Title: Unmade Part 1

Author: Corona http://community.livejournal.com/libraryofsol/63881.html

Fandom: Heroes

Rating: R

Pairing: Peter/Sylar

Spoilers: Post season 2

Disclaimer: In no way mine or anything to do with me. I own nothing.

Summary: The wall is thick enough that it feels like plastic, spanning the entire breadth and separating both rooms.

AN: A huge thank you must go to [info]sarren, who betaed this for me and made it a thousand times better than it was.

"I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room."

-Blaise Pascal

Peter wakes up on the floor...

His face is pressed into white tiles which are blurry and seem to go on forever from his position.

The last thing he remembers is bright light and pain. But his body feels loose, solid and relaxed and...misplaced.

He shifts, skin peeling off the warmth of the floor and instantly cooling, as he turns his face to make out exactly where he is.

The room is white, an endless stark white that stabs at Peter's eyes and makes everything painful and immediate, too white to leave his eyes open for long, which is why he sees the room in bright vivid snatches between blinks.

It's clear by the time he's pulled himself to his feet, by the time he's standing, unsteady and squinting, he's developed a certainty that this isn't where he's supposed to be.

It's not a hospital, though it has the same antiseptic smell and taste that haunts every breath. It's an L-shaped room, the large half leading round in the other direction. Make that two L-shaped rooms joined together. Unnaturally white, the walls flat and endless, fluorescent lights sunk into the ceiling. Flat area which could only be called a bed by someone extraordinarily generous, toilet, sink...that's it.

There are no windows, or doors. It's a white cell.

This isn't in any way connected to the last thing he remembers, the last ragged snapshots that he can piece together.

The last thing he remembers is- the last thing he remembers is Nathan.

Nathan is dead.

"Nathan-"

The word is hard and broken, rasped out of his throat like he's been eating sand. It starts an ache all the way from his chest to the back of his throat, which doesn't slide away but lingers in a way pain hasn't done since he first touched Claire.

He puts a hand up on instinct, holds the skin, which is cold and slightly clammy, pulse slow under the skin. The back of his neck hurts too, a jagged throb which tells him someone has been sticking things in him. Which is not a good sign at all.

A worse sign is that clearly the wound is still there, which means- he swings an arm down, checks the pale underside and sure enough someone has been injecting him

He tries something, anything, from telekinesis to invisibility. There's nothing there, just an empty hole where all the frustrated abilities and fractured control should have been. He tries until the side of his jaw aches, but he can't pull anything out.

His feet are bare, and he's wearing white pants and a t-shirt that he's certain he doesn't own, and they conjure up the word 'inmate' in very unpleasant ways.

He follows the wall round, round to the second L-shaped room, which by all appearances is an absolute match of his own.

He almost walks straight into a glass wall.

His hand clips it hard enough to make his knuckles ring and he presses his other hand against it almost on instinct.

"What the hell."

The wall is thick enough that it feels like plastic, spanning the entire breadth and separating both rooms. There's someone sprawled on the white bed in the identical room, crooked and loose, still unconscious, and Peter doesn't even need to shift any further along the wall to know that it's Sylar.

This more than anything else, even the damn needle marks, confirms the horrible suspicion that Peter is a prisoner.

He lays both hands flat on the wall. Sylar's room is absolutely identical to his own, the same utter lack of windows, doors, or even differences, it's featureless and sterile and Peter's hands dig in hard enough to go white on the glass.

He bangs sharply on it, there's enough give for him to feel it, but not enough to see it vibrate, though the noise is loud enough in the contained space. Though when he stands perfectly still for a moment he realises it's not completely silent, he can hear his own breathing, and the quiet hum of the fluorescent lights

"Sylar!" Peter has no way to know if the glass wall is soundproof, the thump of his own skin against the warm surface is muted.

His fingers curl until he's using the side of a fist rather than the flat slap of a hand, which makes the noises softer, more hollow. But the shimmering shake of the glass seems fiercer.

"Sylar!" There's no echo, just the angry scream of his own voice.

He bangs until his hand aches, two more times, three.

One bare foot twitches where it's stretched out and Peter exhales sharp and loud. The movement confirms, at least, that Sylar isn't dead.

Peter realises he'd honestly thought that he was, that they'd left him there sharing a divided cell with a rotting corpse.

It had been a reasonable enough assumption. The last time he'd seen Sylar he'd been run through with Hiro's sword, bleeding out in the middle of Kirby plaza.

"Sylar?"

The foot shifts, is dragged along the white surface, one long fold of spine and a hand flattens where Peter can see it, pushes until Sylar's back unfolds. Until he's no longer a sprawled body but a curve of unsteady but horrible familiarity.

He stands facing the other wall for a long moment, swaying slowly in the cold room. He spreads a hand, as if testing the air, or his own powers.

There's a pause, and then he raises a hand and presses it against the side of his head in a gesture that's frustrated and angry, but not pained.

Then he finally turns, and sees Peter, takes two steps forward.

"It's a wall," Peter says simply, and the question as to whether the wall is soundproof or not is answered because Sylar hears the sentence, reaches a hand up, flattens it against the glass. It's pale, waxy, but long and traced with fine, dark hair.

It makes him feel worrying close, glass wall or not. There is no guarantee that he's the only one bereft of his powers after all.

The fingertips push in, white and flat and the movement brings a scowl to Sylar's face. A scowl that's hard and stark and matches his eyes perfectly. He's taller than Peter remembers but thinner, stubble and unfocused eyes make his face look narrower, crueller.

His eyes slide from the pressure of his hand to Peter, one slow sweep.

"Where are we?"

Sylar's voice is low, a drag of suspicion and threat. Not entirely clear either. There's a quiet slur to it that suggests he's not entirely free of whatever it was that knocked them out.

"I don't know," Peter puts his own hand on the wall, loose and relaxed. Sylar scowls at that too. "What do you remember?"

"I was dead," Sylar says simply, accusingly. "I was dead on the ground in an alley with my insides on fire..." He stops, tilts his head. "I remember blood."

Peter lays his other hand on the wall.

He remembers blood too, he remembers blood and screaming, and he remembers Nathan being heavy, so very heavy, the weight of him dragging him through Peter's arms. He remembers his brother falling.

He remembers very little after that.

"I don't remember how I got here either."

Sylar's eyes sweep his face, a mistrustful search for lies, for anything underneath the words. He'll find nothing, nothing at all. Because it's true and Peter is as bewildered as him.

"Bennet," Sylar says quietly. "Bennet has a fondness for putting people in glass cases."

"Bennet wouldn't have done this." Peter says and Sylar's expression is question and irritation and something that might be disgust.

"Assuming people are incapable of things is at best stupidity and at worse immaturity."

"I never said he was incapable," Peter says angrily. "He left, he left the people that were tagging us, collecting us."

"So whoever they are, minus Bennet, it amounts to the same thing."

"Which is?"

"Captivity, torture, death."

"Trust you to assume the worst."

"It's not an assumption, it's experience," Sylar says simply, flatly.

Peter frowns. "They had you before. They tortured you?" Murderer or not it seems horrifying, that the quest had not simply been tagging and study after all but something darker, something more involved. Because this lends a new flavour of paranoia, of urgency to his new surroundings.

"They killed me," Sylar says simply, he eyes Peter through the glass. "I came back."

"But how did they get both of us, why did they get both of us-"

"They like to test us and this time, this time they seem to have perfected the medication."

"How do you know?" Peter asks curiously.

"Because I've been trying to kill you since you started talking."

"Nice," Peter says hoarsely. "That's really nice."

"Since you're not dead, or, at the very least, choking. I'm going to assume the drugs work."

"What do they want us for?"

"You could hope 'vivisection' isn't an option."

"That's not funny," Peter says harshly.

"Mankind's entire evolution has been fuelled by a greedy search for power."

"But what do they want?" Peter says, confused and frustrated.

Sylar scowls at him like he's an idiot.

"They want what we can do, they want to know how we work so they can take it for themselves." Sylar says in a slow, careful surprisingly patient tone.

Peter lifts a hand, runs it through his hair.

"But if they keep us here why-" Peter puts his hands on the glass. "It doesn't make sense."

"It makes perfect sense," Sylar says thickly. "It's a cage, a cage they can leave us in and do whatever they like. They control our powers."

Sylar glares at him, and when that appears to do nothing he turns to look at the other wall, head tilted to the side.

"We're obviously here for some reason, and they'll tell us eventually. If we can't get out we just have to wait until someone comes, we just have to wait and find out what it is."

Sylar stares at him, as if there's no hope for him, none at all.

"I don't care what they want," he says simply.

Peter ignores him, crosses the room, walks the perimeter of it, watching, waiting.

No one comes...

The longer Peter waits the more it becomes obvious that no one is going to come.

He's been staring at the wall for an age, it remains solidly blank and almost aggressively white. But it doesn't open. There are no windows, no panels, nothing to see out of, and as far as Peter can tell, no way to see in. But they have to be able to see in, don't they? What's the point if they can't see them in here. It's like they've built the walls around them.

He gives a quiet, frustrated sigh.

"They're not coming," Sylar says and Peter's almost certain it's in response to his irritated noise.

He gets up, goes to the wall. Just for something to do he prods at all the joins. Trying to find something, anything, a hidden door that can be prised open, electronics, anything.

He needs something to do, something to do rather than sit in the middle of the cell staring and wondering why they're there, and if someone is watching, if they're listening. It doesn't matter, they're not going to stop him from trying to find a way out.

"They're probably watching us though," Sylar tells him.

