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[The way Sylar is behaving is honestly worrying. He can feel his shoulder muscles tense and the muscles of his jaw click in his ears. His mouth is dry, and dries further as Sylar stretches out.]

Innocent...?

[There's a sadness in Peter's eyes that he can not hide. You don't explode and stay the dreamer you used to be.]

Sylar, you tried to kill me. I'm not sure if I'd believe you if you wanted to save anything. [He does manage not to roll his eyes.]

The last time I looked, your thing was murder.

Edited 2021-01-31 00:07 (UTC)

( He winces, and closes his eyes; there's a twinge by his lips, a furrowing of his brow. Empathy meeting empathy. It's doubly hurtful. )

That's in my distant past. By some handful of years now.

( Not that it really made things any better. )

I'm a better person now. ( His eyes open and he raises his hand from his stomach, tracing a line in the air. ) Timelines are flexible, and so is the distance between 'friends' and 'enemies'. We're neither in the future. Somewhere in those shades of gray, that's where we wind up.

[Empathy is a drag sometimes. Peter doesn't want to believe it's true that a person like Sylar could change, but he feels it just the same. It's heavier to breathe, heavier to move, and his head is swimming. Part of that is out of anger. Part of it is simple confusion.]

Who...is 'we?'

[He shifts from side to side and finally takes a seat on the edge of the roof wall. He's not getting too close.]

The two of us. You and I.

( There's no power for the empathy to soak up. They're mirrored versions of the other. Peter already knew his telekinesis. The intuitive aptitude, the addiction that came with it? That would require some tutelage. He wouldn't give it to his worst enemy.

He makes now move towards Peter. His hand falls back to his torso, and he's content to just watch him. )

Do me a favor? Calm down. We're more alike than you think, Peter. It's better for the both of us if you don't let your emotions soar too high.

[His first thought? Deny, deny, deny. Peter opens his mouth and then shuts it again. It would do absolutely no good to argue with this particular version of Sylar, mostly because Peter has already accepted that this is a version and not the man he faced at Kirby Plaza not too long ago.]

Just so you know, comparing the two of us like that doesn't make me want to calm down.

[Actually, not a lot of things do. Nathan is horribly burned just for trying to keep him from killing people. His mother... Peter leans forward, hands on his knees, his arms stiff and unbending.]

If we aren't friends whenever you're from, why did you come here? I don't buy this Innocent Time And Place bull.

( Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, for Peter, mind reading is still a power Sylar lacks. The burns aren't part of his collected memories. )

I won't apologize for speaking the truth. We are alike. That thing you can do, acting as a power sponge? I can do it too. Always could, just didn't know about it until... someone showed me what I was capable of.

( He sits up but doesn't move any closer. From his fingertips, he generates a tiny ball of sparkling energy. He bounces and rolls it across his fingertips as one might a coin. )

Mine isn't exactly the same. But it's... close enough.

Neat trick.

[Peter doesn’t know Elle Bishop and he doesn’t recognize the ability Sylar uses. His path has evidently diverged a bit from Sylar’s original one, and that is likely one of the reasons why the other is here to begin with. A more innocent time, after all, has precluded that Peter would not yet have grown so hard. He’d taken a different route after he’d nearly blown up the city, struggling to remain alone and to try and keep people safe by keeping apart from them.]

Are you... are you telling me that you can mimic someone else? What was the whole brain scramble thing about then?

[Its like asking someone as a kid how mankind first discovered the ability to drink cow’s milk, or how to process sugar. The techniques and happenstances occur through ingenuity and then are refined over time. Sylar, evidently, is no different. Peter could confirm that if he wanted to, but mind reading is not a skill he’s often used and it does not come as naturally as some others.]

( Sylar smiles sadly. He knows the answer, he had to learn it in a burned down diner not too long ago. Stuck with repressed memories and a kid with too much idol worship. Not the best way to learn your father murdered your mother right in front of you after selling you off like a used car.

