![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Black Edelweiss
Series: Zeitgeist
Follows: One Giant Leap
Wordcount: 1,884
Summary: Two weeks after Claire Bennet's televised leap from the Ferris wheel, the 12th handles it's first case delving into the strange world of specials. Evidence points the investigation toward a former Company Agent, a man Noah Bennet would swear up and down doesn't exist.
Details: Minimal details due to inflation. Full warnings and details in main post.
PREV: Chapter Eleven // MAIN // NEXT: Interlude 9
Peter—Manhattan, New York; December 17th, 2010; 11:53 PM
It was always a strange sensation, sinking into the consciousness of another.
Peter remembered his desperate invasion of Sylar's mind in search of his brother's ghost with an ironic degree of clarity. Motivated by grief and rage, the attempt had been ill conceived—at best—and time had allowed Peter to acknowledge its cruelty. Whatever punishment Sylar might have deserved for his crimes, what Peter's mother had done to him was wrong. Nothing would bring Nathan back, and what his mother and Matt Parkman had inflicted upon his killer in trying to maintain a sadistic illusion had been in its own way as insulting to his brother's memory as it had been to Sylar himself.
It had been Rene's ability Peter had used that night, and the memories in Sylar's head had almost felt like living things, retreating as if in terror from the foreign grasp seeking mercilessly to drag them from where they lived...
By contrast, his later descent into the nightmare Parkman had woven to keep Sylar contained had been less disturbing and far more simple. Sylar's native ability made his mind more difficult to manipulate than most, but telepathy was a power Peter was familiar with, one he had used several times in the past. In any case, Matt had already done most of the work of tearing down Sylar's defenses for him.
Of course, it had been easier getting in than getting himself and Sylar out...
Though in reality it had lasted mere hours, from his perspective, Peter had lived five years trapped with Sylar inside a nightmare vision of the killer's worst fear. Then, Peter had thought he understood the false world keeping them prisoner, but it had taken him that long to realize that it was his own baggage preventing their escape. That subconsciously his hatred and distrust of Sylar—and his inability to move on from his brother's death—would not allow Peter to let him loose on the world. In those five years Peter had learned a lot about the man behind the monster, and of the manipulations that had helped that monster come into being. Peter had slowly come to terms with the idea that Sylar really did want to change...
Even more slowly, Peter had been forced to acknowledge that Sylar might even be capable. He just couldn't do it on his own. What he felt for Sylar...it wasn't forgiveness, not exactly. He wasn't sure that they could be called friends. Still, the ties they shared were based on understanding and trust.
Trust above all else, because in those five years Peter had been made keenly aware of why the nightmare had taken the form it had. At first glance it had made perfect sense, after all Claire had confessed to suffering similar nightmares. Yet while anxiety about his acquired immortality might have explained that empty city—an empty world in which no one but Sylar was left alive—Peter had come to believe the truth was more complicated. Sylar's hell had been a world in which he was utterly and completely alone, and knowing what he did now Peter thought that reflected the killer's past more than it did his fears of the future.
In one way or another, everyone in Sylar's life had abandoned, rejected or betrayed him. Sylar had no one—no one but Peter, and Peter was aware of the deadly seriousness of the responsibility now resting on his shoulders.
The trap Matt had woven had been more than effective in confounding his and Sylar's escape, but the actual mechanics behind it were remarkably uncomplicated. All it needed was an image or thought from the target's mind that already held significant power over them, then you simply gave it prominence. Once this was done, if the idea was strong enough, the target would practically hold themselves prisoner. Simple. So simple, the trap had easily caught Peter as well by mistake, and certainly simple enough for Peter to reverse engineer the process...
And repurpose it with a much more pleasant experience in mind.
Though to his own perception Peter stood within the scene, he wasn't truly a part of it. The setting had come into being slowly as Detective Ryan had described it, details trickling into Peter's view from memory that words would have left behind. The apartment did seem small, but as Ryan had said not overly so. Controllers in hand, Ryan and his partner sprawled side by side, ties and coats shucked carelessly over the back of the overstuffed couch. Their shoes had been kicked off underneath the low coffee table resting in front of them, the smudged glass surface almost invisible beneath the clutter of greasy cartons and empty bottles.
He supposed as "happy places" went, it wasn't half bad, if a little mundane.