"I've already assumed that."

Peter taps the wall and it feels solid, not that he's any sort of expert. It feels like a wall. It could be a wall that goes on forever for all he knows.

He follows it anyway, follows every line, prods at where it meets the glass wall. He even goes back and examines the flat slab of a bed, the plumbing where the sink and toilet join the wall. Everything is white and neat and completely sealed up. He keeps looking, just for something to do, he keeps looking rather than sit down and think.

About the fact that Nathan is dead, and he doesn't remember anything afterwards. It's like Nathan died and the world just stopped.

"The walls are solid, you can tell by looking at them," Sylar sounds bored but there's something restless simmering underneath.

Peter's hands skid into stillness.

Adam brought Nathan back once, maybe-

"Pacing like an animal isn't going to change the fact that we can't get out. That they never intended us to get out. They could have built the walls around us for all we know."

Which is too close to Peter's earlier disturbing thought, so he ruthlessly ignores it.

Maybe if Claire knew what happened, if Claire could have been there, maybe...?

Is such a slim chance enough to balance hope on? Or would he just go slowly mad wanting it to be true.

"Maybe they're never coming back," Sylar adds, he seems unconcerned that Peter is ignoring him.

Maybe Peter has to believe Claire saved Nathan, just for a while, just until he can think about it, without wanting to smash this room to pieces.

And at the moment he can't.

At the moment he's useless.

"Maybe they'll even watch us rot."

"God, will you stop talking!" Peter gives up, stops sliding his hands across the wall and returns to the white bed.

He sits there for what feels like hours, legs hanging over the edge, hands dangling down. Sylar's quiet, shifting occasionally, bare feet sliding on the floor.

Peter's thirsty, brutally thirsty and after sitting in misery for as long as he can manage he crosses to the sink and drinks from the faucet.

It makes him realise how hungry he is too, but there isn't a whole lot he can do about that.

Sylar watches him walk back to the bed and sit down again, wiping his wet hands on his pants.

"If they starve us at least I'll have the pleasure of watching you rot first."

"I don't care-"

The lights go off.

The white cell is suddenly completely black, and Peter is left alone with the thud of his own heartbeat and the over-loud sound of his own breathing.

"What's happening?"

There's a long pause, and no sign that Peter is anything but completely alone in the dark.

"Sylar?"

"Eleven pm," Sylar says eventually, quietly. "It seems someone wants us to go to sleep."

"Why?"

Sylar gives a long frustrated sigh.

"I don't know, why should I?"

The last thing Peter wants to do is sleep. He stands up, carefully makes his way around the room, arms outstretched in front of him. They brush the glass divide and he follows it the other way around. He can't help but realise that the darkness is an opportunity for whoever has taken them, and opportunity where they can see and Peter can't. And he still doesn't know what they want, what they intend to do-

A thump of flesh against glass makes him freeze, hands tensing in mid-air.

"Sylar?"

There's a grunt.

"Sylar was that you?" There's anger creeping into Peter's voice and he can't help it.

"Yes," an equally quiet irritated hiss from faraway in the dark, and Peter has to wonder about that too. The wall has to be fairly thick and yet he can hear Sylar well enough through it. Well enough that neither of them has to shout. But he checked the wall, he checked the wall and hadn't seen any speakers, any gaps. He hadn't seen any camera either but who'd leave them in the dark without the ability to see them? He has to believe they're being watched. They've been injected and left here, what would be the point if they weren't listening in, if they weren't watching them.

He misjudges a wall, slams his foot against it. Sylar doesn't say a word over his cursing and Peter wishes he would. He thinks a screaming match in the dark would be something, and it would make him feel like his heart was slamming in his chest for a reason.

But Sylar refuses to play.

"Hello!" Peter judges that he's in the middle of the room, give or take a foot each way. He doesn't know which way to look but in the end doesn't think it matters. "Damn it, let us out!"

He listens to nothing in the dark.

"You can't keep us in here!" He says furiously.

"They can and they will." Sylar's voice seems to get progressively calmer as Peter's sways into hysteria.

"They can't-"

"They can do whatever they want while we're the ones sitting in the dark."

"Shut up," Peter says simply. "Shut the hell up."

Peter takes a step, follows the wall until the slide of tile becomes the squeak of glass.

"While we're the ones walking into walls."

"Screw you."

Sylar ignores him until Peter is forced to make his way back to the bed.

"We have something they want, everyone has something someone else wants," Sylar says and Peter can tell by the softness of his voice that he's wandered into the other side of his cell.

"You don't have anything I want."

"You'd be surprised."

"I don't want to talk to you," Peter says roughly.

He stares into the darkness for a long time.

***

Peter wakes up staring at a white ceiling, too sudden and too bright.

He blinks, then squints until the glare is manageable.

"Jesus."

"It just came on."

Peter turns his head. Sylar is next to the wall, palms on the glass. He looks unhappy, his jaw is shaded dark, already halfway to a beard. Peter has no idea how long he's been asleep.

It's much different, seeing the person you're being held with.

"It's six am," Sylar adds.

Peter doesn't know how he knows. He doesn't think he wants to know. He stands up, goes to the glass wall, stares through it.

"Where were you before this happened?"

"I thought you didn't want to talk to me?"

"Where were you?"

"Where were you?" Sylar counters.

Peter opens his mouth, then shuts it again.

"This could be a trap. You could be working with them to find out what I know."

The anger is almost audible through the glass.

"If you think I would ever, ever let someone render me helpless and lock me in a room-" Sylar bites off the rest and Peter has to admit that he honestly doesn't believe Sylar would, control and vulnerability were complicated facets to this, but not in the ways Sylar would ever accept.

"You have poor impulse control."

"And you have a death wish," Sylar snarls.

"So I've been told."

He lets the pause go on for a long minute, until Sylar's mouth drops out of angry.

"So where were you?"

"I visited Mohinder," Sylar says grudgingly.

Peter goes cold. "Did you kill him?"

"It wasn't that sort of reunion," Sylar adds, irritation and amusement warring on his face.

"But did you?"

"No, we were interrupted by some miserable blonde bitch who could throw electricity."

"Elle," Peter says simply.

"Friend of yours?"

"It's complicated."

"You're always making new friends Peter, and a surprising number of them end up trying to kill you."

Peter ignores the comment, which seems to amuse Sylar more than anything else.

"I visited with a woman I picked up in South America. She could spread her own internal plague. I was looking forward to playing with that."

"Why didn't you?"

"That was complicated too."

Peter listens to Sylar shift against the wall and knows it's his turn, but he's not sure he can talk about it yet. If he can bring it into this room and make it real. He definitely can't talk about it here, with him.

Sylar doesn't have to know after all. He doesn't have to know and Peter doesn't have to voice it.

"Nathan was going to make a speech admitting to having the ability to fly, I was there with him and Parkman. It was sabotaged, I don't remember anything after leaving the building."

"So the world doesn't know?"

"No," Peter says in a hollow voice. "The world doesn't know."

"They were prepared. To get one of us would have been lucky, to get us both..."

"Would have taken someone with abilities," Peter hazards.

He looks up, and notices for the first time that the marks on Sylar's neck are more vivid than his own, flares of colour on his surprisingly pale skin. The curve of fingers and anger.

Someone held him down and he fought back

"You normally have an ability to heal, don't you?"

Sylar blinks at him, then catches where he's looking, and his expression isn't half as amused as before.

"No," he says finally.

Peter frowns.

"The first time I met you we went off a building together, I was a mess and you walked away."

"I landed on you," Sylar says flatly.

"You couldn't have walked away from that, not without some sort of healing ability."

"I'm very dedicated." He still doesn't turn around, he's just a white shape in the white room under a shock of dark hair.

"You couldn't have walked away from that."

"I walked away," Sylar says roughly. "I just didn't get far."

He glares at Peter like it's suddenly all his fault. Like he's the one who dragged them both here.

Then he wanders back into the other half of his room.

He ignores Peter for the rest of the day.

At eleven pm the lights go out again.

***

Peter wakes up on the third day rolled into the wall, one arm flung over his head to block out the glare from the overhead light.

He's stiff, like he's been in the same position for hours, head throbbing and the back of his neck and inside of his arm ache like they've been-

He lurches upright, sluggish hands pressing into his own skin.

There are fresh needle marks in his arm, the highest of which is still bleeding gently down the skin of his arm. He sits up, head vibrating in one hard throb of pain. He's dizzy and angry in the same breath.

"What the hell?"

"They came some time in the night."

Peter goes to stand up, changes his mind and lets himself drop back down onto the bed.

"They?"

Sylar isn't on his own bed. He's leant against the flat white wall, skin sickly pale, one hand clamped round his own arm.

"They," Sylar says simply. "And I don't remember it, I don't remember waking."

Peter considers his throbbing head under this new information.

"They drugged us, they drugged us while we were asleep." Peter drags his fingers over the ache in his skin. "And they took blood."

And just like that Peter's furious, sliding to the edge of the bed and forcing himself to his feet and over to the glass that separates them.

"What the hell do they want with us?"

Sylar shakes his head, then tips it towards the other end of the cell.

"That's not all they did."

Peter turns his own head round. At the edge of the glass on either side are two silver trays. Peter can see enough to tell that it's food. Clearly they don't intend to starve them after all.

"I haven't touched it," Sylar says flatly.

"They've already proven they can drug us without showing their faces," Peter says. "I think drugging the food would be overkill."

"I think drugging the food would be sensible," Sylar says roughly.

Peter stares at the food for a long time.