Not that he's about to tell any of that to Peter. He flicks away the electric coin and watches it fall over the side of the roof. Its size was already diminishing before it went out of sight. It disappeared entirely before it passed Peter's window. )

My first power was empathy. Like yours. The aptitude, the ah, able to read brains... thing? ( He twirls his finger by his head. ) That came after I witnessed an unfortunate incident. It stuck, empathy was buried. Right up until it wasn't.

I could get technical, but that's the gist. Funny thing is, we cancel each other out. What powers are you carrying these days, I wonder?

That’s what you mean, huh? That we’re alike? [He watches the spark, both out of curiosity and to make sure it doesn’t hurt anyone.]

[Peter wants to be skeptical but until recently, it hadn’t been his normal course of action in life. He has no idea who Sylar is as a person, just that he’d tried to, and sometimes succeeded, in hurting his friends and family. Forgiveness, however, comes more easily to the other man than it should. Being a Petrelli has foisted that on him. A capacity to forgive is the only way to survive in a family of sharks and liars.]

It never felt like we canceled each other out.

[He doesn’t have nightmares about being dead, though he imagines sometimes that he should. It had been traumatic for the people around him, though. His dreams as a whole have been off. They consist of mostly loneliness and sadness; feelings and not images.]

Aren’t we a little old to play show me yours and I’ll show you mine?

( Somehow he just knew Peter would be overly concerned with the people below. Lawful Good, always out to be the hero. Right up until he wasn't, when Sylar made him into the very thing he hated. He never did find out what happened to Kirby Plaza after the Company carted him away, he suddenly realizes. Obviously it didn't blow up, and obviously Peter was still fine. But, how...? )

I just had ice cream with oreos. Some things you just never grow out of.

( Never felt like we canceled each other out. No, it didn't. Funny how that works, isn't it? If he activated one of his abilities, Peter could learn the history of multiple timelines. And everything he touched. That was a bit of a curse. )

Quid pro quo is a classic, Peter. Gotta give me that at least. Y'know what, I'll do you one better. Tell me what happened after Kirby Plaza. And I'll tell you how I didn't die.

[If Sylar travels through time, or visits various timelines for fun (Peter will let it sink in that it seems to be his Fate in the future, too), the fact that he doesn’t know what happened is a little surprising. Of course, things might change if timelines are involved. Peter’s read enough comics to know the dangers of that... and he’s been visited by enough accent dropping Japanese men from the future to understand that changing the past might not really change the future at all for the traveler. He can’t help but be a little more excited than wary. At heart, he still has his wonder.]

Uh. [He clears his throat. And partially wishes he had some ice cream too.]. The exploding man? That was me.

[There’s pain at the edges of his voice even if he is very, very clearly trying not to let it become noticeable. In a way, all it does is highlight it. He fights with his expression the same way.]

I was overwhelmed. Juggling too many abilities was bad enough, but Ted’s unstable one... I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. My brother kept me from killing everyone. I exploded over Manhattan and he’s paying the price for it. That’s why I’m here. I can’t hurt anyone else this way.

( Sylar may be attempting to turn over a new life, trying to be polite, but neither will stop him from rolling his eyes when Peter says who the exploding man was. He bites back the retort of 'yes, obviously and listens to the rest.

What he says about Nathan gets his attention the most. His eyes narrow at that. Peter had said 'paying the price' but not 'paid'. Still alive, then. Still a chance he might play the hero. His lips quirk at the corners but stop short of becoming a smile. Tuck that ace away.

Which begs the question how Nathan survived in the initial timeline. None of the items in his office told this particular story. Wouldn't know why...

Ah, but it is his turn, after all. )

Someone from the Company decided I was too valuable to die. Little...Miss...Illusionist. Well, not so little, in the end, but you catch my meaning. Hiro left a scar. ( Sylar traces over the spot above his shirt. ) Made me the Company's experiment for a while, too...

( He finally does smile, glancing over at Peter. )

But that's getting too deep into things you can't know about yet.

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