Kereia's Journal

Fic: Do You Want To Be My Superman? - (Gabriel/OFC) - NC-17

2007-08-29T04:37:02Z

Title: Do you Want To Be My Superman?
Author: </a></a>kereia
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Gabriel Gray/anonymous OFC
Summary: She hadn’t meant to kiss him. She'd only come here to pick up a pocket watch.
Word Count: 1765
Warnings: Pre-Series, PWP
Spoilers: Up to 01x10 “Six Months Earlier”
Disclaimer: Heroes belongs to Tim Kring and NBC. I’m just borrowing.
Prompt: #3 “Dream” </a></a>heroes50

Author’s Note: I blame this in its entirety on not enough sleep and too much caffein and sugar. I did leave the OFC vague enough for you to substitute whoever you want, though.

A whole basket of virtual chocolate cookies to my beta </a></a>drunken_hedghog, who trudged through this for me, even though second person fic isn’t her cup of tea. Thank you!

Do You Want To Be My Superman?

You stand in front of the mirror and catch yourself checking your make-up for the hundredth time, smoothing down your top and scrutinizing your hair, which is when you realize that you are actually nervous.

A part of you is annoyed by that, because you’re only picking up a god damn pocket watch for your grandfather’s birthday. This isn’t some grand event, which needs preparation or a lot of attention to detail.

An hour later you enter Gray & Sons, bells tinkling as the door bangs into them and the claustrophobic atmosphere of the shop only adds to your anxiety.

The blinds along the front windows are half-closed, cutting off most of the brutal August sun. You can see dust particles dancing inside orange sunbeams, stirred by the circulation from the air condition. Despite that, the heat is stifling, and sweat is already collecting on your brow and in the hollow of your throat.

Your eyes fall upon the lanky figure of Mr. Gray, hunched over his magnifying glass, and you marvel how that man can bear to wear a vest above his shirt, while sitting inside this furnace without showing any visible discomfort.

He looks up, polite curiosity in his gaze, and you manage a wobbly smile, stammer a greeting and suppress the urge to extend your hand to him, because your palms are already damp and you’ve only been here for thirty seconds.

You explain to him that you are here to pick up the watch you commissioned and he makes a show trying to remember, and for a second you feel crushed, stomach free-falling to your knees and cold replacing the heat on your skin. And you think that it isn’t fair for him to haunt your dreams since the last time you’ve been here, while you apparently failed to make any impression whatsoever.

But then he gets up, walks over to the colossal assembly of drawers against the back wall, opens one of them to retrieve your watch, and all the while he recounts every detail you specified. And when he turns back towards you there is the barest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and you realize that he was teasing you.

In response, a huge, completely disproportionate smile brakes onto your face and he quickly averts his eyes, leaving you confused as to whether he is just shy or you’ve completely misinterpreted the signals here.

And then you wonder what he was talking about five seconds ago, because judging from the look on his face it was kind of important and you’re making an idiot out of yourself, staring at those full, soft lips and wondering how they would feel against your skin.

Demurely, you pay for the watch, reminding yourself that this is just another business transaction, the kind you handle every day; so there really isn’t any reason for your heart to drum away so wildly in your chest that you are sure he can hear it.

He offers the watch to you and as you pick it up your hands touch and as if that was an unspoken signal your eyes meet. Almost instantly his gaze drops away from yours again, but this time you’re sure.

He likes you.

You take in his appearance, the dark, severely combed hair that’s begging to be tousled, the glasses, the layers of clothes; he looks really cute in that nerdy-Clark-Kent way, which leads you to contemplate if ‘Do you want to be my superman?’ would be too cheesy as a pick-up line, but you already know that you’d never be able to say those words out loud anyway.

He smiles hesitantly, probably wondering why you’re still standing there as if nailed to the floor; and because you never do anything half-way, you might as well make a complete fool of yourself before you lose your nerve.

So you kiss him.

His body freezes in surprise and the voice of reason in the back of your mind finally makes itself heard. Only it’s, as usual, two minutes too late, which doesn’t deter it from pointing out, that if a complete stranger kissed you out of the blue, he would have earned himself a slap in the face. If you were in a charitable mood.

