torchwoodinstitute | (no subject)

"Heh. No, thanks," he said, taking a few steps closer. He stared at Luke with intense interest. "This isn't a power I've seen before, so I'll hang out here."

He leaned up against the nearest wall and made himself comfortable. "What's your name, kid?"

Luke's eyes widened like saucers as he stared up at the man. What had that dude in the suspenders called him? Sas? What a stupid fucking name.

He couldn't help but equate him again to Sylar, which left him just a little slackjawed. It did take his mind away from the pain.

And that was enough to make him realize who this was.

"Sylar...?" Well not his name but a name at least?

"It's Gabriel now, but close enough," he replied with an amused shrug. His hands were in his pockets. He wouldn't fault anyone for thinking he and Sasan were the same person, but Gabriel's style was a little less colorful and a lot more dependent on the silhouette he created.

Right now, that silhouette was radiating power- in a different way than Luke, of course. He didn't have any cause to worry about most things, and so he didn't.

He watched Luke with a familiar curiosity- it wasn't muted, but it did seem to be tamed, a bit. "You are friends with Sylar, aren't you?" he said. "Wow. Took me until about four years ago until I found someone I could stand. You must be pretty special. Especially if he hasn't done the whole-" He raised a pointed finger, not quite to Luke's forehead, and moved it across in a line. "-thing."

Luke wasn't sweating. The amount of energy he was giving off was evaporating it before it could leave his skin moist. That said, he was starting to look a little more focused too. There was nothing romantic about the way Luke looked up at Gabriel. His eyebrows had lifted but his pupils weren't dilating. Whatever Sasan's theory about a love triangle, it wasn't true.

Luke had absolutely no capacity to love, though he could fake it all right as long as Sylar was willing to delude himself.

"I'm not special," Luke grunted. "I helped him get that power and now I'm an emergency food supply for when he needs a fix or he gets done with me." Luke said that as if he believed it. "Or is that what you're going to now? Wouldn't blame you. My power is pretty cool and it's killing me anyway. Better get it before my brain fries."

Gabriel could see some of the differences right away. Having actually experienced love- even if he clung like a desperate kid sometimes- he could tell this was different. More like the addiction that had pushed him forward. Little Sylar couldn't possibly guess that, of course, because he'd spent his whole life hoping for someone to love him for the strange creature he was. He barely even knew what the word meant. And this lucky kid came across a psychopath first.

No wonder Jack had sent Gabriel down for this.

After staring at the teenager for probably too long, he shrugged again and said, "Nah. That's not my thing anymore. Plus, I don't think your brain's gonna fry. How would you be an emergency food supply, then?"

Luke laughed softly, just under his breath. "Wow. You grow up to be a fucking jerk," he responded, the grin as fake as the laugh. Luke went through the motions. He couldn't survive the way he wanted to be and so he had learned to fake almost everything.

He wanted to be anyone but himself anyway. Luke only hated one thing and that was the mind that could not love and could not hate anything else. He hated his won fucking indifference. He hated his existence. But that didn't mean that he didn't want to live.

"But you're right. He needs me." Sylar loved him. Luke equated that to be the same thing. "I need some sort of water... You have a million fucking doors and none of them lead to a fucking bathroom?"

Sylar was Sylar. Even when he was Gabriel. And okay, to be honest? He kinda dug the way the older version spoke to him. He was so calm. And Luke needed that.

Gabriel smirked, glad to get a request in the form of a complaint. "Yeah, this place is obnoxious when you're trying to get somewhere fast. Come on, I'll show you where the closest one is." If Luke couldn't make it under his own power, Gabriel would cart him there with telekinesis.

"It's too bad I don't have the freezing ability I used to. I could cool you off right now." He honestly felt sort of mixed about those old powers. He missed them, but losing them led into a much better chapter of his life.

Luke was not too far gone to be unable to walk himself, but he was struggling. The exertion caused the metal they passed to heat up and being too close to him was uncomfortable. Microwaves were a bitch.

"How the hell did you lose abilities? Is it like a video game and you only have so many slots?" Luke could be useful to Sylar if he found this information out for him. Fucking Suresh was no help at all.

Even if he was giving Sylar the means to copy abilities without cutting people open.

The thought caused another burst of heat.

"Just-- hurry."

He could ask questions once he was standing in the shower.

Gabriel kept walking as if he were out in the open with sunny skies and a light breeze. However, he did speed up a little.

"No, it's not like that. I'll go into it when we get there," he replied. He had them do a zigzag in a couple of corridors, going through unmarked doors- and then he opened the first door in a hallway, and it looked like a dorm bathroom. Sinks, open stalls for showers, etc. Gabriel flicked his fingers and turned on all the showers at once. The humidity might not hurt, either.

Luke's reaction pretty much solved any particular riddle as to why Sylar stuck with the other teenager. He liked watching Sylar work.

Sneakers and all, Luke piled himself into the showers, standing under the spray looking like a drowned rat. Though water was not exactly a dampener of microwaves, the effect of the water could still be psychosomatic enough that it did lead towards the boy calming down and the danger to pass.

