
"I knew a Peter," Sylar says, his ominously quiet voice carrying throughout the room. "We… didn't get along very well."
He breaks the grip, and Peter collapses to the floor, left hand rising reflexively to massage his neck.
"Lick my shoes," Sylar says casually.
Peter looks up, aghast. "…What?"
Sylar tilts his head at him. "Which part of that sentence did you not understand?"
Jay gets slowly to his feet, then shouts and crashes backwards into a glass case as Sylar absently flicks a hand at him.
"I gave you an order, Peter."
"…No-"
Peter gets back to his feet, trying to contain his shaking, and feeling a little more assured when he's standing up at full height, meeting Sylar's gaze with his own, realising that they're the same size, and there shouldn't be any reason to be afr-
Peter screams as a burst of pain erupts in his head; he falls to his knees, only dimly aware of Sylar's crooked finger drawing out the pain.
Jay extracts himself from the broken glass. "Stop it-"
Sylar turns his head to him and raises an eyebrow. "You don't give the orders around here," he says. "This is my world."
Peter has sunk even lower to the ground, curled up in foetal position, hands clutching his head in agony, mouth open in silent cry.
"And it's always nice to have hostages," Sylar continues. He straightens his finger. Peter lets out a gasp of relief, uncurling slightly, hands slipping down his face to lie weakly on the floor, eyes wild and staring blankly at nothing.
"Why would you need hostages?" Jay asks.
Sylar grins, and changes the scene.
It's a room they've never seen before, but the two people in it…
Sylar struts over to the man sitting in a chair, a plate of food balanced in his lap, attention drawn by some heated conversation going on by the couch-
Sylar bends down towards his ear. "Hello, Quinto," he whispers, invisible and unheard, although Zach suddenly thinks he feels a strange stirring in his mind. Sylar grins, casting a brief glance back at Peter and Jay. "Missed me?"
And then he slides in, and Zach is no longer Zach.
#
"I meant that Quintopolis thing as a joke," Dem says.
Q shrugs, casually examining an apple. "Infinite multiverse. The place exists. Why let it go to waste."
"My rhetorical tools aren't going to work as well if you're going to make them literal. Give me that apple."
"I got it first." Q takes a bite from the apple and chews. "It's not actually called Quintopolis," he adds. "It's a perfectly respectable, normal universe in millions of ways. That was new york I put them in. He spreads his arms wide and smiles. "You know it's going to be fun. Want to make bets on who cracks first?"
XIII: the best imitation of myself.
"Adam."
He's hyperventilating, staring out mutely at the passing pedestrians, that shell-shocked look back on his face the way it was when they were at the cells. A hand grips loosely at Leo's arm, the pleas to go back having died into whispers and then silence, the population of this city – this world – having once more stolen his attention.
The men, women, children, and everything in between: they pass by in varying shapes, sizes and occasionally colours, but all are, unmistakeably, them. Voices vary only along age, sex, accent and cadence. The women look almost like his late sister-
Sara.
Cold grips Adam's heart.
"Adam…"
Adam swallows, still transfixed. Leo frees his arm from Adam's grip and guides him back into the alley, meeting little resistance.
Adam lets his head fall back against the wall. A gasping sob forces out a tear.
"…Do we want to know what's out there?" Mitchell asks warily.
"See for yourself," Leo murmurs, as Tony strolls ahead to do just that.
Jason hangs around uncertainly, thinking that everyone should probably know about the message on the wall; but it doesn't seem like a good time to interrupt whatever was going on.
"…I'm not going out there," Adam whispers, eyes squeezed shut, trembling against Leo's hand on his shoulder. "I'm not… it's wrong, it's just… wrong… we've… gotta go back… please…"
"Um, I don't think we can," Jason says, deciding that this might be a good time to say so. "The door disappeared and there's… a message…"
Leo looks over. "What?"
Jason points, looking apologetic.
"Hey," Tony calls out. "Why're you all hanging back there?" He hops back over. "…We've survived each other. What's a few thousand more?"
#
"Maybe there are dinosaurs out there," Smudge says after a while, a softly distant, almost dreamy quality to his voice. "We could go out and look. Maybe… maybe one might see us and chase us. But then we could come back in here…"
"…Where it's safe," Sasan continues, tentatively. Smudge still isn't looking at him.