You are about to pull back, embarrassment heating your face, when his body suddenly leans into yours and his hands are in your hair, fingertips pressing tightly against your skull.

His mouth is warm and soft as it urgently moves against yours, his tongue brushing with velvet wetness against your opened lips, before snaking in between to explore the cavern beyond.

He tastes of summer rain and breath mints. Breath mints for heaven’s sake! The taste of which has no business to make your knees weak.

Your fingers claw into the fabric of his shirt, as your tongues slide against each other, and there is a rawness to this kiss which makes you light-headed. His hands start to wander, briefly framing your neck, thumbs whispering against the hollow in your throat, before they descend to your shoulders and along your upper arms, his fingertips barely brushing against the side of your breasts.

In the meantime your hands are not idle either and unbutton his vest, as his mouth leaves yours to fasten on the sensitive flesh behind your ear, his teeth scraping teasingly against your skin, eliciting your whimpered encouragement.

You divest him of his shirt, exposing pale skin, dark, curly hair dusting his pectorals, which invite you to scrape your fingernails across it. He growls low in his throat, as your nails catch on his hardened nipples.

Then he grabs you around the waist and hauls you onto the workbench. One hand presses against your back as he insinuates his hips between your thighs, while the other runs up the sweat-slicked skin of your leg, pushing up the edge of your skirt.

It’s at this point that you really can’t believe that ‘reserved’ was term you ever applied to him.

The voice in your head adopts a slightly hysterical note as it points out that you are about have sex with someone whose first name you don’t even know, in the middle of a store that is open to the public.

Then his lips wander down your neck to your throat, and you stop listening. You can’t even feel any surprise that the possibility of a customer walking in on you excites, rather than terrifies.

His mouth continues its descending path towards your cleavage and you arch your back as his hand pushes underneath your top to unfasten your bra. As his tongue snakes out between his lips to collect the salty moisture collecting between your breasts, he quickly pulls your garments off your upper body, leaving your skin only long enough to allow the fabric’s passage.

His mouth teases you, trailing between your soft mounds to your navel, pushing you further down onto the paper strewn wood. Your fingernails dig into his shoulders, the muscles lean, but firm beneath your touch. When his tongue dips into your navel, his hands find their way underneath your skirt again, traveling to the waistbands before his left hand suddenly twists, slips beneath your panties and into the soaking heat beyond.

He pushes first one, then two fingers inside of you, and that’s enough to make you cry out. Heat rushes through your body, spreading in waves through your abdomen, upwards, until they reach the sensitive nerve endings in your nipples, which you’re begging him to touch.

He laughs quietly against your stomach, while his fingers work his magic inside of you, scissoring and twisting, pushing deep, deep down to curl against that hidden place that makes you writhe against him, breath harsh and shallow, muscles contracting to keep him there.

Your hands tangle in his hair, pulling his face up and he complies only to crush his mouth against yours once again, and the one thing that you and that neurotic twit Bridget Jones ever agreed on is that good guys don’t kiss like that.

His body slides against your own, coarse chest hair rubbing deliciously against your breasts. His free hand skims along your side, the motion reversing at your hips to press upwards, until his palm cups your supple mound, his thumb trailing lazy circles around the hard peak in its center.

As you tongues duel, fast and urgently, you can feel his hips grind against yours, feel the hardness of his member press against your soft flesh and you can’t wait any longer.

Your hands reach feverishly for the fastening of his pants, button popping as you wrest it open. Your hands thrust between the fabric, seeking skin, and heat, and velvet, and when you find it, your palm sliding slowly down the pulsing length, he tears his mouth from yours and moans into your neck. His hand abandons your wanton body, to wrap around your underwear and tear it off, the restraining fabric biting into your skin.

They he raises his head to look into your eyes and as you push his remaining clothes down his legs, you become aware of a low chirping noise. Irritated, your eyes search for its source, but before you can find it he moves back against you, his throbbing cock pressing intimately into your folds, your liquid arousal coating his hardness.

