Brother Vs Brother - Sylar and Gabriel

[thewatchmaker]

Character: Sylar and Gabriel
Fandom: Heroes
Word count: 1080
Rating: R lots of violence and gore
Notes: AU future 'verse where Gabriel and Sylar both exist.
I posted this before as part of a shared fic that never happened.
Prompt: Dr. Ian Malcolm: The lack of humility before nature that's being displayed here, uh... staggers me. for scifi_muses



Each bullet tore out a bit of flesh, tearing me apart piece by piece. A hail of them showering down on me like a rain of fire. The trap had been set. They knew the one chink in my armor, the one thing I cared enough about to come out into the open. They had my brother, and I wanted him.

I wanted him dead.

Brother will kill brother. Friends no more, family meant nothing to either of us. The Earth would be our prize. The need for more and more power had driven us both mad at long last.

They didn’t care which of us they were shooting. They wanted us both dead. The pain made it nearly impossible to focus my power. There were simply too many of them, and every time I took my attention from Gabriel he’d get a strike of his own through. My hair was already burned away, as was his. Half of his face was gone, melted by the fire I’d called into my hands.

I screamed as a shard of broken glass flew into my eye, barely able to focus my power to keep it from going deep enough to reach my brain. Lunging forward, I threw myself on top of him. I had to fight his teeth and the charge of electricity he sent through me, as I tried to get a grip on his throat. His skin was slick with his blood and mine. I screamed as the lightning ripped its way over my nerves and scorched my skin. All I could smell was blood and the stink of burning hair and skin.

He howled in pain with me as my fingers dug into his neck. I called what power I could. I was so tired, wearing out from my body trying to regenerate all the damage being done to it by the army and by Gabriel. His hand clamped around other parts of me, reminding me what a dirty fighter he could be. The pain nearly made me black out, but not before I tore his ear off with my teeth.

Then the bullets stopped. Time slowing down around us, it didn’t come to a dead stop. We were both too powerful for that, but it meant another player had joined the fun and games. I glanced over my shoulder at the only person I hated more than Gabriel.

“Peter!” My lips curled back from my teeth. He never could beat me. He sure as shit couldn’t beat the two us fighting together, but with us fighting each other we were vulnerable. Gabriel’s hand clamped on my wrist, and his eyes, so dark and filled with the fires of madness locked with mine. For a moment I thought he’d stop fighting me, that we’d be partners again, but he just smiled.

“I’d say I was sorry, Sylar, but I’m not.” He whispered and smiled over at Peter. “Do it.”

***
He betrayed me. Hatred, the lust for more power I understood, but this betrayal I couldn’t. Even though we’d turned against each other, I’d hoped in the end if someone came for me that Gabriel would be at my side. I can’t blame him though. I’d probably have done the same thing after all.

So it made me smile as they locked me in the box, because I watched them doing the same thing to him. My abilities had been burned out. Too much damage done to my body to fight back, and I was so fucking weak. Gabriel was out, his flesh only now starting to show any signs of regenerating. Through it all, I could feel the nullification ability that Peter had used to stop us smothering me like a noxious fog.

I screamed when they shoved the first tube through me. Sharpened on one end, they drove the gleaming steel tube through my guts, twisting, pushing and shoving to make sure it hurt more until it came out the other side. The guard smiled as he wiggled it in place until it sank into the socket on the other side, pinning me in place.

They laughed when they did the same thing to my wrists and ankles. Each rod designed to cause me too much pain to be able to focus, keeping my body busy while it tried to regenerate. I blacked out when they drove another through my chest, so close to where Hiro ran me through. When I jerked awake, I could feel the pool of my blood getting deeper and deeper in the box.

I held my breath when Peter came to lean over me, holding up a thinner rod. This one had another purpose. It would go through my brain. This one would keep me dead. I opened my mouth, willing to plead. I was afraid. I was losing my sanity to the pain. He smiled as he shoved it into my mouth with all his strength, and I howled as it splintered the back of my skull.

“Bet you thought that was going for the sweet spot, didn’t you, Sylar?” He chuckled as it picked up another even thinner spike. Peter leaned over, his breath hot on my face as he shoved it into my eye and out tearing up so much of my brain, that I couldn’t register the pain or blindness as the blood and ocular fluid ran down my cheek into my ear. “They think I’m going to kill you, but I’m not. You’re going to be locked up like this, in a living death for eternity. Never able to heal the damage. Unable to think for the pain. You’ll be foaming at the mouth until the end of time.”

He took my other eye then. I could hear Gabriel’s muffled screams as he got the same treatment as me. Blind, insane with pain and rage, I was helpless as the sealed the box shut.

I remember it now in dreams and nightmares. A constant maelstrom of my past, my deeds, and my victories played in my mind, until I lost the ability to judge reality from insanity.

I have no hope. I have only darkness and pain.

How long have I been trapped in this nightmare? I don’t know.

I can’t feel beyond the burning in my nerves. Each time I reawaken I wonder if it is the last.

I cling to the one constant.

The one thing that I will not let go.

I am Sylar.