"Yeah. And we could close the doors so they can't get at us…"
"…and crawl into the bed together."
Silence.
"There's no bed here," Smudge says. "Just that couch."
"There could be a bed," Sasan counters, taking it and winging it, looking around the drab room, in his head refurbishing and refurnishing… "Smudge, we could live here. Together. We'd make this place good, we'd… tear down that horrible wallpaper and get some paint on. Build in beech cupboards for the kitchen. And one of those shiny things to hang pots on, right next to the stove-"
"A fridge with food in it," Smudge adds wistfully.
"Yes. Yes, food. Good food. With the freezer stocked with as many flavours of ice-cream that you can imagine-"
"Raspberry?"
"It's there."
"Peanut butter."
"Definitely."
"Bacon."
Sasan raises an eyebrow, carefully, not daring to do anything that might spoil the stolen moment. "That sounds absolutely disgusting."
"We'd put in a carpet," Smudge says, gazing at the dusty concrete.
"Good idea. Colour?"
"Olive," Smudge decides. "But not all the way. This part near the windows will just be wood, and we could stand here and look out at the trees like it's our garden-"
"Like we're doing now."
"…Yeah. And a bookshelf over there," Smudge continues. "Full of books. I hate reading, but they'd look nice-"
Sasan gives him a wry smile. "…and then I'd make you like reading because you're missing out on so much."
"You could read to me."
"I could," Sasan murmurs. "If you promise not to fall asleep."
"I won't if it's good."
"What; my voice isn't alluring enough for you?"
Smudge looks at him, his expression unreadable. Sasan reaches out a gentle hand to Smudge's head, sifting his hair through his fingers.
"…my mom used to read to me," Smudge says softly, dropping his gaze downward. "Long ago."
"Really? Do you miss her?"
Smudge shrugs. "I don't know," he says. "I haven't seen her in ten years since they kicked me out for being bisexual." He scuffs his shoes against the floor.
Sasan cups Smudge's face upwards. "Your parents kicked you out at thirteen?" he asks, gazing at him in concern.
"Yeah," Smudge replies flatly. "But it's okay. I didn't have to go to school, so that was good. And I had a cardboard box to sleep in and talk to. I named him Eric."
"Smudge…"
Smudge forcefully brushes a tear aside. "…and we could move the couch over there," he says, pointing, changing the subject. "Next to the TV…"
He makes to go over to illustrate, but Sasan holds him back.
Smudge looks up at him. "…Sas?" he asks carefully.
Sasan slowly pulls him into a hug. "I'm so sorry," he whispers. "I'm so sorry…"
Smudge shifts slightly in his arms.
Sasan eventually raises his face to look at Smudge with an impossible tenderness, wondering how he could have ever done anything to hurt him, wondering how many unstated past hurts Smudge had gone through in his life, wondering just what impact this last one had had, and how he had been responsible for it…
Smudge returns his gaze, his face clear, the subtle defences back up.
"…We could snuggle on the couch next to the TV," Sasan finally says. "We could… fall asleep in front of it while… some perky newscaster goes on about the end of the world…"
Sasan peters off, waiting, wanting…
"-the end of all worlds," Smudge finally says. "Forever."
"Forever," Sasan agrees. "Except for this place."
Smudge buries his face in Sasan's neck, his eyes staring emptily at nothing.
"Because we're here," Sasan continues softly, holding Smudge tight, treasuring every moment of their closeness and never wanting to let go. "For… for as long as we want," he says.
"Together," Smudge adds distantly.
"Yes," Sasan whispers. "Because I love you."
#
A part of him is still waiting to wake up.
Zach has spent the last few hours in a daze; not quite living, just existing, letting the flow of events just carry him along; observing the others and trying to make sense of them, trying to reconcile the paradoxical notions of knowing everything and nothing about them, having them at once be a part of him (and he of them) and yet autonomous strangers with their own minds and thoughts he is not privy to.