You forget to breathe, your head falls back as you arch your back, reach between your bodies and gently guide him to your opening. His hands grasp your hips again, as the chirping becomes more insistent, once again demanding your attention. You try to ignore it, try to focus on the sensations in your abdomen, the feel of his skin, the brush of his breath against you breast, but it won’t go away.

You determine that the sound comes from your right and with a heavy arm you swipe at anything within your reach.

A muffled thunk accompanies the alarm clock’s impact on the carpet of your bedroom floor.

Blinking against the early morning sunlight, you rise up, your eyes falling on your flushed, reddened face looking back at you from the wardrobe mirror. With a frustrated groan you realize that you’ve been dreaming and flop back onto your pillow, erotic visions fading in the bright light of dawn.

You’re not sure how you will be able to face him today when you have to pick up that watch, but you have a feeling that you’ll find something to dress for the occasion.

The End

On Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

2007-08-29T04:36:23Z

So when I read the latest HP book over the weekend, I was pretty much blissed out with excitement. And initially I loved it without reservation, except for that one thing at the end, which a lot of people apparently disliked as well, so you know what I’m talking about.

Then I spend the next few days thinking about the book, the conclusion, the ten years that I spent reading fanfic and loving this crazy, loopy, fascinating world, and I decided to write some of it down. At least the part that concerns the last book.

Massive spoilers ahead!

And I was quiet surprised that apparently I like to nit-pick quiet a bit more than I’d anticipated.

I think Deathly Hallows is the first novel in the series that doesn’t lend itself to the one book = one year format. Due to the need to stretch out the trio’s search for the remaining Horcruxes over such a long amount of time, the descriptions of spending months at a time doing nothing but debate the Horcruxes’s possible hiding places stalls the narrative and the scarce information of what is happening in the wizard world can’t compensate the ensuing lag.

Thankfully, these stretches of inactivity are interrupted by visits to Godric’s Hollow and Luna’s father, and from the time the trio is apprehended and taken to Malfoy Manner the story moves at a crisp pace and kept me enthralled till the end.

After HPB speculations about Dumbledore’s death were plenty and varied and I was in the camp that thought Dumbledore had planned his death at Snape’s hand since he had learned of the task of his assassination falling to Draco. I’m glad that DH proved this theory, because I would have been upset if Snape had turned out to be a Death Eater after all. I would have been thrilled, if he had worked towards fulfilling an agenda of his own instead of working only for Dumblesore, but Voldemort’s puppet? No way.

I really like the way Snapes relationship with Lily is portrayed in the DH. From the early days, when he is spying on her, giving their meetings a bit of a creepy atmosphere, which is completely in character with the Snape I know and love, to their shaky friendship later on, with Lily the only Muggle-born exception, in Snape’s otherwise black and white world of wizard-heritage-above-all-else.

The only thing I would have wished for, was that Snape’s decision to cross over to the side of the angels, had been motivated by more than just his love for Lily and the guilt he had felt due to his involvement in her death. It’s fine if that was his initial motivation, I just whished JKR had given us some hint that his fundamental attitude towards Voldemort’s goals had changed somewhere along the way. She doesn’t explicitly state that it hasn’t, but I would have loved to hear more about Snape’s change from DE to spy. But I have to admit that he was my favourite character and I would have gladly read Severus Snape and the Deathly Hallows, instead, so I’m glad he had a whole chapter dedicated to him.

The redemptions of Percy and Kreacher. I love the idea and I think their reasons for “coming around”were well thought out, though I would have liked to see more time spent, particularly on Kreacher, though I’m happy that Hermione’s S.P.E.W. obsession was finally vindicated.

Dudley about turn on the other hand felt forced. Again I like the idea, but this wasn’t even hinted at before and he goes from ignorant bully, to reluctant gratitude in two seconds flat. It’s one of the things that made this book to sugary for my taste, when added to the epilogue, Harry’s survival and Percy and Kreacher’s redemption.