He finally eats it anyway.

***

At first Peter is certain he should refuse to talk to Sylar. There is nothing about him that Peter wants to know, nothing he wants to understand. The fact that they have the same sort of power is irrelevant. Sylar's is twisted beyond any possible definition of the word 'good.'

It's a long time from morning til night. Peter tries, he tries for two days, staring at the opposite wall, walking the perimeter investigating the sink, the toilet, the edge of the raised area where he's supposed to sleep.

They've been here long enough that there's no adrenaline, no righteous fury at their captivity. There's just quiet anger, and frustration, and time.

They both gravitate towards the wall, stare though the glass, and even when they're not talking it's clear they're still communicating.

Even if Peter doesn't always like what they manage to convey.

In the end words are just easier

***

The food stays the same, day after day after day it's the same dull selection of vegetables and meat products with the occasional burst of fruit generosity. Someone, somewhere has calculated the bare minimum amount of healthy food needed to keep two grown men alive and moving.

Judging by the artificial night they're forced to endure it's been at least a few weeks, Peter's going to lose track soon with nothing to write on and no way to tell the time. Though Sylar, infuriatingly, always seems to know what time and day it is.

Their captors have never once shown their faces or given any indication that they're anything other than observers.

Sometimes Peter even has his doubts about that. Maybe they're just feeding them and keeping them drugged and that's it.

Though that seems an incredible waste of resources.

It appears there are resources to waste though, the tray appears in the same place every morning, with no answers and no explanations. Peter has taken to leaving the empty tray in various parts of his cell, just out of curiosity, or possibly stubbornness.

The fact that they were both being drugged, regularly, in their sleep is something he could only be furious about for so long.

There's nothing in the morning to take his anger out on, no one to demand answers of.

All that's left is the tray.

He pushes it away with the edge of his foot now and considers Sylar's question.

Sylar likes questions.

"I don't know, one day you're so certain how your life is going to turn out, so certain what you're going to do, where you're going to go. I even kind of thought I knew how I was going to get there, and then everything changed. My whole life before just ceases to matter, in one day, just one day."

Peter rolls his head, the glass is cold against his cheek, smooth. He can see Sylar out of the corner of his eye, lounged on the white bed, just the top of his head and a long arm, pale under hair.

"And I'm almost certain that it was exactly the same way for you."

Sylar goes utterly still, and Peter knows he's right. He thinks he has other parts of the puzzle too, he thinks he has far more of the picture than Sylar would like.

"It happened to you didn't it, that realisation that suddenly you were someone important, that you could do something amazing, something impossible, something new."

Peter stares at his own hands, listens to bare feet shifting on tiles.

"But instead of wondering what you could do with it, you lashed out."

The bare feet stop. Peter doesn't have to look up to know Sylar is standing on his side of the wall, hands pressed against the glass.

"You killed someone."

"He was weak," Sylar says simply.

"That's no excuse."

"He didn't know how to use his gift, he didn't want his gift." Sylar's tone of voice makes it clear he considers this a crime.

"That's no excuse either, he was a human being."

"When you're given something valuable you fight to keep it. You don't hide from it."

"You've never met anything you couldn't control have you."

"No," Sylar says simply.

"That must make for a fairly miserable life."

Sylar says nothing, just fumes quietly in the background.

Peter thinks he's going to refuse to talk anymore. That he's going to sit there in angry silence for the rest of the day. But he clearly has more, and it's important enough that he'll ignore Peter's barbed comments. He leans into the wall, tips his head against it.

"You wasted your powers, you never mastered them, you never made them your own."

"Because you're the poster boy for emotional control?" Peter says flatly.

Sylar twists his head on the glass, hair crushed into flat complicated patterns. "You had power, you had a destiny, you're wasting it."

"I'm wasting it?" Peter swivels, slaps a hand against the glass hard enough to hurt, god damn it. "I'm wasting it? What the hell do you think you're doing on your own personal killing spree, collecting these abilities like it's a god damned hobby!"

He slams his hand into the glass again, hard enough so his whole arm feels it and Sylar's laughing where he's leant into it, mouth wide and white and so disgustingly amused.

"You're killing people, and collecting their abilities and you don't even have an excuse that's not some sort of selfish belief that you have a right to them, that you'd be better off with them, which isn't even an excuse it's an attempt at justification. Jesus can't you see how fucked up that is?"

"That's a flavour of hypocrisy, don't you think?"

"I don't kill people, I don't want to kill people."

"But what if you did? What if by going near one of us you killed them and took their ability for your own, what would you do?"

"I wouldn't!" Peter says simply, and Sylar's laughing, flat out laughing at him.

"You probably wouldn't either, would you?"

Sylar leans close enough to press his forehead against the glass, eyes dark and intent and so close. "You're a flawed statistic."

"I am not a statistic!"

"It's in the genes, the biological drive to destroy and grow stronger."

"You have serious issues, you know," Peter says, thoroughly disgusted, which starts Sylar laughing again and Peter swears he can feel the vibrations through the glass.

***

Time drags on, something Peter has no control over now. It takes very little of it to become sick of the cell. The white tiles, the glass, the drift of Sylar on the other side of it. Morose and untouchable.

He thinks enough time drags on for him to become used to it again, only for the horrible sameness to send him into frustrated irritation again.

Peter paces, he can't help it, and only when he gets tired of it does he stop.

Just enough to catch his breath and lean on the wall.

They've been over the same questions too many times. Now there are new ones, sharper ones, ones that Peter wouldn't ask without glass and time between them.

"I know what your problem is." Peter says quietly, from where he's balanced sideways against the wall.

Sylar barely looks up from where he's folded over, wrists settled on his own knees. "Please do psychoanalyse me," he says flatly.

"You're addicted to perfection." Peter rolls his head on the glass. "You can't stand to see anyone trying, can't stand to see anyone failing. But then one day you found something you couldn't do and you just snapped and started slaughtering people, chopping off the top of their heads and eating their brains.

Sylar gives him a look through the glass.

"I have never eaten anyone's brain."

"Well you took them and did something with them, and god don't tell me because I don't want to know." He can't help thinking it though, can't help inventing stranger scenarios about what actually did happen to the brains. How exactly did you steal someone's abilities, someone's talents?

The scenarios just get weirder the longer he stares at Sylar's carefully serious expression, and he wonders when exactly he stopped expecting Sylar to lie. When he started assuming that every word out of his mouth would be the truth.

"God," Peter slides down the wall, a screech of skin on glass, until he's sprawled at the bottom of it, until it's smooth and cold and heavy against the back of his head. "I don't care."

There's a quiet in in both cells that's thrumming with an undercurrent of anger but Peter just doesn't have the patience for it today.

"I know how things work, that's how I became special," Sylar says tightly

"You're not special, you're an accident of genetics."

Sylar does react to that, sliding round from his position, fingertips white on the glass.

"You don't think what we are, what we've done, you don't think that's special. You don't think that's incredible?"

Peter sighs, rubs his head against the glass. All the things they've done, most of it more bad than good. All the people they've lost, for nothing in the end, for nothing. They've made no difference at all.

Everything they are and they've made no difference, they've just fought amongst themselves and brought ruin, fucking ruin to everything.

"What you've done isn't incredible Sylar, it's abominable."

"Can't it be both?"

Peter stares at the blank white wall opposite him. "No, no it can't."

"Are you sure?"

Peter says nothing, and in that moment he hates him, he hates him furiously and if the wall wasn't separating them he thinks he would take that quiet frustrated anger and use it.

"You have to be ruthless in pursuit of your goal," Sylar adds, like that makes it okay.

"And what is my goal, Sylar?"

"To survive." The words are forceful, frustrated at his inability to see their obviousness.

Peter throws his hands up.

"And what's your goal, please tell me, did you set out to become a monster or was it just an accident that you never bothered to care about?"

"I'm not a monster."

"Molly would disagree," Peter says simply.

"My goal is power. I take what other people aren't using."

"It never occurred to you to show them how?"

"No."

"So what, you're just going to keep taking other people's powers until...what you explode, you go mad, you get a whole set, help me here for god's sake?"

"Until I have enough."

"Enough for what? Enough to do what?"

Sylar didn't have an answer to that, mouth a downward slant at the edge where Peter can see it.

"Don't you think you're special enough already?" Sylar is scratching absently at the fading marks on his arm. "They certainly seem to think so." Peter adds, when he doesn't get an answer.

Peter desperately longs for something to throw, for the power to crack the glass behind him.

"You're in here with me, all those powers weren't good enough, and do you know why? Because under it all you're arrogant and petty and without power you'd be nothing, you'd just be another statistic who snapped and killed his neighbours. You were so miserable of your own existence that you let it fester....."

Sylar swings round and slams his hand against the glass, then immediately sways away and cradles it in the other.

"Genetics makes accidents of us all, one moment you're nothing and the next you're making decisions that affect millions."

Peter turns and leans into the glass, one hand balanced on his own knee.

"How are you supposed to deal with that? How are you supposed to not make mistakes?"

And suddenly it isn't about Sylar anymore and something in Peter's chest hurts like it's been scraped raw.

Sylar doesn't say a word. Peter twists his head round and finds him staring intently at him through the glass.

"How are you supposed to deal with them when you do?"

***

Peter has decided that if he ever gets out of this place he'll do what Nathan never managed. He'll tell the world, he'll tell everyone. They'll have to follow him across the world if they want to kill him and they'll have to kill everyone. Because people like him shouldn't be locked away like animals, locked away where no one can see, where no one can know.