It's curiously frightening to realise how little he knows about them. Some of their lives he shared for mere minutes or hours of screen time, everything else a vague mystery. He doesn't know what they are thinking. It feels strange to try and guess. But from the way some of them look at him – that almost-guilty, self-conscious look – he wonders if they think he does. And when he meets their gaze there is that flash of kinship, a familiarity, triggering memories of a time spent as them, in their skins, sharing their clothes and mannerisms and expressions and names; but then the moment passes, or they look away, and they become strangers again.
And it takes a while for him to understand – fully understand – that they are people, and any power he may have over them is negligible; that there are parts of their lives that he knows absolutely nothing about, experiences and memories, families and friends: whole lives whose fullness is hinted at in snatches of conversation, or in little quirks that did not originate with him. He wasn't there when they grew up, or went to school, or graduated. He wasn't there when Adam's sister died. He wasn't there for the first meal Leo had when reunited with his biological parents. He wasn't there when Smudge and Sasan fell in love.
But that odd sense of familiarity still lingers, and when Sylar takes over his body again, there's a part of him that recognises it and remembers years spent on the set of Heroes feeling the exact same way.
Only now Zach tries and fails to snap out of character as his hands put his plate of food down and his legs push him up from his chair, walking casually past Louis' petulant stare and down a hallway, into a room as his hands shut the door beyond his control and his face spreads in a grin.
"Missed me, Quinto?" his voice asks in a low whisper.
And Zach's mind struggles to regain its control, but Sylar won't let him. He plonks down in an armchair, head falling back against it.
His eyes close, relishing the moment.
"It feels so good to be back," Sylar murmurs with his voice. "Of course, it would be better if I had my own body instead of your feeble mortal one, but it will do."
Sylar grins again. "You can't get rid of me. You know that, don't you? I'll always find a way back." He shrugs, opening his eyes, lightly running his left hand down his right forearm as though investigating it. "Of course, that assumes that this… is me. I might not really be here. Maybe this is all in your head. What d'you think about that, Quinto? The famous Hollywood actor slowly… goes… crazy…"
Sylar twirls a finger in circles in front of his ear, then drops his hand down onto the armrest.
"What's it feel like?" Sylar asks, smirking. "You can't do anything unless I let you." He laughs. "Nice role reversal, isn't it? It's almost… poetic justice. I control you now, Quinto. I could go out there, pretend to be you… play with them a little…"
Zach tries to move his hand, wrest it out of Sylar's mental grip, but nothing happens.
"…or," Sylar adds, pondering, "I could give you back control of this pathetic body and have you do exactly as I want. And you can stop trying to move your hand. I'm not letting you."
Sylar strokes an armrest with his thumb. Zach feels the rough material against his skin.
"You're… the wildcard," Sylar says. "You could be anybody here. That's got to be useful." He gives up on the armrest and picks absentmindedly at Zach's plaid shirt. "What could we do with that?"
…Maybe this is all in his head, Zach thinks again, desperately. He doesn't feel possessed. He feels like he's acting. But he can't stop it.
"We could pick a target," Sylar suggests. "That bisexual guy, maybe. Hey… let's see how many of his friends you can kill off and replace before he realises that it's all… just… you. And maybe he is you as well. You're the only person in this place, Quinto. The rest of us aren't real. Right?"
Zach thinks he would be more inclined to agree if he could move even an eyebrow at will, although Sylar does him the honours and raises one.
Sylar sits up in the chair, clasping his hands together, fingers intertwining as he seemingly addresses the air.
"You could be anyone. Anyone. That has to be useful. You can get them to do anything you want. …Anything I want. What do you think about that?"
And Zach gets a tiny bit of control back, enough to gasp out in relief, his expression turning in a second from evil to fear.
"…What makes you think I'll do that?" he asks. "You… you can't act as them. Only I can. Which means you won't be in control-"
Sylar takes over his tongue, cutting him off.
"That's what my hostages are for," he says simply. "I believe you've… been acquainted with the recently departed Peter and Jay. So far they've not been enjoying their afterlife very much." Sylar smiles. "I could make it even worse."
#
It's almost a blessing in disguise, Leo thinks. In any other place, there would probably be no way for the five of them to get anywhere without attracting a whole lot of unwanted attention. As it is, the only stares they get seem to have more to do with how they stand clustered together looking varying degrees of terrified and giving off tourist vibes, making Mitchell mutter about how they could at least try to look natural, whereupon Tony breaks out in a spout of nonchalant whistling that draws at least one definite stare.