On the other hand I am very impressed that JKR wasn’t afraid to show that Dumbledore, for all his greatness, power and wisdom, wasn’t a perfect , all-knowing saint. She didn’t hesitate to make him unsympathetic and manipulative. I was fascinated by his admission that he felt he could not be trusted with power because he had let it get to his head in his youth. It makes Dumbledore human and three-dimensional, especially when those characteristics (being secretive and manipulative, nice parallel to Voldy) accompanied him to his dying day. There were hints strewn throughout the series, but till DH, they’d always been overshadowed by Harry’s POV.

Harry as a Horcrux. Now I will admit that I was hoping this wouldn’t happen. I had two theories going into DH about this. Either Harry is a Horcrux and he dies, or he is not a Horcrux and he lives. And as much as I love the book and the series as a whole, I think that having Harry be a Horcrux and survive is a cop out.

I might be able to buy that by the time Voldemort attacks Harry’s family at Godric’s Hollow, his soul has become so unstable that the rebounding AK fractures it even more and binds it to Harry, in spite of the dark and complicated magic, that it would normally take to create a proper Horcrux. But to make it explicit how difficult it is to destroy a Horcrux and that it is imperative that the vessel that houses the fractured soul must be destroyed as well. And then have Harry survive another AK and just be freed of the part of soul that had lived within him, while his body remains unharmed. No, sorry, but no.

I know there are plenty of ways to fanwank this, but I if Harry had to be a Horcrux I would have preferred him to die in the clearing, his sacrifice protecting the fighter’s back at Hogwarts, the way his mother’s did him. (I loved the brief allusion to that, when Voldemort’s spells stopped working the way they were supposed to.) Then have Ron, Hermione and the remaining wizard/centaur/house-elf community rise up against Voldemort and his DE.

Another reason why I didn’t want him to be one is that I wanted to see a showdown between him and Voldemort, where Harry kicks his snaky ass.

The wand lore was interesting, but this is the one thing that could have used more build-up in the previous books. Not about the Elder Wand specifically, but the general concept of how wands are passed on/won and generally important. I know it was touched on briefly in the preceding books, about ‘the wand choosing the wizard’ and goblin’s being upset about not being allowed to learn wand lore, b ut the endless explanation during Harry’s fight with Voldemort were distracting and made the fight itself disappointing for me.

That said the fight at Hogwarts, teachers, students et al, against the DE was awesome! McGonagall duelling Snape and rallying desks into a stampede. Trelawney fighting! With crystall balls. The biggest surprise for me was Molly Weasley though.

For one thing I had always thought of her as a bit overbearing and at times even annoying mom, and (here I have to admit that I was a bit of an idiot) with the rumours flying around that there was a mole in the Order, I thought Molly had been put under the Imperius when she gave Harry that watch as a birthday present. I thought the watch had some kind of spell on it so that Harry’s whereabouts could be traced, a theory that crumbled once the Taboo was introduced.

But I would have never, never, picked Molly as the one to obliterate Bellatrix’s ass! “Not my daughter, you bitch!” was perhaps my favourite line in the whole book. I had hoped that Neville would be the one to take down Bellatrix, but boy, he got his moment when he killed Nagini. I was so, so proud of him, and I feel a bit ridiculous to be proud of a fictional character, but gave laud exclamation of “Go, Neville!”, when I read that, complete with silly smile and fist pump in the air.

The one joke that had me in stitches though, because it came out of left field was early on when Ron describes the value of his birthday present to Harry. “It’s not all about wand work, either!” Great line. Very sneaky, JKR.

I have this twisted love-hate relationship with the Malfoy family. I love that in the end, Narcissa and Lucius put their family above their allegiance to Voldemort, even going so far as to lie to his red-eyed face. I’m not a fan of black and white divisions and they are a refreshing shade of grey.

Speaking of which, I was really disappointed that after all this talk about standing united and whatnot, not a single Slytherin student stayed behind to fight. And I’ll admit that I am completely biassed in this, because I always held the qualities attributed to Slytherin as the once who could be used to the greatest effect, next to Hufflepuff, because I think that ambition, strategical thinking, and a knack of figuring out how people tick, as well as hard work with which to acquire skills and knowledge are more varied then the intelligence attributed to Rawenclaws and the bravery of Gryffindors.