"Even me?" Sylar asks from across the cell, head canted sideways, mouth a twist that's too close to amusement to Peter's liking.

Peter presses his lips together, then finally relents.

"Maybe."

He'll make sure no one gets away with this, no matter what it takes. They can't just take people away, take them away like they never existed.

He stares at the ceiling, aggressively bright to his eyes, and he has to blink the blurring away before he can focus across the cell.

Sylar's a long shape in his own cell, sat against the wall in shades of black and white. He's utterly still.

Peter wonders if anyone's looking.

For either of them.

***

On the twenty fifth day Peter decides they need some sort of system so they can tell what day it is.

"I always know what day it is," Sylar says flatly, dismissing Peter's good intentions with a single expression.

"But I don't and I need something else to look at occasionally, something to tell me it's the twenty fifth day."

"It's not the twenty fifth day," Sylar says quietly. He's slouched back against the wall, the material of his shirt pressed into artistic creases against the glass.

"What?"

"It's not the twenty fifth day." He swivels his head until Peter can see one of his eyes. "It's the twenty sixth, it's been twenty six days since we woke up in here."

"And you would know this because?" Peter thinks about it for a minute. "Did you kill someone who had the ability to never be late? I'll bet he was a real challenge." Peter says sarcastically. Then decides it doesn't make much difference. "Alright twenty six days, that would make it......" The pause is too long.

"Thursday," Sylar tells him, which makes no difference to anything, but still seems to amuse him.

***

For all his smug arrogance and willingness to stab at perceived faults, eventually Sylar starts pacing too.

It takes forty days before he's taking quick jerky steps from one side of the cell to the other. He's much thinner than Peter took him for, and Peter suspects now he's thinner still. All narrow edges and dark hair painting his skin, a wounded curve of limbs.

He walks and walks, occasionally dragging his fingers across the wall, then following them with the hard press of fingers.

"You're making me dizzy," Peter says harshly.

"Go to hell," Sylar spits between steps.

Peter burrows his head back into his arm, breathing into the skin until it's too hot and too close.

"They're not going to ever let us out," he mumbles.

Sylar either doesn't hear him or chooses to ignore the words.

***

Peter has decided that when he gets out of this place he's going to tear it to pieces.

***

Peter doesn't know what day it is when everything becomes too much, when it's too bright and too white and Sylar's face passes in front of the glass too many times, a stretch of threat and amusement, needling his own impotence. Until everything is too close and too much.

Peter finds himself talking but no longer listening to what he's actually saying.

Whatever it is it makes Sylar stop his pacing, draws him closer to the glass, and his expression- it's like he's watching something fascinating.

"You've gone mad," Sylar says quietly.

Peter's sudden completely irrational anger is so quick and furious it scares him. But he's powerless to stop it.

"Go to hell," Peter says furiously through the glass, close enough to throw spit with every word. "Go to hell!"

"You've gone mad," Sylar repeats, only the fascination is sliding rapidly into something almost uneasy.

Peter leans close enough to press his forehead against the glass.

"Then I'll be in good company."

Muscles twitch in Sylar's face, furious and restless and Peter watches that control crack straight down the middle.

And then they're screaming at each other. If there are words they're no longer listening, they're at the stage where words don't matter.

Sylar slams his hand against the wall until it bleeds, until every thump leaves a spray and slivers of red on the glass, and Peter gets close enough to see the glass shake minutely under every hit.

He thinks he can feel it.

Everything, absolutely everything he's been holding in pours out of him like poison.

It ends with him slumped in front of the glass, making noise like his body isn't sure whether it's screaming or crying.

They don't speak for four days. Pacing and righteous in their own furious silences. The blood dries on the wall, and in a long line down Sylar's arm. He barely notices where it's painted gruesome smears down one pant leg.

Peter tries to work out how they're drugging them while they're in the cell. Tries to find the air vents, a grill where gas can get in, something, anything. He finds nothing but white tile. Which should be impossible. People can't breathe inside a box. The ceiling is too high to reach, but it's just more of the same. White tile and fluorescent lights.

Sylar drifts from one side of the cell to the other. Contained and watchful.

But eventually they're drawn back to the wall, hands pressed against the glass, breath fogging the surface.

"What day is it?" Peter asks.

Sylar rolls his head towards him, eyes tilting down.

"Sixty," he says eventually.

Peter lets the wall cool his face.

"It feels like more."

***

"Tell me more about Adam."

Peter turns his head until he can see Sylar, who's lying on the floor on the other side of the glass.

"No, I'm not going to pander to your collection fantasies."

Sylar laughs at the description, quick and surprised; it's a deep and unfamiliar sound.

"Tell me anyway."

"You don't want to know about him. You just want to get your fingers inside his head."

"Just deep enough to learn how he works."

"Forgive me," Peter says, mouth tilting sarcastically at the edges. "You're not a sociopath; you're a biologist, piecing your way through the brain until you can work out exactly how we do what we do."

"It's a tried and tested method."

"Wouldn't that make you a better judge of how Adam works?"

"If you let me."

It's a strange way to phrase it, and it throws Peter for a second.

"He can heal anything. You could probably unpick him and then put him back together again."

"Creative."

"Gruesome," Peter corrects. "But if anyone deserves your fingers in their brain...."

"And then I wouldn't need Claire." Sylar meets his eyes purposely, and Peter is surprised by the fact that there's no taunting in the suggestion. Sylar is just stating a useful fact.

"No," Peter says quietly. "You wouldn't need Claire."

"That's very generous."

"It's pragmatic."

"It's bloodthirsty," Sylar says honestly. "For someone like you."

Peter is seconds away from asking what that's supposed to mean exactly, but he already knows. He shrugs instead.

"Yeah, well my perspective is slightly skewed."

Peter twists slightly, drags one of his legs up until he can rest a hand on it.

"If everyone could do what you do-" Peter stops, looks at the ceiling. "If everyone could do what you do, how many of them do you think would?"

Sylar looks at him sideways, as if to check if he's serious. Peter just watches him, because he is serious, he wants to know what Sylar thinks. And Sylar thinks about it, really thinks about it. Peter watches him through the glass, turning the idea over and over in his head.

"A quarter," Sylar says finally. "Maybe more."

"You really think one in four people would turn to slaughter just for the chance to be like us."

"I think two in four would think about it." Sylar pulls himself to a sit, lets his shoulder rest against the glass. "I think we're closer to animals than you think for all our pretences at evolution, at bettering ourselves, I think that given the chance we'll screw over our fellow man in a heartbeat."

Peter leans against the glass, until they're shoulder to shoulder, two inches apart.

"I thought you were the one protesting your evolutionary superiority."

"I said I was striving for evolution, I said I was the next step. I never said we weren't still animals underneath. But you wouldn't understand that, you've never felt like part of the puzzle."

"We're not parts of a puzzle," Peter says without thinking. "In a puzzle you need all the pieces to see the picture."

Sylar goes very still on the other side of the glass.

"The important pieces, the pieces that tell you what the picture's going to be. The corners, the sides-"

"And the pieces that don't fit, the pieces you don't need, you throw them away."

"I never said that, I don't throw people away."

"We're not talking about people," there's definitely a laugh under Sylar's words this time. "We're talking about importance, we're talking about how we fit into the picture. You still haven't grasped that yet."

"You'd be surprised."

"Tell me then." Sylar shifts, puts a hand on the floor until he can turn and face him. "Tell me what it was like for you."

Peter stares at him through the glass before speaking.

"It felt like I had to follow what I believed was my destiny no matter what the cost, no matter where it took me, all the way to the end."

Sylar looks at him for a long time, expression as open and searching as Peter has ever seen it.

"You do understand," he says at last. And Peter for the life of him can't work out why that should be wrong.

"You're broken," Peter says carefully

"No, you're broken," Sylar counters in a tone of voice that's calm and ever so slightly amused.

***

"Your brother's dead, isn't he?" Sylar says quietly. It's not a question, it seems more like a conclusion he's just reached.

Peter's laying on the floor, arms stretched out on either side of him. It's cool and it eases his restlessness. He doesn't have to look at the room, which never changes, which never, ever changes.

"Yes," he admits, because he honestly can't think of anything else to say, and lying just seems to take too much effort. Sylar stares at the wall, and whether he's considering some sort of platitude, or putting his thoughts in order, or thinking up ways to kill him, Peter doesn't know.

Sylar's face is hard to read.

He doesn't stay quiet for long though.

"So what do you fight for now?"

The question surprises him, and for a second Peter is struck by the fact that he doesn't know. What he was and who he wanted to be has always been so firmly tangled up with who Nathan was, who he'd wanted to be. When Peter looks at himself now he struggles to see anything but the smaller piece of a broken puzzle.

And just like that he knows.

Revenge.

Sylar laughs against the glass, one quick, sharp sound like he knows exactly what Peter is thinking, like he expected it.

"People are capable of anything." Sylar laughs. "Of everything given the right motivation."

It's true, but the words sound so hopeless out of Sylar's mouth, like it's some hideous truth, push everyone the right way and they could be a monster.

He feels like testing it though.

"So what could motivate you into saving the world?"

"I have no interest in letting the world burn," Sylar says quietly. "I hunt out power. I don't just randomly slaughter people for no reason."

"They weren't always people with abilities, ordinary people got caught up in it too. It's not their fault that they're not like us."

Sylar moves, drawing his hands up and balancing them on his knees.

"Why are you so angry?" Peter asks. "Did life treat you so badly that you desperately needed to pull the whole world down around you."