It struck him oddly that, given the choice of any time, place, or fantasy, Ryan would chose something so apparently routine, but then Peter had asked the detective for a memory of safety, of security and contentment. Those emotions were so strong in this place—in this moment—that even Peter could feel them. Even without that, Ryan's face would have been all the proof he needed. The man's expression was so free of the anxiety and fear Peter had seen in his short acquaintance with the man that he could almost imagine he was looking at a different person entirely. He briefly wondered if there was more to it than what he was seeing, but this unguarded glimpse of these two strangers' lives already had Peter feeling like a voyeur. Rather than pry any deeper, Peter took just a moment more to check the dream for cracks, then turned and stepped out the door of the illusory apartment.
The hallway he stepped into definitely wasn't the one he had been expecting, however. In fact Peter was surprised—and disturbed—to find it alarmingly familiar.
Back when the Primatech facility in Odessa was still operational, Level 5 had been home to some of the most dangerous specials imaginable. Sylar had been held prisoner there on more than one occasion, along with countless others whom the Company had defined as a threat—including Peter himself. The barren corridors of Level 5 still inspired a sick feeling of dread, and for a moment Peter thought his own memories were trying to trap him as they had before. Then the sound of a lock engaging forced him to turn. The detention cell was all hard cement and naked pipe, just as Peter remembered. Through the large glass pane opening into the cell he could see Detective Ryan beside the mental facsimile of his partner, still sitting on that ragged red couch, oblivious to the way his surroundings had changed.
The sudden and unanticipated shift threw him a little, but Peter still had the rest of his job to do. Now that he had effectively shut Ryan away, he needed to find who he was looking for. Peter spared one final glance at Ryan before he turned down the hallway.
He hoped to God he was doing the right thing...
There were other cells, of course. As he passed, Peter caught a glimpse into a few of them. Each seemed to hold some element similar to the one he had left: pieces of life on display within the cold, grey rooms, stolen from context.
In one, a Ryan who appeared to be in his early twenties stood with a serious-looking man in his early thirties. He was dark complected, with a short beard, and if forced to guess Peter would have placed his origins somewhere in the Middle East or India. The two stood very close together, and Ryan was adjusting the collar of the man's shirt with a bright smile. Though his solemn expression stayed firmly in place, Peter thought he saw the man's eyes soften just a little.
In another Peter saw Ryan sitting at a cluttered desk. He was listening to a short, grinning man in his early forties who was perched against its edge. Though Peter couldn't hear their conversation, he saw that the detective wore an indulgent smile. Both men were in uniform, police blue, but the style struck him as oddly out of date. Upon a second glance Peter realized with a stab of unease that the name on the young officer's tag wasn't "Ryan".
Finally, in one, Ryan—Reichardt, Peter corrected after a moment's thought—sat at a table set for dinner. Sitting with him at the table were a woman and two boys. The woman appeared to be in her late thirties, blonde haired, blue eyed and still very lovely. The older of the two boys looked like he was in his middle teens, while the youngest was probably about ten. Judging by their mode of dress, the scene had to be decades old... And there was smile on Reichardt's face here as well, but Peter saw a note of something else in his eyes, sad, guilty, and touched with regret. Peter's earlier voyeuristic feeling returned, stronger for having seen it.
From then on he did his best to avoid further glimpses into the cells as he continued on his way.
Though the halls he traveled were empty, they rang with echoes that ricocheted unnaturally against the stark walls. Peter heard his mother's voice, and his father's. He heard Adam Monroe's voice, raised in outrage, and Charles Deveaux's rich laugh, and Claude's voice laden as always with its bitter sarcasm. He heard other voices he didn't recognize, other languages he didn't understand. Some he managed to identify—Arabic, Japanese, French, what he thought might have been Russian, and German wielded harshly in the sharp, angry tones of argument.
There was nothing significant about the door he was lead to, just a faint pull against his awareness. Yet when he opened it everything changed.
Momentarily blinded by the sun, Peter was left blinking as his eyes adjusted to the sudden, harsh light. He stepped through the door into a ruined landscape. Dust stung his lungs and his eyes, clinging to his skin in a thin film where the heat of the air had squeezed sweat from his pores. So broken was everything that it took him several disoriented moments to realize he stood on a city street, the familiar angles disguised by chunks of rubble and layers of debris. A gust of wind thinned the smoke and dust that had obscured his vision, and Peter caught an indistinct glimpse of a human figure standing in front of him.