"I get that there isn't some older version of me here. Whatever. Did you kill me?" That was the most pressing question. "Because I don't think you did or you wouldn't be so interested in what I could do. You have no idea who I am do you?"

"Nope." Gabriel wasn't going to pull punches, there. "I'm good with faces, and I've never met you before. It's possible you two got into a branch of realities where you don't exist. Huh, I wonder what the ones without me are like." They probably involved a lot of happier people. Oh, well.

Luke was looking better, even while looking like a drowned rat. That was good- Gabriel could take the heat, but that didn't mean it was pleasant to have your insides broiled. "So what's your name, kid? I never caught it.

"I never gave it," Luke pointed out, not playing that game. "It doesn't matter who I am if I don't even exist here right? Soon as you guys get some food into Sy, we're as good as gone anyway."

He had no idea that Jack had just about as good as offered Sylar a place to stay here. And he had absolutely no way of knowing that he himself would not be offered the same.

"So you're one of them now? Talk about selling out, dude. Do they feed you files too so you don't feel the need to go out and crack skulls?"

Well, he gave Luke the opportunity. From now on he was 'kid', or any increasingly embarrassing nickname he could come up with.

The accusation got a laugh from him. "Oh, you guys got caught by Primatech, huh? I suppose you would, you don't seem like you'd be all that subtle. Or maybe you went after Petrellis. That's pretty much an instant trip there."

He looked off into the distance as he thought about the rest of it. It had been a long road, getting to here. And seeing someone so like how he used to be was a big reminder. "This isn't Primatech. But you can call it selling out, if you want. I do make a lot of money. Not quite sure what you mean by 'one of them' though. This whole place is made up of misfits."

Fucking Petrellis. Fucking Peter. They should have killed him when they had the chance. Luke grit his teeth and stepped out from under the spray. He was going to leave footprint shaped puddles for a long while but he didn't complain. Discomfort was never one of his concerns. "Yeah. It was one of the Petrellis. The little one. Probably shouldn't have brought him to see Suresh." It's not like confessing did anything to anyone.

Luke even looked just a little proud of himself when he mentioned that name. Killing the doctor had been so good--

"I just don't get you. You can have anything. Did you stop having fun with it? Was it Suresh's kid? Fuck. That's it isn't it? And he's doing it again-- God damn it. Listen. Great talk. I gotta run."

Yeah, no. They weren't done talking yet. He held out his hand, palm down, and moved it down in the air. His telekinesis glued Luke to the floor, and propped him up from any tipping over due to his momentum.

"I found out I was going to go nuclear in Manhattan," he replied. "If you keep going the way you have, Sylar might, too. Hell, the Company might be planning that. I'll never understand what's going through Angela's head." What a scary woman she was.

"But yeah, eventually it's going to get boring for Sylar, because we kill for reasons, not just for fun. That's not how you operate, though, is it? You think he's going to kill you when he figures that out?"

Struggling was pointless and so Luke sort of hung there, leaning against nothing. He watched the water drip from his hair and chuckled. "That's pretty cool how you can do that." Whatever the grown up Sylar was attempting to prove, and whoever Angela was, Luke didn't know. And he wasn't going to comment either.

Mohinder Suresh had to die before Sylar became something he wasn't. That Luke knew for certain.

"I think he'll kill me when he stops needing me or that voice in his head demands to know how what I can do works." That thought made him laugh too. "Fuck. He doesn't need me anymore anyway. Bennet just hands Suresh's son folders with scans or some shit and they go off on fucking play dates for a few hours and bam! No need to cut people open when you can fucking do it virtually."

God. That pissed him off.

"I mean, whatever man. It is what it is. He'll never forget me anyway." His initials were burned into Sylar's skin. "Why? Is that thing in your brain getting itchy now because of me?"

"Not for the reasons you're thinking, no." It was as much as he was willing to admit. It didn't take a genius to see that Luke intended to go murder Mohinder, and since the teenage version wasn't available...

Let's just say this line of logic was making it really hard to care about this kid continuing to breathe. But being right on the heels of another situation that put Mohinder in danger and not handling that well, he had to do the right thing here.

Maybe he could bend the rules a bit, though.

"So you're waiting to get discarded, then, now that you've outgrown your usefulness. Bet it stings a bit to know he didn't need you to get started. In fact, I got a lot further without you." His mouth pulled tight into a line, imitating a smile. "Mohinder was the only person who ever brought me down, tenacious as he is." Not entirely true, but Eden and the Haitian had to work together on that one. It was close enough. "Chandra Suresh is dead, isn't he? Who killed him?"

Gabriel was wrong on two counts, but he wasn't the psychopath that Luke was and he probably couldn't even fathom the way Luke thought. It wasn't human. Part of his brain had turned off where emotional caring was suppose to go. He played at it to keep Sylar, he gave into him physically because it kept his obsession close, even when it grossed him out to do the things he did. Sylar was important. Luke was not.