"The world gave me nothing," Sylar turns until his cheek is pressed against the glass. "Nothing good and nothing bad, just nothing."

"That's the great slight the universe laid on you? Mediocrity." Peter thinks he should be furious, he thinks he should be wounded for humanity. But he can't quite dredge up anything but a vague sense of disappointment. A quirk of black humour that it all started from somewhere so mundane.

"I didn't want to be mediocre."

"People have had better excuses. You really think that one's good enough, and you don't even feel guilty, not for any of it. Leaving people in pieces or mediocrity, how the hell did pieces win, Sylar?"

Peter pulls himself up into a sitting position; shifts until he can lean against the wall. He lets his head drop back, and stares at the ceiling again. He doesn't understand, he just doesn't understand. He doesn't even know if he wants to, but god help him he has to try.

"I used to," the words are so quiet Peter almost doesn't hear them. But they're sitting against the wall, back to back.

"Used to what?"

"I used to feel guilty."

Peter stares at the floor.

"What happened?"

"I stopped caring."

***

On day seventy-seven Peter wakes up and Sylar is gone.

Sylar's cell is empty, the white space utterly bare save for a few fading fingerprints on the other side of the glass.

For a long and confusing moment Peter thinks he's hallucinating. They've been here a long time after all and Sylar has always, always been on the other side of the glass.

"Sylar?"

The space remains empty, lost without its former occupant. It's just a dead white space tacked onto the end of his own.

"Sylar?"

He's breathing too hard and his voice is quiet and rough.

He's alone.

For the first time in more than two months he's alone.

They'd taken him, they'd taken him out of the room while Peter was sleeping. He has no idea how or why. They've been here so long, so long without their jailers choosing to actually make contact so Peter just doesn't know.

Do they want to question him, experiment on him, set him free?

He has no idea.

He strives to ignore the voice in the back of his head. The one that says 'what if he died in the night? What if he died and they took him away?'

And Peter is going to be alone here now.

He's alone in the white room with no one to talk to, nothing to look at but the white walls and the glass looking into an empty room.

"Where is he?" He takes too steps, stares up at the formless white ceiling. "Where is he, where did you take him, what are you doing with him?"

He turns in a circle, keeps turning, until he can see everywhere, everywhere.

"Where is he!"

He doesn't get an answer, the place is utterly silent.

He rubs his face, paces, paces a little more. The idea of Sylar being taken somewhere, taken somewhere and experimented on seems more likely, he can't think of any other scenario. Which leaves him not only suddenly brutally claustrophobic but also worried, worried to the state where he feels like he's smothering some sort of outburst. Like he might start shouting and never stop.

He goes to the wall, presses his hands against it and peers into every corner of the other room, every inch of the floor. Just in case someone has left something, some clue, some evidence that they were there. That they took him away.

Peter paces some more.

He counts the paces across the room, nine, and then paces the other way, twelve. Then he does it again to prove the walls aren't closing in around him. Plenty of room, plenty of room to walk and breathe and sit.

Though when he's done it before he's always had Sylar sneering at him from the other cell. Telling him it's a psychological response, telling him animals did the same thing. Or he'd sit glumly on his own bed, or lean against the wall resolutely not looking at him and not caring, holding a vague air of smugly superior amusement.

Peter sits down on shaky legs.

They'll bring him back, they'll bring him back eventually, he just has to wait.

He just has to wait.

He sits still until he's stiff, until he's cold, until remaining like that exhausts him.

He gets up and starts to pace again.

Hours into his pacing Peter's brain is making up wild theories about how Sylar was never here at all. About how he hallucinated every second of it, driven mad by the white tiles and the drugs and the empty cell. That he made him up to stay sane and went mad anyway.

The thought disturbs him so much he sits down, puts his head in his hands.

He doesn't look up again for a while.

When the lights go off he goes to the wall, strains for some sign, something in the darkness, noise or movement. He catches himself muttering quietly under his breath and forces himself to stop.

Then he goes back to the bed and sits in the dark.

He doesn't sleep.

***

Peter wakes up just the same, head too tight and aching, and it takes him a second to focus in the flare of white light.

Sylar's back.

He's sitting on the edge of his bed, elbows balanced crookedly on his knees.

Peter surges forward, too fast, arms hitting the wall hard enough to hurt. The relief is something he doesn't entirely understand, but he catches hold of it with both hands.

"Sylar!"

Sylar tips his head and stares at him. His eyes look wrecked, shot through with red, pupils too wide. He's shaking like he's drunk, like he's drugged.

"Sylar-" Peter's hand screeches when he moves it, and awkwardly, impossibly, tries to get closer.

"Where did you go, where did they take you?"

Sylar tries to swallow, coughs instead, then simply shakes his head. Peter says his name again, and he's not entirely sure why, maybe it's just noise in the silence, more to reassure himself than anyone else. But it seems to lure Sylar slowly, painfully to the wall. He slumps back against it, and he looks worse close up. There are dark bruises around his wrists and in the bend of each arm.

"Who took you?" Peter says quietly, anxiously.

Sylar stares at him through the glass and then shakes his head again.

"Where did they take you?"

A quick frantic swallow forces out rough words.

"I don't know."

"Sylar, where did you go?"

"I don't know," Sylar repeats and Peter can't listen to that dull lifeless tone again. So he leans into the wall, as close as they ever get and says nothing.

Their captors have finally taken notice of them and nothing could convince Peter that this is a good thing.

The day drags on impossibly slowly, slower than any that came before.

Peter doesn't stray far from the wall, doesn't pass it without leaning into its cold surface, a press of fingers that leave prints and warmth behind. Because bringing Sylar back once does not mean they don't intend to take him again, or kill him, or move him.

Sylar moves little but when he does it's slowly, painfully, like he's been hollowed out and put back empty and drugged.

Peter eventually stays by the wall, leaning in the same spot where Sylar's narrow back rests, watching the walls and the slow unhappy pulse that jumps in Sylar's neck.

He's too paranoid to sleep.

But then, they took away that choice weeks ago.

***

Peter spends six days watching Sylar, watching the walls, staying awake as long as he can. He watches until Sylar pieces himself back together, pacing and angry and arrogant and too thin now.

He forgets to watch himself.

***

Peter is not in the cell.

The walls are plain concrete, dull grey, more like the cell he was kept in next to Adam. For a fleeting, disorienting moment he thinks he's back there. He can't see much of his surroundings, just snatches and blurry outlines. Large white globes drift in and out of his vision, obscuring the walls, floating past his face.

He thinks he tries to reach up and touch one, but he can't move, he can't move at all. He tries to protest, or call someone, but he can't speak either.

The globes are talking, slow and strange, and it takes him just that long to realise that the globes are not globes at all but people. Impossible to define behind white masks.

Peter is fascinated, in a distant sort of way, until he realises that these are his captors.

And with the realisation comes panic, comes refusal.

He twists against whatever's holding him, twists as hard as he can and though he can feel it he's not exactly sure he's moving at all.

He still can't speak, but as the faces come into sharper focus he knows he's still trying to form words.

Everything is too bright and too sharp, it's far more real than it was a moment ago.

And someone is talking, someone is talking, but the words are fragmenting, falling into each, and the room, the room isn't quite as bright as it was before.

They're putting him under again.

But he doesn't want to sleep, he wants to scream because they're inside his head, all the way inside where no one should be without his consent and he can feel it. He's horrified, and terrified and he was certain he couldn't make a sound but he can hear himself screaming.

He can hear himself screaming.

And then nothing....

***

The next thing he sees is white.

Every inch of him aches, like it cramped into pain hours ago and came out the other side. He can barely move his left arm and he can taste blood at the back of his throat and against his teeth.

They've left him on the floor, sprawled on the tiles like he doesn't matter at all.

And that strikes Peter as the most telling of all.

He turns his head, slowly, awkwardly.

Sylar is watching him, forehead pressed against the glass, eyes dark and intent and something else, something impossible to define.

Peter tries to speak, but nothing comes out.

"Swallow," Sylar says carefully, patiently.

Peter obeys and god it hurts, it hurts like fire going all the way down.

But it shakes his voice free.

"Was I dead?"

"No," Sylar tells him. "They're probably very careful not to kill you, neutered like you are, you might not come back. I think that would spoil their fun."

Peter drags himself up, balanced on his knees, he feels like he's been dead, feels like he'd kind of like to have stayed there a bit longer.

He's cold all the way through, unsteady on his hands, mouth thick and bitter with the taste of tin and unconsciousness.

It's too much, he leans down again, presses his aching head against the cold of the floor and groans into the tiles.

"It goes away," Sylar says quietly, there's a tone in his voice that's quieter than normal, strange and breathless and new.

It takes Peter a long painful minute to realise it's relief.

***

It becomes a new and unwelcome addition to their captivity. Every Thursday one of them will disappear, only to reappear Friday bruised and shifting in slow confused movements. Shaking off the haze of drugs and pain and blood loss.

Peter knows well enough by now that it's less about careful scientific study and more about reckless experimentation. Neither of them are healing like they can, like they should.

They've gone from almost three months of inactivity to a sudden and insidious fight for survival.

***

Peter lost track of the days long ago.

Sylar is the one who always knows. The one who always knows exactly what day and what time it is. Knows the day of the week, the date of the month. Even when their captors turn the lights off early, or leave them on and blend one day into the next Sylar always knows. It isn't a stolen power, just natural talent. Or possibly just a well-practised knowledge. He used to mend watches. It's not a surprise he has something of an intimate relationship with time.