"We should find a map," Jason suggest tentatively, more curious passersby casting them looks the longer they stand indecisively at the alleyway opening. Tony stops whistling.
"So what… we just walk down the street until we find one?" Mitchell asks.
"Or we could ask for directions," Tony points out.
A young couple pulls their screaming kid past them, the mother yelling something about no more new toys if she tries eating Rover's food again.
Adam's eyes have glazed over when Leo looks at him, withdrawn into the relative safety of his head, unable to deal with the weirdness, unable to process the multitudes of people – visible and hinted at – existing and living with his face.
He had enough presence of mind to set his watch to countdown the amount of time they had to get out, chopping off a couple of minutes to account for the time spent before discovering the message; and it is perhaps only the possibility of being trapped here, forever, that made him move.
"…You guys suck," Tony mutters. "I'm going to ask someone." He leaves their group and heads towards a hotdog stand at the street corner some distance away.
What disturbs Leo most is the normalcy of the place. Overly-homogenous population aside, it could be any contemporary urban city. Skyscrapers, traffic, people, a fountain across the street… It's New York, apparently, or perhaps new york, if the battered page of the new york times flapping against a trashcan is any indicator. Leo doesn't let himself examine it further. He doesn't want to see the photos.
Up ahead, Tony relishes the invisibility and suppresses the urge to strip naked and streak down the street. He walks up to the hotdog stand.
"Hi…" he greets.
The teenager manning the stand looks up from his Biology textbook, lost in studying for an exam as he waits for customers. Hair pokes out from beneath a baseball cap.
"Yeah?"
"Do you… know the way to Wells and Lake?"
The teenager shrugs. "I don't know, man. I think a bus might go there. Or catch a cab or something. Wanna buy a hotdog?"
Tony almost says yes, his stomach having forgotten the meal he'd had not that long ago, but then he catches sight of the cash lying in the till and realises he doesn't have any local currency.
"Nah," he says. "I just ate. Tried selling one to him?" Tony gestures towards a scruffy-looking man sitting on a bench across the street, clad in a blazer and T-shirt and gazing sadly at a half-eaten sandwich in his hand. A pigeon trots past.
"Yeah, I've tried. I guess he likes his sandwich."
The two of them gaze at the sad sandwich guy for a while, watching as he takes a slow, pondering bite and then goes back to looking at it.
"That is so not how you eat a sandwich."
Tony agrees.
They watch him chew and take another bite. Tony glances briefly over the hotdog stand, taking in the hotdogs, bread, cash till and Biology textbook.
"You… run this thing yourself?" he asks.
"Huh? …Oh. Not really; it's just… a part-time job. Trying to save up for college. And then maybe one day I can graduate and get stuck in some dead-end job somewhere." He sighs. "But that's life, right?"
Tony appraises him, remembering a similar time, and makes a decision. He leans in, secretively. "Want an adventure?"
"Hell yeah. Where can I get one?"
"What's your name?"
The teenager hesitates, then decides that Tony looks harmless. "Stanley."
"I'm Tony. And… I'm from another world."
Stanley raises an eyebrow. "Sure you don't want to buy a hotdog?"
"…Hey. I'm serious." A thought strikes him. "Okay, look at this…" Tony pulls his wallet out of his jeans pocket and yanks out a dollar bill. He holds it up to Stanley-
"It's a dollar-fifty for one-"
"Look at it."
And Stanley looks, and his mouth falls open. He picks the bill out from Tony's hand, staring at the illustration of George Washington. "Where'd you get this?" he asks in fascination, investigating the rest of the bill. "It's really well made."
"It's real," Tony says. "That's legal tender cash right there. Or at least it is where I come from."
Stanley hands it back. "Okay, this thing is awesome, but it takes more than a dollar bill with an alien on it to make me believe you're from another planet or something."
"Not another planet," Tony says. "Another world. Another universe. Where the people look different from each other."
"…So what do they look like?" Stanley asks, humouring him, having decided that Tony is more interesting than the cellular workings of bacterium. "Not-human?"