Peter approached slowly, cautiously, and the figure resolved itself in front of him like the image developing on a photograph.
The light grey dust obscured the man's uniform, but Peter could see his badge glinting dully underneath. The tag pinned to his chest read "Ryan", but when he looked into the man's eyes—face coated with dust and grime and streaked with tears—he knew immediately that wasn't really who he was seeing.
"Sieben, acht, neun, zehn..." Konrad said, the words a worn-sounding sing-song as he stared blankly ahead into the wreckage around them, "Augen auf, ich komme..."
Then he turned to look at Peter, almost expectantly, and Peter found himself slightly startled by a faint sense of recognition he hadn't felt with Ryan, as if they had met before. And Peter realized, if Konrad and his mother really had been as close as Bennet claimed, it was even probable that he had...
"Well you found me, Peter," Konrad said quietly, a faint, tired smile twisting at the corner of his mouth. "Now what?"
PREV: Chapter Eleven // MAIN // NEXT: Interlude 9
Author's Note: This interlude was inspired by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
musicalphrase, who expressed excitement for the inclusion of Peter and telepathy. I didn't really intend to go in-depth with this in my original (fairly Sylar-centric) outline. I have difficulty writing Peter sometimes (I don't always "get" him as a character), but it seemed like a reasonable request, and I kind of wanted to so a scene similar to this anyway...
P.S. I consulted several serious sources for Konrad's words at the end of this interlude. Because just ripping them from song lyrics would have been tacky...
That said, it's still a good song. :)
Translation:
"Sieben, acht, neun, zehn..." - "Seven, eight, nine, ten..."
"Augen auf, ich komme..." - "eyes open, I'm coming..."
(these are words spoken while playing hide-and-seek)
Series: Zeitgeist
Follows: One Giant Leap
Wordcount: 1,884
Summary: Two weeks after Claire Bennet's televised leap from the Ferris wheel, the 12th handles it's first case delving into the strange world of specials. Evidence points the investigation toward a former Company Agent, a man Noah Bennet would swear up and down doesn't exist.
Details: Minimal details due to inflation. Full warnings and details in main post.
PREV: Chapter Eleven // MAIN // NEXT: Interlude 9
Peter—Manhattan, New York; December 17th, 2010; 11:53 PM
It was always a strange sensation, sinking into the consciousness of another.
Peter remembered his desperate invasion of Sylar's mind in search of his brother's ghost with an ironic degree of clarity. Motivated by grief and rage, the attempt had been ill conceived—at best—and time had allowed Peter to acknowledge its cruelty. Whatever punishment Sylar might have deserved for his crimes, what Peter's mother had done to him was wrong. Nothing would bring Nathan back, and what his mother and Matt Parkman had inflicted upon his killer in trying to maintain a sadistic illusion had been in its own way as insulting to his brother's memory as it had been to Sylar himself.
It had been Rene's ability Peter had used that night, and the memories in Sylar's head had almost felt like living things, retreating as if in terror from the foreign grasp seeking mercilessly to drag them from where they lived...
By contrast, his later descent into the nightmare Parkman had woven to keep Sylar contained had been less disturbing and far more simple. Sylar's native ability made his mind more difficult to manipulate than most, but telepathy was a power Peter was familiar with, one he had used several times in the past. In any case, Matt had already done most of the work of tearing down Sylar's defenses for him.
Of course, it had been easier getting in than getting himself and Sylar out...
Though in reality it had lasted mere hours, from his perspective, Peter had lived five years trapped with Sylar inside a nightmare vision of the killer's worst fear. Then, Peter had thought he understood the false world keeping them prisoner, but it had taken him that long to realize that it was his own baggage preventing their escape. That subconsciously his hatred and distrust of Sylar—and his inability to move on from his brother's death—would not allow Peter to let him loose on the world. In those five years Peter had learned a lot about the man behind the monster, and of the manipulations that had helped that monster come into being. Peter had slowly come to terms with the idea that Sylar really did want to change...
Even more slowly, Peter had been forced to acknowledge that Sylar might even be capable. He just couldn't do it on his own. What he felt for Sylar...it wasn't forgiveness, not exactly. He wasn't sure that they could be called friends. Still, the ties they shared were based on understanding and trust.