Peter is lost when Sylar isn't there. Pacing the half empty cell with no anchor to tell him how long it's been, how many hours he's wandered across the cell and back again.

Sylar would know what time it was but without him Peter is stuck guessing,

Peter has never been able to tell the time even close to exactly. He's never had to make the effort before.

Nathan is the one that always made sure he remembered things, that he was always on time, or as close to as made no difference.

If Nathan was alive, he'd be looking for him.

The last time he was locked up Nathan had been in hospital. The first time Adam saved him. The first time Peter realised he could be saved.

That things were far more complicated and amazing than he'd ever imagined.

He's been without his powers before, so has Sylar. They've both been locked up before.

But this might be the last time.

He slams his hands against the glass, making it judder sharply and stares into the empty cell next door.

The glass bends and shifts under his fingertips.

Peter doesn't think anything of it.

***

Sylar isn't sitting on the bed when Peter shakes himself out of sleep.

He's laying facing away from Peter but there's red on the tiles, fresh and smeared around the curve of Sylar's head.

Peter tries to walk before he's off his own bed, knee smacking the tile sharply enough for him to feel it all the way up to his shoulder. A spike of pain and panic that he barely feels through the adrenaline.

"Sylar?"

Sylar's still as death, blurring as Peter's breath fogs the glass.

They wouldn't leave him in the cell dead, they wouldn't, they wouldn't leave him in the cell dead.

"Sylar!"

They wouldn't force Peter to watch him rot through the glass, what kind of a fucking sociopath would do that.

He's shaking, banging the side of his fist on the glass whenever he has the coordination.

"Sylar!"

"Stop shouting." Sylar tells him in a cracked, broken voice, though he doesn't move an inch.

Peter's hands relax, slide down the glass with a noisy squeal. "Jesus."

Sylar doesn't speak again but his fingers move across the white tiles, painting bloody lines as they drag through the pools he's made.

He makes no effort to move for a long time, Peter's as close to the glass as he can get, biting back the demand that he get over here now so he can at least see how bad it is. So he can see what they've done.

Eventually Sylar tips his head back, swears, and drags himself over to the glass.

He's too pale, the smears under his eyes darker and deeper than they were before.

Sylar bleeds slowly, sluggishly from the puncture wounds in the bend of his elbow, from his ear, and from one nostril.

He looks like he's been in a car crash.

He wipes his nose twice, then gives up and just lets it run.

"It won't stop bleeding," Sylar says conversationally. Though there's a floaty, breathless quality to his voice that Peter doesn't like.

There's too much blood on the tiles in Sylar's room.

"Lift up your shirt."

Sylar raises an eyebrow.

"Just do it."

Sylar makes a noise and does as he's told.

There are no more bruises.

Peter breathes out in a way which isn't relief, but it's the best he's going to get.

Sylar drops his shirt, sways very slightly and then leans against the glass.

Without even thinking about it Peter lays his hand on the glass over Sylar's and the quick glance and lopsided curve of his mouth on one side tells Peter he's amused.

"Are we dating now?"

"Fuck you," Peter says, but he doesn't move his hand, he doesn't move away, and when Sylar presses the pale length of his forehead against the glass Peter can't help but lean in as well.

Peter can hear him breathing, a quiet, heavy flare and rasp, he presses his palms against the glass like he can hold him there, like he can hold him up. Even though all he's touching is cold glass.

Peter can see the slight jump of his pulse in the long bare curve of his neck.

He counts it silently, then counts it again.

It makes him no happier.

He wants to try a third time but Sylar twists his head, blocking his view.

"They're taking us apart piece by piece."

"They won't kill us," Peter can't sound as certain as he did before.

"They don't care anymore, you know they don't care."

"We'll get out."

Sylar opens his eyes and tips his head back off of the glass. Peter forces himself to pull back and look at him.

"What would it take to break that tendency towards optimism?" Sylar asks quietly.

Peter notices absently that Sylar's fingers are longer than his, fingertips arcing over his own on the glass.

He says nothing, there's nothing he can say. Because not having something in here is a death sentence.

Sylar clings to his simmering anger like he's afraid it will be taken from him and Peter, Peter has something that though it's dented still feels a lot like hope.

"Selflessness is not a good evolutionary trait," Sylar says slowly and pointedly.

"You think I'm going to make myself extinct?"

"We'll both be extinct if we don't get out of here soon," Sylar says flatly.

Peter knows, his skin is too fine, too easily bruised. He's fragile in a way he shouldn't be and Sylar- Sylar doesn't stop bleeding now, eyes dark and smudged a dull grey.

They're breaking into pieces. Every time they come back there's less there.

"You should take better care of yourself," Peter tells him.

//So should you// Sylar says.

But his mouth never moves.

Peter is so stunned that for a long moment all he can do is stare.

"What?" Sylar's voice is a curl of suspicion and curiosity.

Peter shakes his head. But he tries again, tries desperately to find something, a flare of thought, a word, an impression.

But there's nothing there.

Nothing but blank emptiness.

***

He's almost certain he imagined the whole thing. The brief, bright lie of too fast a heartbeat and the cell's too hot air.

It's another four days before there's another long, fine thrum of connection.

A whisper of discontent, though Sylar is leaned back against the wall, facing away, hair a mess against the glass.

Two words, quiet enough that Peter might have missed them, or assumed they were spoken.

But they weren't.

//Sylar,// Peter thinks. //Sylar if you can hear me put your hand down on the floor, facing me.//

There's a pause, just long enough for Peter to be certain he's fooling himself. That his brain is simply providing quick, helpless flashes of auditory hallucination.

Until Sylar's hand very slowly drops to the tiles, splays out, fingers facing where Peter's sitting.

His head twitches against the wall.

//Don't turn around.//

//You're not speaking.// A curious statement, not a question, and his shoulders move in another quick flex.

Peter swallows, tries to put his thoughts into some sort of order.

//No I'm not.//

He hasn't done this for a very long time, and he's never tried it like this before. He's almost certain he's broadcasting too much, but that really doesn't seem to matter anymore.

//Do something else.// Sylar's mental voice is rough and insistent, there's no questioning quality, everything is cold and guarded.

//I can't,// Peter tells him. //I'm trying and I can't, I can just, I can just do this.//

//How long?// It's half curiosity and half accusation.

//Not long, I wasn't sure at first, I thought I was imagining it.//

//You've been reading my mind?//

//Not really.//

//What does that mean?//

//It's more like looking over your shoulder while you're reading the paper,// Peter tries.

Sylar does turn around then, Peter almost speaks, almost warns him that they can't give an indication that they can do this.

But Sylar doesn't say a word, he just stretches out on the raised surface of his own bed and stares at the ceiling.

//What good is it? What good is it if you can't do anything else?//

//I just said I couldn't do anything else yet. If the medication stops working, I don't want them knowing about it.//

Sylar twitches sharply then and Peter suspects that thought was too loud, too forceful.

He pulls it back, tampers it down.

//It might be a start.//

He paints his voice with something that wants to be ruthlessness more than optimism.

//A start is good.// Sylar thinks quietly.

***

They give no sign whatsoever that one of Peter's powers has snuck out of its carefully locked box.

***

Everything hurts. Peter doesn't come awake slowly but limb by limb, and every inch of his skin aches. It feels like he slid down a brick wall and left half of it behind.

He doesn't even want to think about moving. Breathing is hard enough, every inhale brings angry nerves alive to protest and scream at him.

"Peter?"

It takes him a minute to work out how to tell Sylar that talking might kill him. The inside of his brain feels so fragile he thinks he might throw up if he tries to use Parkman's power, and in this position he'd probably choke and die.

He refuses to be part of such an undignified death.

"Peter!"

On the other hand there's the chance that Sylar won't actually shut up until he knows Peter isn't dead, or close to dead, or dying.

The world swims away for a while.

"Peter!"

His name is more insistent now, thin with strains of something that Peter isn't used to hearing in Sylar's voice.

He manages, through determination and stupidity, to turn his head towards the glass.

He spends the next two minutes with his eyes shut, begging his head to stay attached.

//Peter?//

Peter opens his eyes and instantly regrets it. Sylar is a smear of black and white beyond the glass.

//Peter talk to me.// Sylar's mental voice is tight and uneasy.

"Peter?"

Peter makes a noise. He's certain he intends it to be words but it's just a garbled thing that wants to be acknowledgement and complaint and misery.

Sylar seems to understand, he relaxes, unwillingly against the glass, fingertips digging and shifting on the surface. Peter knows how he feels. Every other part of the room feels so far away sometimes, a world away, separated by space as well as glass.

"Come over here," Sylar says eventually.

Peter groans.

//In a minute.// Peter manages weakly. His own voice echoes around his head like it wants to escape and he isn't sure whether Sylar has heard until he recognises Sylar's impatient, fidgeting wait for him to drag himself nearer

//You look like a fallen doll.//

Peter isn't entirely sure whether Sylar intended to send the thought or not.

Peter pushes himself up on his hands, sways and wonders if he's going to be sick. The world stabilises around him and slowly, endlessly he makes his way to the wall, lays his hands against it and catches his breath.

The cell never feels so big as when he wakes up half dead.

"Your eye is bleeding." Sylar lifts a hand, as if to wipe it, then lets it fall against the glass instead.

"At least I still have an eye." Talking hurts and Peter shakes his head, breathes through the spear of pain in his throat.

//What do you remember?//

//Nothing.// Peter tips his head against the glass until the cool surface can soothe his aching skin at least a little. //I don't remember anything at all.//

He feels like he could lay against the wall and sleep, and perhaps never wake up.