I know that JKR and I disagree completely on this point, (as I’m sure many of you do) and they are her books, so sticks and stones and all that, but I was hoping for a little more shades of grey for Slytherin house.

The Slytherin who became a bit ambiguous, and his journey throughout the last two books, was handled very well, was Draco. He started to realize what a mess he’d gotten himself in when he was tasked with Dumbledore’s murder, and from that moment on he steadily changed from the one-dimensional bully he had been in the earlier books. I didn’t anticipate him working for the Order or even actively helping Harry, that would have been too much, but I loved his subtle resistance, when he tried not to confirm the trio’s identities at the mansion, and the only thing that I like about the ill-advised epilogue is the nod of reluctant respect between adult!Harry and adult!Malfoy.

However, that epilogue was a really, really bad idea. I don’t even like Albus Severus because I can’t buy that Harry’s feelings towards Snape would ever turn from utter hatred to fond understanding. But that’s really just a minor point. The reason I don’t like the epilogue is because it is so utterly irrelevant (and not to mention nauseatingly sappy) in the review of the series. Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione has been set up over the past books and the story has never been about the romance. ( I did however love the scene leading up to and revolving around Ron and Hermione’s first kiss. So cute and funny, without crossing over to candy fluff.)

Where is the insight about what happened in the wizard world? Who is Minister of Magic? Has the ministry changed its stance on wand lore being knowledge that should remain exclusive to wizards. Are they recognizing the centaurs, goblins and merepeople as intelligent, sentient races, that should no longer be shunned to the edges of society? What happened to the remaining Death Eaters? Are the house-elves being liberated, paid wages, treated humanely when they chose to offer their services? What happened to the Weasleys?

There are a dozen more questions that I would have liked an answer to (If JKR absolutely insisted on an epilogue, I would have much more preferred a completely open ending.) and instead I have to read, what I already know would happen, because who will end up with whom has been telegraphed well ahead of the series’s conclusion. So disappointing, especially because it was unnecessary. DH could have stood well on it’s own, without an epilogue. I could have lived with JKR not answering any questions, the more to be explored with fanfiction. But if she absolutely wanted to write one, why not place it a year in the future and address the important issues that the series juggled with, the core of what I thought this story was about?

Going into DH, I knew I had to expect the deaths of quiet a few characters, and with Dobby, Fred, Remus, Tonks, and Snape it caught pretty much all of my favourites. Surprisingly, for me at least, I’m not upset about that. I didn’t have Hedwig or Mad-Eye on my list, or Remus and Tonks, on the other hand I though Hagrid was a goner for sure. However, I called Snape, Dobby and one of the twins before I started reading the book. I’m mourning Remus and Tonks the most, because they were unexpected and I shipped them like crazy, and I am disappointed that they were barely in the book at all, leaving tons of potential unexplored, but I realize that with all the plot points and character arcs that needed to come together in this book, it must have been difficult to linger on them.

Reviewing this, I realize that I’m complaining about quiet a few things. I did love the book and I plan on rereading it as soon as I can, for what I’m sure won’t be the last time. The last third of the book kept me at the edge of my seat, turning pages without any breaks for food or drink. It was fast-paced and exiting. And I loved the details of the wedding preparation, Dumbledore’s will and Scrimgeour’s last visit, the continuity with the scar on Harry’s hand, courtesy of Umbridge, the reappearance of Umbridge, Krum, Luna, Dobby and Gringotts. I loved the attention to detail, the wonky characters and idiosyncrasies that made it a joy to read these stories and I’m a bit in a state of shock because it’s over, now.

And I’m looking forward to the last two movies and tons and tons of fanfiction!

And if you would like to read a much funnier review that will have you laughing so hard you can breath, read violet_quill’s If My F-List Wrote DH, which was reced on a friend's LJ. Warning: Link leads to spoilers!