So no. It didn't bother him to know that Gabriel had gotten further without him. "Listen. I didn't even want him. He puppy dogged after me for weeks. It was easier to just join forces I guess. And give us a fucking break. We're seventeen dude. You probably had your own bank account to go wherever the fuck you wanted tracking people with powers down. We have fucking curfews. I bet if you did know me when we were older, and didn't kill me outright, you would have gotten further still. And you know what?" He actually laughed. "Shit man, if you did kill me anyway, that would still put you further up on the tally!"

So good try there.

The second wrong thought was just that, a thought. He could not answer it. However, he had absolutely no intention of killing this Mohinder here. What the fuck did it matter to him? Suresh back at home? He was the danger. He'd be as good as boiled soon as they got in range.

"Anyway? Yeah. The doctor is dead. I'll take credit for the kill there but Bennet's the one that wanted me to do it. Fuck if I know why. That old dude was a pervert though. He practically came whenever Sy showed him any of his abilities."

Huh, interesting. This kid really wasn't quick to a temper. But something had set him off. Gabriel would find it.

He chuckled at Luke's assessment of the 'old dude', rolling his eyes. "Yeah, he was not my favorite person in the world, either. The leading expert on special abilities in the world, and he couldn't tell I had one." He shook his head. Chandra was so quick to throw away everything that wasn't perfect. It sort of made sense that he didn't figure out Gabriel's ability to fix things, even when that was the very first thing he'd done for Chandra.

He never got to talk about any of this with Mohinder, for exceedingly obvious reasons. It was kind of nice to complain a bit. "But if you killed Chandra, that means that you're not going to get your death by Sylar's hands," he noted. "Mohinder's going to kill you first. Sorry, kid."

"A scrawny sixteen year old is gonna kill me? How?" No no. Tell him. Please do. The thought was laughable. "He still thinks Sylar is this sweet thing that could never willingly hurt anyone."

There was a sick smile on his lips as he thought about that, still hanging there in a weird angle between the floor and the nothingness. Sylar could let him fall and he would probably catch himself but it still might be just a little painful if he landed on his face. Oh well.

"But hey. If he does, he does. And then he can neuter Sylar like he's done to you."

He wasn't going to bother explaining it. There was no way he could understand that Mohinder was passionate in all areas, and that included mourning and avenging his father. Let Luke find that one out on his own.

The statement about him being 'neutered' made him laugh. If it had been the early stages of his reform, he might've been irked by it, but he'd been happy for too long by now. It was clearly not a state that Luke was familiar with. "Wow, you really don't have any use for emotions at all, do ya, kiddo? Maybe you're not even capable of understanding. In that case, I can only feel bad for you."

He did let go of his hold then, entirely. If Luke fell, then whatever. "You want some dry clothes?"

Luke wasn't ready for it and so he stumbled, but he didn't fall. The door was right there and be caught himself. "We can feel sorry for each other then," Luke said as he straightened up and then wrung out his clothing.

The smile he gave Gabriel was fake. It was well practiced but it was still fake. Nothing hit his eyes. It rarely did.

"Now dry clothes? Yeah. That'd be good. And I need to get back to Sy." Luke was obviously fixated. He didn't think Sylar needed him and maybe Luke couldn't feel anything real for Sylar, but Luke did need Sylar. Being away from him hurt.

Edited 2016-01-29 22:37 (UTC)

"In that case, just head right across the hall." The room across the hall was something like a dorm room, with a desk and a bed and a drawer that had a number of different sizes of a few different outfits.

He held the door open for Luke, and waited out in the hall. It gave him time to type in a message to Jack on his wrist strap: Heat sink is secure. Bring him back to kitchen? y/n?

It was very possible it wouldn't get through to Jack in time, due to the time dilation issues. But if it did, he thought he'd give the Captain a heads-up on this.

The text actually came back before Gabriel could send his. Bad idea. I want to talk to him in private. Lock him up somewhere safe. Damn time dilation.

But that could be a bad idea too. Jack wasn't going to like what he found. Sylar and Luke might not be reunited if that was the case. Gabriel of all people knew how brutal Jack could be. He made the tough choices. Sometimes that was honestly the only choice left to make.

Luke was dangerous. How dangerous Gabriel could only speculate.

It took the boy some time to get himself out of his wet clothing and into dry ones. That was enough time for Jack to get down to them. And probably enough time for Luke to realize something was wrong and start banging on the door.

Gabriel didn't lock the door, and instead just held it shut. At least that way, Luke would know he hadn't left. Not that he figured that really mattered. Gabriel figured he was a flawed version of Sylar, as far as Luke was concerned.

He wasn't sure how this was going to go down, but it probably wasn't going to be good. When Jack had recruited him, he was surprised that the man trusted him, but he'd know that Gabriel cared about some things. Luke wasn't like that.

He nodded his head when Jack arrived. "You want me to come in with you?" In case Jack needed some immediate muscle, in this case.