He shuts his eyes, just for a minute.

//You were gone a long time.// It's an accusation rather than worry, but with Sylar it's almost the same thing.

//I want to sleep.// Peter doesn't think he intends to send it, but it owns every part of his brain at the moment, so it's hard to think anything else.

//You never let me sleep.// Sylar protests in some strange mixture of quiet petulance and rebuke.

Peter opens his eyes again.

//You're always too angry to sleep.//

//You're clearly too stupid to stay awake.//

Peter laughs against the glass, which has never seemed as comfortable as it does right that moment.

"Don't go to sleep," Sylar says harshly.

Peter rolls his head sideways, damp forehead making the glass squeak. He's exhausted and cold and he feels awful and he wants nothing, nothing, more than to sleep right that very moment.

//Tell me about your brother,//Sylar's voice is quiet.

Peter makes a snorting noise that fogs up the glass.

//You don't want to hear about Nathan,// he says flatly.

//No,// Sylar's hand flist back and forth over the bottom half of the glass, restless and frustrated. //I want to hear you talk.//

***

Peter has developed an itch under the skin on the back of his right hand. He scratches it until it bleeds, until the skin is red and dotted.

Sylar protests that it's in his head.

Peter tells him he looks like a dead man walking and has no right to have opinions on his skin infections.

Sylar protests that if it is a skin infection he's glad they have a wall separating them because it's obviously a disgusting one.

Peter laughs, quick and amused.

The people watching probably think they've both gone mad.

If there's anyone left watching.

Maybe they've just stopped caring what they do in here on their own.

***

Peter doesn't realise exactly how used to Sylar's voice in his head he's become until he wakes up dizzy, the tiles swimming in front of his eyes in savage and sudden ways.

He's still in the cell -

Only he's not.

Jesus, he's not just here, he's also in that bright metal place having the skin taken off the side of his neck piece by piece.

His hand rises and catches where there's no pain at all, though he can still feel it, he knows, he can't know but he does.

He's so tangled in Sylar's head he feels like he's the one screaming.

There's a noise in his head underneath it all a quick jerky buzzing.

His blood is too hot inside him, flaring in quick painful throbs. Overpowering everything else, making breathing a faraway thing of noise and air. Until the buzz in his head feels like it's on fire, hands sweat damp and trembling against the glass and Sylar is still screaming in his head-

The veins in his hands are glowing.

It's the faintest curl of yellow red under the skin but it's real and it's there, and it's growing.

He takes a breath and another, clenches his teeth together to hold the inhale that's shock and triumph and impatience.

Because if he can get Claire's power to work he's fairly certain he can get this crap out of his bloodstream, whatever the hell it is, and with no drugs in his bloodstream...there is no question about what he's going to do.

He's going to get out of this room.

And he's going to kill anything he finds on the other side.

Peter doesn't know what the catalyst is, whether it's pain, fury or some complicated mixture of the two. He doesn't know if it's his own adrenaline destroying everything that doesn't belong. But it's like every ability he's ever taken is pushing out, is forcing itself free, forcing itself loose. And for once he doesn't try and stop any of them.

The holes in his arm, the bruises around his wrists fade between one breath and the next. The flare from his hands fades too and then comes back brighter than before, quick and deadly and immeasurable.

Peter remembers how to burn.

And no wall on earth is made to withstand that.

There are people on the other side but after those first few seconds of light and heat and the shatter of a thousand tiles they're buried beneath the cascade of melted rubble, cut down by the wave of heat that flows out of the hole.

The ones that make it to the door leave it swinging behind them.

The white cell has collapsed into a long room full of computers and long screens, glass tanks and shelves full of file folders, now blackened and smoking gently.

Not all of the crushed are dead, the crack of hot tiles and the shift of brick is a background to quiet cries of pain, and louder noises, something past pain and out the other side.

Chemicals have exploded, some of them burning steadily across the furniture.

Peter doesn't know how much time he has, he doesn't know what sort of resistance this place can produce and how quickly.

He leaves the survivors to burn.

***

The corridor isn't as empty.

Men and women in white, half rushing towards him and half rushing away fill the narrow space. A whirl of uniforms and shouting.

An alarm screams overhead, wild and discordant and too loud.

Someone catches the edge of his t-shirt, hard fingers pulling before they've even tightened their grip, other arm moving arm, and swinging down.

All Peter sees is needles.

He puts a hand out and pushes, hard.

The man's bulk flies ten feet and hits the wall hard enough to crack the tile and leave blood in a sunrise pattern behind. He doesn't slide down, but falls, a wreck of uniform, needles cascading everywhere.

He doesn't move again.

It gives Peter a handful of seconds before three men move to grab him.

He makes certain that he's too hot to touch and they wheel away again on noises of pain and flaming sleeves.

The one man who steps forward again gets a face full of electricity and ends up on the floor shrieking.

No one is moving towards him, the momentum is now firmly up the corridor and away

He doesn't know whether to follow them or -

He reaches out, past the alarm, past the white tiles and screaming to find out where they're going -

The science lab is not that way.

Neither is Doctor Oberman.

That's his name, that's the man who runs this place.

Doctor Oberman.

And he's back the other way, and so is the medical room.

Which is where Sylar is.

He lets them run, doubles back.

Most of the doors are locked, but it doesn't matter, he snaps his way through the locks until he finds the office at the end of the corridor.

The office with doors leading everywhere.

There's a man inside. A small, sensible man in a suit, who moves the moment he sees him, weaving between the metal cubicles, shoes clattering on the shiny floor.

Peter doesn't know him. But he knows without doubt that this is the man who stood behind the walls. This is the man who watched them for a hundred and eleven days. Who cut pieces off of them and left them to die.

This is Doctor Oberman.

Peter pushes with a hand and a metal table screeches across the floor, jams itself in front of the door.

Oberman is brought up short, he presses his hands against the metal, realises he won't be able to move it before Peter gets to him.

He turns sideways and raises his arms.

"Wait, Peter, I can explain everything, just stop, just stop for a moment."

Peter does stop, but he holds the table where it is.

"We're only taking the ones that can do terrible damage, Peter. The ones that have no control."

Oberman clears his throat. He takes a single step, one hand falling to rest on the table.

"You must understand that you're a danger to yourself and those around you. We're protecting the population, Peter. We're protecting the world. Isn't that what you wanted to do, Peter? Isn't that what you spent so long trying to do? We keep them here, keep them where they can do no harm and try to learn from them, try to learn from you. It's so new, we're all so new to this, you must understand."

Oberman takes another step, face earnest. He believes what he's saying, he believes what he's doing, he really does.

"Your mutations are too wild, too severe. The world isn't ready for them, the world isn't ready for you. You can't get out of here Peter, let us help you, let me help you."

Oberman reaches out a hand.

Lightening hits everything in the crowded room, bouncing from desk to desk, along the wide spaces of wall, though cloth and skin.

Peter watches it catch Oberman and propel him to the floor, limbs twitching and contracting away from the current, spasming as Peter refuses to stop.

Until he's a fold of smoking limbs, perfectly still.

Peter picks up the fallen ID badge, flips it in his fingers. Doctor Oberman. It's not a key card, he doesn't need it. But he will remember the name.

It drops it on the smoking body, snaps the handle off of the door and steps into the silver room.

It looks disorientingly different even headed, larger, colder. There are two metal tables back to back, one of them is empty, but the other-

For a long horrible second Peter is certain that Sylar is dead. He's not bleeding anymore, skin a pale unhealthy white.

The doctor looks up from his cutting and his expression falls from anger at the interruption to surprise and fear in a second. The scalpel he holds shines red under the bright lights.

One gesture from Peter flings his lunging assistant back against the equipment trolley and metal clatters across the floor.

"You can't be in here," the Doctor says stridently, still holding his scalpel, he takes two uncertain steps back. "You can't be in here!"

"I've been here before," Peter reminds him and sends both him and the trolley slamming back into the wall with a crash.

Peter doesn't check to see if either of them are unconscious or dead.

He shoves the last of the medical equipment out of the way and pushes the glass light to one side.

"Sylar?"

He follows the restraints down Sylar's arms.

"Sylar?"

One of the straps has dug in so deep there's fabric in the bloody cut along Sylar's wrist, chafing back and forth in the red ruin.

Peter snaps it through, lays two fingers against his throat.

"Sylar?"

He's not dead. But his pulse is slow, the skin too cool and Peter wishes furiously that he had the ability to heal other people.

Claire's power isn't in his blood, it's just something he can copy, and though he thinks maybe he's capable of that while he's healing, they don't have the time.

Even if Peter was crazy enough to try a transfusion.

Sylar shakes his thoughts apart when his hand catches Peter's wrist where's still balanced against his neck.

"You got out of the room," Sylar says thickly.

Peter's breath explodes out of him.

"I thought you were dead. You're like a horror movie villain you know that?"

Peter helps him pull himself to a sitting position.

"I'm genetically persistent," Sylar says thickly, hands clamped round Peter's wrist and shoulder, he's holding himself up.

Peter doesn't say a word, but loops a hand round Sylar's waist, physically drags him off of the metal table.

It's not easy, Sylar is tall and awkward and touching is a new and strange experience that they've never really given each other permission for.

And Peter, Peter can only use one power at a time.

"We're getting out of here," Peter tells him. "But first-wait!" Peter fishes among the medical supplies for two bottles and a syringe.

"What's that?" Sylar asks but doesn't resist when Peter drags his arm down.