Tribute - (Sylar/Claire) - NC-17

2007-08-29T04:34:27Z

Title: Tribute
Author: </a></a>kereia
Rating: NC-17
Characters/Pairings: Sylar/Claire
Summary: Claire gets tangled up inside a dream.
Word Count: 2127
Warnings: PWP, some violence
Spoilers: Up to 01x23 “How to Stop an Exploding Man”
Disclaimer: Heroes belongs to Tim Kring and NBC. I’m just borrowing.
Prompt: #2 “Need” - Heroes50

Author’s Note: I wrote this scene as part of a, as of yet unposted, sequel to Don’t Fear the Reaper. But once I had finished it, I realized that it doesn’t fit into the narrative structure of the sequel anymore, so I decided to post this separately. All you need to know, is that this takes place a few months after the events of Don’t Fear the Reaper, and Claire moved to a New York boarding school after the season finale.

Many thanks to my wonderful beta </a></a>drunken_hedghog.

Tribute

She blames it on the coat.

Bad boys in long, dark coats are irresistible. She is fairly certain that this is a scientifically proven fact.

After all, how else can she explain the dream?

She wakes up in her dorm in the middle of the night. The room is dark, except for the hazy glow of a nearby street lamp, while the moon hides behind a frayed canopy of clouds. The windows are wide open, curtains billowing in a light breeze, which carries the scent of acacias and lavender. Despite the languid movement of air currents, the room temperature is far too high for April, and this is how she knows that she is dreaming.

Her eyes travel toward the opposite wall where her roommate’s bed should be. Instead her gaze falls onto the shadow that stands near the window frame. A tall silhouette shrouded in the dark.

She is not afraid when he steps away from the wall; further indication that this isn’t real. The coat swishes around his legs, draping over firm, lean shoulders. His face remains bathed in shadows as he approaches, and Claire half rises and pushes the blanket away from her.

He doesn’t say anything, and the only sound in the darkness is their quiet breathing. She pushes herself into a sitting position, but he raises his hand, and she is pushed back by an invisible force. A small twist of his wrist, and Claire feels the covers slide against her as she is pulled to the side of the mattress, until her lower legs dangle over the edge.

Her breath hitches in her throat, as phantom hands brush against her ankles, circle lightly up her legs, the barest touch against her heated skin. The pressure against her shoulders vanishes, shifts upward, a light sensation against her throat. He is still standing there, silently, and she can feel his eyes burning into her.

Unseen tendrils of power curl around her underwear, inching the material down, the restriction of the elastic rubbing deliciously against her sensitive skin. A small moan escapes her lips as her nipples harden against the light material of her nightshirt.

As her panties are flung away to lie forgotten in a corner, he approaches, his hands replacing the manifestations of his mind. He kneels between her legs, the faint shimmer of the moonlight finally catching his face. A face that would seem impassive, were it not for the heat in his eyes; the forceful dominance behind those dark pupils, that send shivers down her spine.

His fingertips move in slow, unhurried circles against the joints on the outside of her ankles, before unhurriedly travelling upwards, the lightness of his touch filling her with equal amounts of excitement and frustration. He leans forward, the rough material of his coat pressing against her thighs, as his shoulders brush against her, causing a low growl to issue from her throat. Looming over her, his hands encircling her knees, he gently blows against the twin elevations of her nipples below the plain wool of her top. Her breasts grow full and heavy under his breath, and heat pools between her legs.

She shifts on the hard mattress, half impatient for him to take her, half enjoying her exquisite agony.

Then, with a suddenness that elicits a small outcry, he grips her hard around her knees and jerks her toward him, pressing her centre against his own, as his mouth descends and fastens around one of her cloth-confined peaks. The heat of his mouth burns her; nerve endings overloading with the sensation of warmth and wetness, his tongue coaxing her flesh to harden further. She moans, finally lifts her arms to wrap them around his head, fingers raking through his tussled hair, silently begging him to suck harder, deeper.

His hands move up her limbs to cup her buttocks, long, strong fingers kneading the firm cheeks as his tongue flicks against first one, then the other nipple, moisture cooling on the abandoned skin, sending tiny bolts of electricity coursing through her veins.

