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Title: By Right of Salvage
Fandoms: Heroes
Rating: PG
Genre: Sci-fi, Angst, Horror
Warnings: Character deaths. And I'll throw one on here for kidnapping, just in case.
Details: Gen. AU, Sylar being creepy, general dubiousness.
Wordcount: 770
Characters/Pairings: Sylar, Monty Petrelli.
Summary: Possession is nine-tenths of the law. This can be applied to fatherhood as easily as anything else.
Notes: More about this AU in the author's notes.
"It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons."
—Friedrich von Schiller
The minutes slipped past silently and unmarked inside the broken clock tower, an irony lost upon the man working diligently at the battered desk shoved snugly into a corner.
He was bent over the components of an old two-way radio, mouth somewhat slack though his dark eyes were focused upon his work with piercing concentration. Working a wire into place for a connection, his other hand reached up, gently twisting a few hairs from his head. With his eyes still on the assembly in front of him, he twirled the hairs together in his fingers until the dark strands lightened to a metallic hue. Releasing the wire, he brought his other hand up, a hot spark lighting between two fingers. The charge melted the soft gold strands to drip down onto the wire.
The man's finger twitched and the radio crackled to life. Static. The transmitter was still fried, and it would take a great deal of work to receive any sort of signal through the ambient radiation, but there was power to the speakers. That at least was something. He didn't have the easy familiarity with electronics that he did with clockwork, but a radio was simple enough. Compared to the snaking grey labyrinth of a human brain, the wiring he was working with now was downright primitive. A faint satisfied smile came into existence on his lips, a finger rising to push the glasses back onto his nose...
Glasses that he was not wearing.
It had been a long time since he'd last engaged his hands in honest work, but in those moments he was very much the man he'd once been, so deep in the half-abandoned skin of Gabriel Gray that he'd almost forgotten himself. His eyes lifted to the reflection in the expanse of fractured glass in front of him, quickly reassuring himself that his mask was still in place. Beyond the broken pane he could see the boy where he stood outside, watching the sky. Shutting off the radio, he sat back at his makeshift workbench.
Monty...
He recalled the weekend they'd all gone away to the Cape. An earnest attempt to reconnect with his family, to re-learn the people who had somehow become all but strangers to him. His sons, Heidi, Pete. His brother had taught Simon and Monty the names of the constellations, and told scary stories over a bonfire on the beach where he and Peter used to spend their childhood summers swimming...
Where Peter and Nathan had spent their summers, he reminded himself.
Not his family, he knew now. Not his life. His true identity and memories had returned in the aftermath of the explosion, but so many of Nathan's still remained. At times, they rattled together, mixed in jagged confusion like a box of shattered glass. Part of him desired violently to squash the genuine sadness Peter's memory inspired. That part, a loud, angry, vengeful part was still angered by what had been done to him. That anger was fanned by embarrassment over feeling such grief for the man—a man he had tried to kill so many times himself—as though he had truly lost a brother.
That rage directed itself inward. Knowing what had been done to him he knew he shouldn't blame himself for that confusion. But, if he were to be completely honest, he knew exactly why he did. To have any success in separating out the infection of unwanted memories, he would have to distance himself from Nathan entirely, cutting his ties with the other man's life. And doing that would mean giving up any claim he had to the only piece of that life which still mattered.
He couldn't do it. Monty was his.
His son.
It wasn't something he had asked for when he had taken Nathan's identity, seeking only a means to a much grander end. But that witch Angela had out smarted him, somehow, trapping him behind the face of her eldest son. Whether or not she had realized then, she had placed her family in his hands. That gave him the right. More importantly, Monty needed him. No one else had the power to protect him, and despite the lie at the root of things, he was the only family Monty had left. He would maintain that illusion for the boy's sake, though he risked losing himself in the process.
Because no one had ever needed him before. The responsibility he felt for his son was as intoxicating as it was frightening. His son was the only thing he had left, in this or any other world, and there was nothing he wouldn't do to keep him.
God help anyone who tried to take that away.
Author's Note: This story is actually from an old RP application to a game I don't play anymore. I've been talking about reviving the concept on another game with the friend who played Monty, so I was reading through the old app and found this "sample pose" I'd completely forgotten about.
If the RP doesn't get revived, I might write more for this 'verse later. If it does get revived, I might rewrite some of the logs as fic anyway.
The concept is of an AU where Sylar, after An Invisible Thread wound up living a couple of years as Nathan, "reconnecting" with Peter, Heidi and Nathan's sons before it was all torn apart when Monty's ability (an energy manipulation power, first appearing similar to the radiation one) manifested during a gathering in Washington DC. Most of the nation's capital was destroyed, several key figures of government were killed (including the President), as was nearly the entire Petrelli family (minus Claire and Monty). Sylar also survived, regaining his memories, and he has been raising Monty as his own ever since.