Trust above all else, because in those five years Peter had been made keenly aware of why the nightmare had taken the form it had. At first glance it had made perfect sense, after all Claire had confessed to suffering similar nightmares. Yet while anxiety about his acquired immortality might have explained that empty city—an empty world in which no one but Sylar was left alive—Peter had come to believe the truth was more complicated. Sylar's hell had been a world in which he was utterly and completely alone, and knowing what he did now Peter thought that reflected the killer's past more than it did his fears of the future.
In one way or another, everyone in Sylar's life had abandoned, rejected or betrayed him. Sylar had no one—no one but Peter, and Peter was aware of the deadly seriousness of the responsibility now resting on his shoulders.
The trap Matt had woven had been more than effective in confounding his and Sylar's escape, but the actual mechanics behind it were remarkably uncomplicated. All it needed was an image or thought from the target's mind that already held significant power over them, then you simply gave it prominence. Once this was done, if the idea was strong enough, the target would practically hold themselves prisoner. Simple. So simple, the trap had easily caught Peter as well by mistake, and certainly simple enough for Peter to reverse engineer the process...
And repurpose it with a much more pleasant experience in mind.
Though to his own perception Peter stood within the scene, he wasn't truly a part of it. The setting had come into being slowly as Detective Ryan had described it, details trickling into Peter's view from memory that words would have left behind. The apartment did seem small, but as Ryan had said not overly so. Controllers in hand, Ryan and his partner sprawled side by side, ties and coats shucked carelessly over the back of the overstuffed couch. Their shoes had been kicked off underneath the low coffee table resting in front of them, the smudged glass surface almost invisible beneath the clutter of greasy cartons and empty bottles.
He supposed as "happy places" went, it wasn't half bad, if a little mundane.
It struck him oddly that, given the choice of any time, place, or fantasy, Ryan would chose something so apparently routine, but then Peter had asked the detective for a memory of safety, of security and contentment. Those emotions were so strong in this place—in this moment—that even Peter could feel them. Even without that, Ryan's face would have been all the proof he needed. The man's expression was so free of the anxiety and fear Peter had seen in his short acquaintance with the man that he could almost imagine he was looking at a different person entirely. He briefly wondered if there was more to it than what he was seeing, but this unguarded glimpse of these two strangers' lives already had Peter feeling like a voyeur. Rather than pry any deeper, Peter took just a moment more to check the dream for cracks, then turned and stepped out the door of the illusory apartment.
The hallway he stepped into definitely wasn't the one he had been expecting, however. In fact Peter was surprised—and disturbed—to find it alarmingly familiar.
Back when the Primatech facility in Odessa was still operational, Level 5 had been home to some of the most dangerous specials imaginable. Sylar had been held prisoner there on more than one occasion, along with countless others whom the Company had defined as a threat—including Peter himself. The barren corridors of Level 5 still inspired a sick feeling of dread, and for a moment Peter thought his own memories were trying to trap him as they had before. Then the sound of a lock engaging forced him to turn. The detention cell was all hard cement and naked pipe, just as Peter remembered. Through the large glass pane opening into the cell he could see Detective Ryan beside the mental facsimile of his partner, still sitting on that ragged red couch, oblivious to the way his surroundings had changed.
The sudden and unanticipated shift threw him a little, but Peter still had the rest of his job to do. Now that he had effectively shut Ryan away, he needed to find who he was looking for. Peter spared one final glance at Ryan before he turned down the hallway.
He hoped to God he was doing the right thing...
There were other cells, of course. As he passed, Peter caught a glimpse into a few of them. Each seemed to hold some element similar to the one he had left: pieces of life on display within the cold, grey rooms, stolen from context.
In one, a Ryan who appeared to be in his early twenties stood with a serious-looking man in his early thirties. He was dark complected, with a short beard, and if forced to guess Peter would have placed his origins somewhere in the Middle East or India. The two stood very close together, and Ryan was adjusting the collar of the man's shirt with a bright smile. Though his solemn expression stayed firmly in place, Peter thought he saw the man's eyes soften just a little.
In another Peter saw Ryan sitting at a cluttered desk. He was listening to a short, grinning man in his early forties who was perched against its edge. Though Peter couldn't hear their conversation, he saw that the detective wore an indulgent smile. Both men were in uniform, police blue, but the style struck him as oddly out of date. Upon a second glance Peter realized with a stab of unease that the name on the young officer's tag wasn't "Ryan".