"No, they're all human. Just… different. Like this," he says, pointing at the dollar bill.
"…Yeah, that's so not human," Stanley points out.
"Look," Tony says. "Someone comes up to you saying they're from another world, there are only three possibilities. They're crazy, or they're trying to sell you something, or they're telling the truth. Do I look crazy to you?"
Stanley shrugs. "Maybe."
"Yeah, well, I'm not. And you don't look rich enough to rip off. Which means I'm probably telling the truth, and if you turn me down now, you're going to spend the rest of your life sitting in an office cubicle regretting it."
Stanley stares at him. "…Now you're getting scary."
"A bunch of friends and I are stranded," Tony continues. "We've got less than half an hour to get out, and we could really do with a local guide."
"I don't know this place very w-"
"You know this world," Tony says. "You were born here. You grew up here. We weren't."
Stanley knows all about not going off with dodgy strangers and agreeing to be their tour guide; but Stanley had never been one to listen to the alarm bells that go off in his head, and there was something curiously persistent and earnest in Tony's eyes.
It almost made him believe.
"…Okay," he finally says, slowly. "Just let me lock up the stand."
#
[Trigger warning: mild sexual harrassment]
"You hurt him," the voice says, quietly, and it takes a while before Sasan realises that time has stopped, the floating dust particles hanging suspended in the rays of light, and Smudge warm but unmoving in his embrace. Sasan doesn't move his head, recognising the voice and swallowing back fear as Q casually saunters into his field of vision, a look of mock-concern on his face.
"How could you do that?" Q asks. "How heartless did you have to be to break his heart?"
Sasan doesn't say anything, but he tightens his hold on the time-frozen Smudge.
"You're the first person who ever reciprocated his love," Q continues. "You're the first person who ever made him feel he was worth something." Q bends in close. "And then you blew it." The hint of a smirk tugs at the corner of his otherwise impassionate face, but then it fades into a mildly questing eyebrow.
Sasan closes his eyes, breathing in the low musky scent of Smudge's hair.
"Don't make promises you can't keep," Q says. "Playing the committed soul mate… you've never managed to keep a boyfriend for more than a week. What makes you think this will be different, Sas? Or are you so… callous… not to care what it'll do to him, the day you have to admit that you've found someone else?"
"Smudge is different," Sasan says in a trembling murmur.
Q raises his eyebrows. "It looked like you were having fun with Louis."
"I didn't want to," Sasan says tightly.
"Really?" Q asks, and with a thin smile his image shifts and morphs until Sasan is staring in shock at himself, clad in his own clothes rather than ones borrowed from Adam, regarding him with a slightly patronising smile.
"Because it looked like you’d go for anyone who looks like you," Q says in his voice. "A bit of a narcissist, aren't you, Sas?"
A surge of heat and embarrassment rushes through Sasan's body as he tries to keep his eyes from checking himself out, grasping desperately on to the unmoving Smudge as Q tauntingly pulls open the top button of his shirt; Sasan’s shirt, he owns that shirt…
Sasan swallows. "Don’t," he says, his face flushed, trying to break free from the gold-brown stare of his own eyes, his body crying out in want.
Q grins.
And Sasan wants to stop watching but can't bring himself to close his eyes, hot with mortification and forbidden desire, digging his fingers into his palm to try and distract himself.
"Stop it," he forces out.
Q raises a perfectly groomed eyebrow. "What makes Smudge so special?" he asks. "What makes him so different from all the other guys you've ever had? From all the other guys here?" Q leans in towards Sasan's ear, noting his half-hearted flinch as he whispers: "Stop fooling yourself, Sas."
A not-completely-unpleasant shiver runs down Sasan's back.
Close your eyes, Sasan tells himself, but his eyes still want to look, moving his gaze yearningly over the perfect copy before him, taking in every contour just out of reach of his subtly twitching fingers.
"Look at you," Q says, thinly-disguised contempt in his voice. He runs a hand roughly through Sasan's hair, Sasan tensing at his touch, breathing fast, a sob caught in the back of his throat.
"If you love him as much as you claim," Q continues, "you'd let him go. He deserves someone better. Someone who'll love him for him."