Fandoms: Heroes
Rating: PG
Genre: Sci-fi, Angst, Horror
Warnings: Character deaths. And I'll throw one on here for kidnapping, just in case.
Details: Gen. AU, Sylar being creepy, general dubiousness.
Wordcount: 770
Characters/Pairings: Sylar, Monty Petrelli.
Summary: Possession is nine-tenths of the law. This can be applied to fatherhood as easily as anything else.
Notes: More about this AU in the author's notes.
"It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons."
—Friedrich von Schiller
The minutes slipped past silently and unmarked inside the broken clock tower, an irony lost upon the man working diligently at the battered desk shoved snugly into a corner.
He was bent over the components of an old two-way radio, mouth somewhat slack though his dark eyes were focused upon his work with piercing concentration. Working a wire into place for a connection, his other hand reached up, gently twisting a few hairs from his head. With his eyes still on the assembly in front of him, he twirled the hairs together in his fingers until the dark strands lightened to a metallic hue. Releasing the wire, he brought his other hand up, a hot spark lighting between two fingers. The charge melted the soft gold strands to drip down onto the wire.
The man's finger twitched and the radio crackled to life. Static. The transmitter was still fried, and it would take a great deal of work to receive any sort of signal through the ambient radiation, but there was power to the speakers. That at least was something. He didn't have the easy familiarity with electronics that he did with clockwork, but a radio was simple enough. Compared to the snaking grey labyrinth of a human brain, the wiring he was working with now was downright primitive. A faint satisfied smile came into existence on his lips, a finger rising to push the glasses back onto his nose...
Glasses that he was not wearing.
It had been a long time since he'd last engaged his hands in honest work, but in those moments he was very much the man he'd once been, so deep in the half-abandoned skin of Gabriel Gray that he'd almost forgotten himself. His eyes lifted to the reflection in the expanse of fractured glass in front of him, quickly reassuring himself that his mask was still in place. Beyond the broken pane he could see the boy where he stood outside, watching the sky. Shutting off the radio, he sat back at his makeshift workbench.
Monty...
He recalled the weekend they'd all gone away to the Cape. An earnest attempt to reconnect with his family, to re-learn the people who had somehow become all but strangers to him. His sons, Heidi, Pete. His brother had taught Simon and Monty the names of the constellations, and told scary stories over a bonfire on the beach where he and Peter used to spend their childhood summers swimming...
Where Peter and Nathan had spent their summers, he reminded himself.
Not his family, he knew now. Not his life. His true identity and memories had returned in the aftermath of the explosion, but so many of Nathan's still remained. At times, they rattled together, mixed in jagged confusion like a box of shattered glass. Part of him desired violently to squash the genuine sadness Peter's memory inspired. That part, a loud, angry, vengeful part was still angered by what had been done to him. That anger was fanned by embarrassment over feeling such grief for the man—a man he had tried to kill so many times himself—as though he had truly lost a brother.
That rage directed itself inward. Knowing what had been done to him he knew he shouldn't blame himself for that confusion. But, if he were to be completely honest, he knew exactly why he did. To have any success in separating out the infection of unwanted memories, he would have to distance himself from Nathan entirely, cutting his ties with the other man's life. And doing that would mean giving up any claim he had to the only piece of that life which still mattered.
He couldn't do it. Monty was his.
His son.
It wasn't something he had asked for when he had taken Nathan's identity, seeking only a means to a much grander end. But that witch Angela had out smarted him, somehow, trapping him behind the face of her eldest son. Whether or not she had realized then, she had placed her family in his hands. That gave him the right. More importantly, Monty needed him. No one else had the power to protect him, and despite the lie at the root of things, he was the only family Monty had left. He would maintain that illusion for the boy's sake, though he risked losing himself in the process.
Because no one had ever needed him before. The responsibility he felt for his son was as intoxicating as it was frightening. His son was the only thing he had left, in this or any other world, and there was nothing he wouldn't do to keep him.
God help anyone who tried to take that away.
Author's Note: This story is actually from an old RP application to a game I don't play anymore. I've been talking about reviving the concept on another game with the friend who played Monty, so I was reading through the old app and found this "sample pose" I'd completely forgotten about.
If the RP doesn't get revived, I might write more for this 'verse later. If it does get revived, I might rewrite some of the logs as fic anyway.
The concept is of an AU where Sylar, after An Invisible Thread wound up living a couple of years as Nathan, "reconnecting" with Peter, Heidi and Nathan's sons before it was all torn apart when Monty's ability (an energy manipulation power, first appearing similar to the radiation one) manifested during a gathering in Washington DC. Most of the nation's capital was destroyed, several key figures of government were killed (including the President), as was nearly the entire Petrelli family (minus Claire and Monty). Sylar also survived, regaining his memories, and he has been raising Monty as his own ever since.