Finally, in one, Ryan—Reichardt, Peter corrected after a moment's thought—sat at a table set for dinner. Sitting with him at the table were a woman and two boys. The woman appeared to be in her late thirties, blonde haired, blue eyed and still very lovely. The older of the two boys looked like he was in his middle teens, while the youngest was probably about ten. Judging by their mode of dress, the scene had to be decades old... And there was smile on Reichardt's face here as well, but Peter saw a note of something else in his eyes, sad, guilty, and touched with regret. Peter's earlier voyeuristic feeling returned, stronger for having seen it.
From then on he did his best to avoid further glimpses into the cells as he continued on his way.
Though the halls he traveled were empty, they rang with echoes that ricocheted unnaturally against the stark walls. Peter heard his mother's voice, and his father's. He heard Adam Monroe's voice, raised in outrage, and Charles Deveaux's rich laugh, and Claude's voice laden as always with its bitter sarcasm. He heard other voices he didn't recognize, other languages he didn't understand. Some he managed to identify—Arabic, Japanese, French, what he thought might have been Russian, and German wielded harshly in the sharp, angry tones of argument.
There was nothing significant about the door he was lead to, just a faint pull against his awareness. Yet when he opened it everything changed.
Momentarily blinded by the sun, Peter was left blinking as his eyes adjusted to the sudden, harsh light. He stepped through the door into a ruined landscape. Dust stung his lungs and his eyes, clinging to his skin in a thin film where the heat of the air had squeezed sweat from his pores. So broken was everything that it took him several disoriented moments to realize he stood on a city street, the familiar angles disguised by chunks of rubble and layers of debris. A gust of wind thinned the smoke and dust that had obscured his vision, and Peter caught an indistinct glimpse of a human figure standing in front of him.
Peter approached slowly, cautiously, and the figure resolved itself in front of him like the image developing on a photograph.
The light grey dust obscured the man's uniform, but Peter could see his badge glinting dully underneath. The tag pinned to his chest read "Ryan", but when he looked into the man's eyes—face coated with dust and grime and streaked with tears—he knew immediately that wasn't really who he was seeing.
"Sieben, acht, neun, zehn..." Konrad said, the words a worn-sounding sing-song as he stared blankly ahead into the wreckage around them, "Augen auf, ich komme..."
Then he turned to look at Peter, almost expectantly, and Peter found himself slightly startled by a faint sense of recognition he hadn't felt with Ryan, as if they had met before. And Peter realized, if Konrad and his mother really had been as close as Bennet claimed, it was even probable that he had...
"Well you found me, Peter," Konrad said quietly, a faint, tired smile twisting at the corner of his mouth. "Now what?"
PREV: Chapter Eleven // MAIN // NEXT: Interlude 9
Author's Note: This interlude was inspired by
musicalphrase, who expressed excitement for the inclusion of Peter and telepathy. I didn't really intend to go in-depth with this in my original (fairly Sylar-centric) outline. I have difficulty writing Peter sometimes (I don't always "get" him as a character), but it seemed like a reasonable request, and I kind of wanted to so a scene similar to this anyway...P.S. I consulted several serious sources for Konrad's words at the end of this interlude. Because just ripping them from song lyrics would have been tacky...
That said, it's still a good song. :)
Translation:
"Sieben, acht, neun, zehn..." - "Seven, eight, nine, ten..."
"Augen auf, ich komme..." - "eyes open, I'm coming..."
(these are words spoken while playing hide-and-seek)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 28 March 2012 08:06 am (UTC)From:In your defence, they've thrown Heroes' characters in so many directions, sometimes you have to go to great lengths of twists and subplots to make it coherent....
I wonder how many of those glimpses were actually Ryan as he knows himself. Hm...
no subject
Date: Friday, 27 July 2012 03:49 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: Friday, 27 July 2012 04:02 am (UTC)From:And I'm really glad I did too. I forget about certain characters sometimes, especially if I'm not confident about writing from their point of view. Peter and I have issues. I've never been able to really pin him down. I can put myself in Javier's shoes, or Noah's or Sylar's and imagine what they'd feel about things, but when I try to do the same with Peter I draw a total blank. But I'm really happy with how this interlude turned out.