"Something so you can walk at least."

Sylar lets Peter inject him twice in complete silence, the alarm sounds far away but Oberman was so insistent that they couldn't escape from this place.

"If we're lucky, it'll do more than that."

"And if I'm unlucky?" Sylar asks.

"It'll stop your heart."

"That's not comforting."

"I know CPR," Peter adds, which is the truth.

Sylar eyes his outstretched hand like he doesn't need it, but lets Peter catch his waist and move them both into the next room.

Where something slams into Peter from behind, a crash of weight that throws him onto his hands.

Sylar falls to one side, hits the doorframe, sliding down until his knees hit the floor.

Speed and momentum take Peter's face all the way to the ground. It smacks into the tiles, teeth biting down on his cheek and filling his mouth with blood. There are fingers in his hair and sudden slicing pain on his back, in his back, god all the way through him-

He cries out, surprise, pain and angry refusal. He's twisting under the new weight, turning, and something in his back tears sharply, bleeds under his shirt.

The man above him is the same age as him, younger maybe, teeth clamped together in fury, ragged blonde hair a mess over his forehead. One hand is tangled in the fabric of his shirt and surrounding him- surrounding him are what looks like spears dragged from the shadows of the room. The man is apparently solidifying and manipulating the darkness.

"No-"

Peter puts a hand up and gets one through the hand instead of the throat, only to have it jerk free and reform as a thin lancing band that tears through the meat of his fingers.

Peter's other hand is smashed into the floor, one long black shape stabs into his palm, opening it and pinning it to the floor.

"You're not leaving, Mr Petrelli, you're staying, whether you're in one piece or not."

Ribbons of darkness flow overhead, smash the light fixtures and then swing the other way, knocking machinery and computers askew from their cables. They topple to the floor with a crash throwing sparks and metal everywhere.

One of them arcs down and punches through Peter's shoulder.

He chokes on his own scream, free hand knocked aside every time it dares to flare with electricity or light.

The tendril widens inside the wound, swells under the pouring rain of blackness, until he's screaming over the sound of his own collarbone creaking.

Blood slaps Peter in the face, a burst of it from the sudden ragged hole in the middle of his attacker's throat.

Pale fingers catch a handful of dirty blonde hair and physically drag the man free; he crashes into the tangle of machinery their fight knocked over.

The man's manifestations dissolve like they never were, leaving Peter with ragged, empty holes that are both healing and bleeding out on the floor.

Sylar drops the bloody scalpel he's holding, leans far enough that Peter can see his face under the swinging light.

Peter's still gasping when Sylar lays a hand on his shoulder to pull him up. The tear in his chest is mostly still open and he snarls through his teeth.

Sylar releases him, moves his hand to Peter's waist, lets Peter grip his arm and pull himself up at his own pace.

"Thanks," he manages.

Sylar lets him lean against his shoulder while he re-knits without a word, then they both use each other to get upright again.

"We have to leave," Peter heads for the door.

"Wait, wait!" Sylar says roughly.

He drags the tumbled body out from the wreck of machinery, where it rolls onto its back, stares sightlessly at the ceiling.

"You already have it, I want it."

"Sylar!"

"I want it!" Sylar says roughly, and his voice is more insistent, more alive than Peter has ever heard it.

The medical equipment scatters under his hand.

"We don't have time!"

Sylar presses his teeth together until Peter can hear them.

"Sylar, we don't have time," he says more quietly.

But the scalpel is already bloody and he'll never, never-

"Damn it, Sylar!"

Peter tugs his arm out of the way and Sylar lets him, lets him with a snarl of angry denial.

Peter leans in and lowers a hand.

And carves all the way through the skull with a brutal crack.

Sylar freezes where he's knelt, he looks completely stunned.

"Five minutes," Peter says tightly, he's shaking, swallowing convulsively and he feels more than a little sick. "Five minutes."

He waits by the door.

He doesn't turn around.

Sylar eventually comes back to stand beside him, left hand dripping quietly on the tiles as they make their way back up the corridor, and Peter carefully ignores it, running his hand over the wall instead.

"These are the cells," he says, hands frustrated. "If I can find out how to open-"

One of the walls slides in, the tile sealant easing apart until a section of wall becomes a door.

The first cell is empty on both sides.

And the second.

The third is empty as well but the sink in the corner is painted orange brown with the remains of someone's last act as a prisoner.

"Peter?" Sylar's voice is a quiet call from further along the wall.

Peter steps back out of the third room, heads towards Sylar, who tips his body sideways to let Peter through.

This room isn't empty.

There's a boy, no more than six or seven sprawled on the floor.

His skin is grey and papery, eyes milky white and staring. He's lying like he's just this moment tumbled to the floor, inches from the glass.

The stench of death is dry and vile inside the air conditioned room.

The boy has been dead for a while.

On the other side of the wall-

On the other side of the wall is the boy's twin, small hands pressed against the glass, he's staring at the corpse of his brother.

Peter heads back out of the cell, lays his palms against the cell's counterpart and shoves until it opens.

"Peter!"

"No," Peter says, whatever Sylar's going to say, the answer is no. "I'm not leaving him, even if I have to drag him all the way."

Peter steps inside and reaches a hand out, moves to catch one tiny pale wrist.

The moment his fingers touch skin the boy ceases to exist, he just collapses into fine ash.

Peter slams back into Sylar on a noise of horror; Sylar grunts and steadies them both.

The ash floats in the air and across the floor, then disappears entirely.

"Jesus," Peter says in a voice that's shot to pieces.

His hand skids down Sylar's arm, trying to back up without moving.

"It wasn't a twin," he says breathlessly.

He stares through the glass at the body on the other side.

"It wasn't a twin." He's shaking and he can't breathe.

Sylar catches his arms and very slowly backs them out of the cell.

"Don't you dare tell me that didn't-"

"It did," Sylar says quietly and his fingers tighten on Peter's arms. "Come on."

The cells eventually end in a staircase. Three flights up and they meet no one else. Arriving at a pale door with nothing on it but a smooth, pale handle.

But Peter has already spotted the security camera at the top of the stairs, facing them both.

He catches Sylar's bloody wrist and tugs him away from the door.

Seconds later the wood is shredded to pieces by an explosion of gunfire.

"I don't think they want us to leave," Sylar says dryly when the noise cuts out.

The wood from the door continues to sprinkle down, it's canted on one hinge now, leaving it leaning and creaking in the silence.

Peter tears it off its hinges and sends it flying down the corridor, a hurtling crooked, ragged mess of wood and torn metal. There's nowhere to run and the sound of bodies and equipment hitting the walls and falling is louder than it has any right to be.

Until all that's between them and the door is bodies.

Peter can't drag up any mercy for anyone who wants to put him back in the cell.

Halfway through the wreck Sylar catches his wrist and pulls it back and round. Peter doesn't resist and when he see a flash of shifting uniform and the skid of a gun across tile he throws out an arc of electricity without even having to think.

Sylar holds his wrist for a second longer than he has to, then very slowly lets it fall out of his hand.

The outer door isn't even locked.

Peter shoves it hard enough that it judders the last two feet and bangs on the wall.

It's night and the air outside is cold and sharp. Peter stops under a quick, wild gust of wind.

Sylar stops beside him, staring into the darkness.

Peter has never been so glad to be outside in his life. He turns sharply in the dirt before he changes his mind.

He wrenches the handles on the doors until they're a twisted curve of metal.

No one is leaving the burning building behind them.

Sylar doesn't say a word, just watches him.

"What are you going to do now?" He asks at last, and his voice is different outside, deeper, wilder, it's more the voice Peter remembers.

Though he isn't afraid of it anymore.

"I'm going to find my brother, wherever he is, and then I'm going to find out who killed him, or ordered him killed, who wanted him dead."

"And then what are you going to do."

"What would you do?"

Sylar concedes the point.

"But you're not me," he says quietly.

"I think I'm still trying to work out who I am."

A window cracks behind them, flames unfurling and licking out into the night.

"You could come with me," Peter says carefully. "If you want."

Sylar frowns at him, somewhere between surprise and honest curiosity.

"Now why would I do that?"

The wind tugs at the edge of Peter's t-shirt.

"Because you don't want to kill everyone. Because I know who you are and what you want now."

Sylar's jaw twitches but he says nothing.

Peter shrugs helplessly.

"And because I want you to." Peter doesn't know it's going to come out until it's already said.

The honesty gets him the strangest look of all, something that's briefly naked and conflicted before Sylar looks off into the wind and doesn't look back until his face is flat and serious again.

"Why?"

"Maybe I'm doing it because you're too dangerous to leave on your own."

"You're not," Sylar says simply.

Peter shrugs but doesn't try and deny it.

"Come with me," he says again, more insistently this time, and the edge of Sylar's mouth tilts up.

"You'll have your powers back soon," Peter reminds him. "I can't make you come. I can't make you do anything."

There's a quick, brief smile at the statement, as if Sylar thinks differently, and then Sylar's hand flattens in the middle of his chest, warm and hard through the thin material of his t-shirt.

"We could fight?" He suggests, though Peter doesn't detect any enthusiasm under the words.

He wraps his hand round Sylar's wrist, but doesn't try and tug it away. Sylar's eyes drop briefly to his fingers.

"Ask me again," Sylar's voice is flat, careful.

"Come with me," Peter says without hesitation.

"People will die," Sylar says quietly, it's a promise, an honest truth and an opportunity that Peter never expected to be given. An opportunity to change his mind.

Peter doesn't take it.

They leave the compound to burn.