"No…"
"That's being a little selfish, don't you think?"
Sasan opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out.
He remembers quiet nights cuddled on the couch in each other's presence; running around Kenselton Hotel joking and laughing and falling on each other; the grasp of his hand the time Sasan died, Smudge's eyes filled with love and desperation and the unspoken plea for him to live; Smudge's ever-present desire to protect him from all harm, his nonchalant oblivion to the world's accepted logic, the way his eyes sometimes glaze over when he's thinking, the way he looks at him and holds him and calls him Sas… the kid who was thrown out of his home at thirteen…
"I love him," Sasan finally says, and speaking it gives him some confidence. He hugs Smudge tighter, and finally finds the will to close his eyes and shut out Q's mocking impersonation. "Smudge. I love him. I do."
Smudge moves in his arms. "You do what?" he asks, and when Sasan opens his eyes, Q has gone, and time has started again.
Sasan strokes a thumb across Smudge's lips, swallowing back tears. "This," he says, and leans in to kiss him, and Smudge does not resist.
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Jay reaches out a finger to touch Zach, stumbling back as Sylar's mind forcefully rebuffs him, shielding Zach's body from additional possession. He glances at Peter, the both of them near colourless and insubstantial in their half-life state, and he wonders if this is what being a ghost is like. He doesn't even know what he is, but when he puts his hands on the armchair, they go right through. The floor seems solid enough, though; at least, until he thinks about it, whereupon his feet sink through and he jumps back up, landing on once-again solidity.
Peter cautiously joins Jay by his side, staring at Zach's body with mild trepidation.
"He played us," Peter says.
Jay is silent, still trying to register this piece of knowledge.
"If… Sylar could take control of him, then we could too, couldn't we?" Peter asks. "I mean, if it's just acting…"
"I'm not 'just acting'," Jay says quietly. "And I don't think Sylar wants to share."
"There are two of us and only one of him," Peter points out.
"He's powerful," Jay says. "Whatever he is."
Silence.
Peter tries to touch Zach, only to encounter the same blocking.
And then, in a burst of will to escape, Jay catches him and pushes him back. "Go for it," he says with sudden fierceness. "Just keep trying."
Peter grasps Zach's arm, feeling Sylar's mind trying to throw him off, when Jay clamps his own hand on top of his, adding mental and physical strength-
Peter's other hand joins his first, his eyes closing as Jay turns him around and pushes him back, falling towards Zach in the chair, Jay suddenly doing a jump and lunging towards him in a huge shove-
Peter jerks up in a suddenly-solid armchair, physical heart thumping, his gaze darting around in shock.
"…Jay?" he breathes out, but the world is now in full colour and he feels everything, and the body he inhabits has a strange familiarity to it.
He brings his hands up in front of his eyes, still hyperventilating, then drops them, looking down at and picking at the plaid shirt he's suddenly wearing.
Peter stumbles out of the chair. Somewhere in his mind he feels a suppressed consciousness. He swallows.
"…Zach," he says, just in case. "It's… it's Peter, I… I don't know what's going on… I'm sorry… I don't know how… how to control this…"
He thinks he hears a scream, but it's coming from somewhere inside his head… and he stumbles against the wall as he feels a violent lunge attempt to tear his mind out of the borrowed body, and Peter struggles to stay in it, wringing his hands together, feeling through the fingers, trying to emphasise every sensation…
Get out of this room, he thinks, and runs out the door. Find others. Let them know…
He winces violently and staggers back as Sylar makes another attempt to regain control. The attack breaks off halfway, and Peter hopes that Jay is okay, wherever he is – for he can no longer see him; and whatever he's doing to try and keep Sylar at bay will last long enough-
He doesn't know this place, the pattern of corridors alien to him. Peter runs a hand through his hair and swears.
"Zach?" he asks, feeling as though he's speaking to himself.
But Zach doesn't have any better idea where to go. He doubts that Louis would be any help, and he has no idea where Smudge and Sasan have run off to. All he can do is try to keep Peter there against the continued attacks, preferring him to the alternatives of either having Sylar in there, or waiting in trepidation for Sylar to return.
He's grateful for the company.
Chapter 14 »
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