for the_muses_stage: surprise
Sep. 6th, 2010 06:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
heroslayerTime ground to a halt around him, and he took a moment to savor the stillness of it all. For as long as he had had Nakamura's ability now, for all that he'd abused the ability to rewind the clock or simply be somewhere else, he'd never actually bothered to just stop time. There just hadn't been time, and as he finally forced himself into action and moved down the hallway, he couldn't stop the ghost of a smile from creeping onto his lips, the irony not lost on him.
He paused again, outside the door, and picked the lock so he could let himself into the apartment. Sunlight streaming in through the window in the kitchen swirled around his legs as he moved through it, and he chanced a backwards glance at the errant rays of light, watching as they settled into odd peaks and whorls, unable to settle naturally with the seconds frozen as they were. His smile grew -- he'd have to try this again back at the watch shop, just to see what the dust in the back rooms he hadn't bothered to touch did -- and he turned back, heading further into the apartment, back towards his childhood bedroom.
He stopped as stone still as anything else in the apartment at the sight of his mother, understandably some years younger than he remembered her, forever making her way out of his bedroom.
His face fell, heartache so deep it nearly brought tears to his eyes writing down the aftermath. Dimly, he supposed he should have expected this, coming back to this time and this place, but he hadn't. He hadn't even considered the possibility of seeing his mother. His father, maybe, as he was half-convinced that the man was still alive out there somewhere in the proper time, but his mother? Virginia Gray was dead and he had apparently imposed that truth on the whole of her existence. Every memory of her from his childhood was tainted with her death; every thought of her brought up images of her standing there, staring at him in that instant before she fell, stunned, her sewing scissors blooming from her chest like a cancerous flower. And yet there she was, stopped forever in seconds, untainted.
Without thinking, he moved to her, his fingers reaching to tuck a piece of her hair back behind her ear. He looked to her face, hoping irrationally for some sign of approval, but she didn't move. She just stood there, staring frigid, disapproving holes through him, and he took a sudden step back as though he truly believed the look was directed at him and not something beyond him. The pain and bitterness that enveloped every memory of his mother returned in an instant.
She'd called him a monster once. A demon. Something. He couldn't quite recall, the better part of that moment having been swept away in a rush of horror and numb, but it didn't matter. What mattered was, in that instant, considering what he was doing, she'd been more right than she'd ever known. He was taking the first steps towards making himself Ungodly. She'd been right, even if she'd never known it. Apparently it was a good day for irony.
His heart hardening in his chest, he took a deep breath and edged around her and into the room, taking care not to touch her again. Rather than find the bedroom he remembered growing up with, however, he found his father, a cigarette clenched between his teeth and a watch in pieces in his hands, leaning over the workbench he could remember being in the living room for ages before his mother had finally parted with it. He stared for a moment, uncomprehending, then moved back around his mother and out to the kitchen as if a change in scenery would somehow explain everything.
It didn't. It made no sense. The Petrellis, Elle, everyone -- they'd been lying to him. They weren't his family. The Grays were his family and this was their apartment and he should have been in that room, less than a year old, asleep in the crib Virginia must have gotten rid of ages before he could summon to mind his first childhood memory. He should have been here.
Something Elle had said earlier, something he hadn't cared enough about to listen to, drifted back to him. "I knew you had been adopted, Bennet told me that much."
He was possessed by the sudden urge to break something -- maybe one of his mother's Goddamn snow globes -- and he barely thought better of it, biting back the flare of his temper with nothing short of a great act of will. Elle apparently hadn't been lying and if that was the case, it only made sense that his younger self wasn't here. If that was the case, maybe she'd been telling the truth when she'd insisted that she hadn't known that the Petrellis weren't his birth parents.
"Goddamn it," he hissed at the diorama he'd created -- Elle had made such a convenient scapegoat, too -- then, abruptly, he was gone, back to his own time. Virginia and Martin restarted an instant later, like clockwork wind-up toys, unaware that they had ever been disturbed in the first place.
Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 883
He paused again, outside the door, and picked the lock so he could let himself into the apartment. Sunlight streaming in through the window in the kitchen swirled around his legs as he moved through it, and he chanced a backwards glance at the errant rays of light, watching as they settled into odd peaks and whorls, unable to settle naturally with the seconds frozen as they were. His smile grew -- he'd have to try this again back at the watch shop, just to see what the dust in the back rooms he hadn't bothered to touch did -- and he turned back, heading further into the apartment, back towards his childhood bedroom.
He stopped as stone still as anything else in the apartment at the sight of his mother, understandably some years younger than he remembered her, forever making her way out of his bedroom.
His face fell, heartache so deep it nearly brought tears to his eyes writing down the aftermath. Dimly, he supposed he should have expected this, coming back to this time and this place, but he hadn't. He hadn't even considered the possibility of seeing his mother. His father, maybe, as he was half-convinced that the man was still alive out there somewhere in the proper time, but his mother? Virginia Gray was dead and he had apparently imposed that truth on the whole of her existence. Every memory of her from his childhood was tainted with her death; every thought of her brought up images of her standing there, staring at him in that instant before she fell, stunned, her sewing scissors blooming from her chest like a cancerous flower. And yet there she was, stopped forever in seconds, untainted.
Without thinking, he moved to her, his fingers reaching to tuck a piece of her hair back behind her ear. He looked to her face, hoping irrationally for some sign of approval, but she didn't move. She just stood there, staring frigid, disapproving holes through him, and he took a sudden step back as though he truly believed the look was directed at him and not something beyond him. The pain and bitterness that enveloped every memory of his mother returned in an instant.
She'd called him a monster once. A demon. Something. He couldn't quite recall, the better part of that moment having been swept away in a rush of horror and numb, but it didn't matter. What mattered was, in that instant, considering what he was doing, she'd been more right than she'd ever known. He was taking the first steps towards making himself Ungodly. She'd been right, even if she'd never known it. Apparently it was a good day for irony.
His heart hardening in his chest, he took a deep breath and edged around her and into the room, taking care not to touch her again. Rather than find the bedroom he remembered growing up with, however, he found his father, a cigarette clenched between his teeth and a watch in pieces in his hands, leaning over the workbench he could remember being in the living room for ages before his mother had finally parted with it. He stared for a moment, uncomprehending, then moved back around his mother and out to the kitchen as if a change in scenery would somehow explain everything.
It didn't. It made no sense. The Petrellis, Elle, everyone -- they'd been lying to him. They weren't his family. The Grays were his family and this was their apartment and he should have been in that room, less than a year old, asleep in the crib Virginia must have gotten rid of ages before he could summon to mind his first childhood memory. He should have been here.
Something Elle had said earlier, something he hadn't cared enough about to listen to, drifted back to him. "I knew you had been adopted, Bennet told me that much."
He was possessed by the sudden urge to break something -- maybe one of his mother's Goddamn snow globes -- and he barely thought better of it, biting back the flare of his temper with nothing short of a great act of will. Elle apparently hadn't been lying and if that was the case, it only made sense that his younger self wasn't here. If that was the case, maybe she'd been telling the truth when she'd insisted that she hadn't known that the Petrellis weren't his birth parents.
"Goddamn it," he hissed at the diorama he'd created -- Elle had made such a convenient scapegoat, too -- then, abruptly, he was gone, back to his own time. Virginia and Martin restarted an instant later, like clockwork wind-up toys, unaware that they had ever been disturbed in the first place.
Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 883
