Sylar - Gabriel Gray

Characters: Gabriel, Hiro, Molly mentions of Parkman
Fandom: Heroes
Rating: R
Word Count: 677
Prompt: 16/100 #60 Drink 100heroesfics Anna: This girl hurt your vanity... she didn't hurt your heart! You have no heart! You've never loved anyone and you never will. scifi_muses
Notes: Crackfic - AU verse created by @futurepurfect on Twitter. A different Sylar, from a very different AU world. Set 16 in the future.

Time in a Bottle

He’d slipped through my fingers so many times over the years. He was like trying to capture a thought or a memory in the blink of an eye. But after finally getting my hands on Matt Parkman, I could do just that. I could read thoughts. I could create a reality in someone’s head so real that they’d live out their lives in there while their bodies died of starvation.

With Molly Parkman’s blood still slick on my fingers, I thought about Hiro Nakamura. I didn’t need a map like Molly did. I could see where the time traveler was as he sipped sake in a Tokyo bar. She’d have been able to do so much more with her ability if she’d tried. So few of them ever tried to learn how to use what they were given. I never made that mistake.

I’d let Hiro go. He was no threat to me. Keeping out of my way over the years, but when he’d taken her from me he’d torn open an old wound. Rubbing my thumb over the scar on my chest, I remembered the pain of his katana slicing through my chest and out my back. It still irked me seventeen years later that he’d managed to survive me flinging him into that building.

Claire Bennet. My Claire. Taken from me once again, but not by my fucking brother, Peter. This time she’d been stolen out of my time by Hiro’s interference. When I thought about her, I saw nothing. She was gone from my reality, and I would have her back. I didn’t spend so many years killing everyone she loved or would come to love just to have her escape to another time and place.

Flying fast enough to leave a sonic boom in my wake, I flashed across the sky to Japan. Hiro was finishing the last sip of sake when I appeared behind him. I grabbed him around the neck with my hands and my power, crushing his wind pipe, the pain would stop him from using his power. Three men in the bar tried to stop me. With a wave of my hand they spontaneously combusted crumbling ash too quickly for them to scream.

Holding Hiro by the collar, I dragged him into a corner while everyone else in the bar ran out screaming. His eyes were watering from the pain and his face was turning red as he tried to breathe. Focusing on his mind, I filled it with images of his past, leaving him in a dream with his mother until he stopped struggling.

“Where’s Claire, Hiro?” His mother asked him in his mind. “We need to find her.”

“Otasa she is in the past.” Little boy Hiro beamed with pride. “I saved her from the bad man. Saved her from Sylar.”

“That’s right,” she said, running her fingers through his hair. “Where did you take her, Hiro? Show me where you took her.”

The images opened in his mind. I saw them together, near where her house had once stood in Texas. The wind was blowing her long hair away from her beautiful face. Hiro was wearing his ninja outfit with his katana on his back like the man I had pinned to the floor at my feet.

“I need to fix my mistake. Take me back, Hiro. Please.”

Whatever, I didn’t need to hear the words. Didn’t need to hear her beg him to let her save her family from me when it’s her fault they’re all dead. All she had to do was love me the way I loved her. It would have been simple. But nothing is ever simple with that bitch. They blinked out of time, and suddenly she was standing in the past. I knew where she’d gone.

Hiro was still smiling about his mother when I cut open his head. After all these years, I could finally take that glorious power from him. With it I would find my Claire, and I would make her so very sorry for leaving me.