When he withdraws, she almost protests out loud, but the pressure against her throat subtly increases, warning her to maintain their sanctuary of silence. His hands sneak back between her legs, pushing them open, exposing the drenched heat in between.

His gaze holds hers, invisible power supporting the back of her head, as he bends down and lightly bites into the tender flesh of her thighs. Her breath catches, as his tongue worries the sore spot he created, before his lips feast on her skin, suckling slowly. Claire can’t suppress the whimper in her throat. Her eyes are unable to tear away from his.

He emits a small moan, almost inaudible, as he enjoys her taste, his hands holding firmly onto her spread thighs. He draws out her anticipation, stilling her increasingly urgent movements on the bed with muscle and mind.

Eventually he takes pity on her, abandons her bruised skin, pushes his palms flat against her thighs, opening her further and dips his head towards the hidden treasure of her womanhood. His eyes hold her captive as his tongue trails once over the swollen folds, and she throws her head back, breath stalling in her lungs.

His mouth explores the warm succulence before him, tongue dipping into every valley, lips sucking on the musk scented peaks, lapping up her juices as they flow from her stimulated body. She writhes against his face, her delighted moans adding to the quiet symphony of the wind chimes by the window.

His tongue circles around that small peak in her centre, and when he finally trails the rough surface of that muscle across her clitoris, she bucks against him, hips rising off the crumpled sheets.

Her breath comes in harsh, erratic pants, her body twisting and turning under his skilful torture. Her head thrashes on the pillow, until invisible hands clasp her throat tighter, constricting her airways, causing her heart to beat like a wild thing inside her chest; not from fear, but because it heightens her arousal. He suckles the nerve cluster, varying between slow, gentle caresses and fast, hard assaults, until that spring inside her is wound so tight that she thinks she will break apart underneath the strain.

And break she does.

With a silent cry, she shatters into a million pieces, body arching, vision drowning in fire blackened stars, liquid flowing onto his eagerly lapping tongue.

She comes down slowly, falling into awareness as the dull throbbing of abated desire settles into her stomach. Her skin feels chafed where his stubble pressed against it, but she can’t feel him touch her anymore and her eyes fly open, only to behold him as he stands beside her, his face once more hidden in shadows.

She tries to move, but finds herself restrained once again. He kneels on the sheets, his coat rustling quietly with the movement as it fans out around him. Her skin is sweat-slicked, and her limbs feel as if weighed with lead, but the intensity of his gaze reignites her voraciousness almost instantly.

He sidles closer to her, his hand lingering briefly on her thigh, before snaking back between her legs. His fingertips find her clit and softly press and circle around the swollen nub until she spasms under the skilful ministration; still too sensitive from her recent orgasm.

Sylar raises his free hand, extends a finger, and draws an invisible line from her stomach to her neck, power following the gesture, cutting through her nightshirt. The incision goes deeper than cloth, shallowly splitting her skin. Still unable to move, Claire cries out as the pain from her injury mingles with the pleasure wrought by his hand.

He bends over her, his eyes boring into hers and laps the blood from her already healing skin; traces his tongue from her belly button to the hollow of her throat, leaving a trail of fire on her body. Her breasts beg for his attentions, neglected safe for his brief detour earlier and he complies to her wordless request, brushing his thumb against one of the contracted nubs. As his fingertips continue to work between her legs, his mouth feasts on her collarbone, leaving the skin bruised and tender.

The gentle interlude is short-lived. As she enjoys his diligence, he abandons her clitoris and, without warning, plunges two fingers inside of her. The sudden intrusion elicits a sound, half outcry, half moan, as her hips rise against his hand in welcome. She can feel his fingers curl inside her velvet channel, and the heat within becomes too much to bare.

Swiftly, the pressure starts to build again, but he withdraws immediately leaving her bereft of his touch, involuntarily sobbing with unsated need.

His face re-emerging into the moonlight, the corners of his mouth lift almost imperceptibly. Then she feels herself lifted off the bed, flung face first onto the ground, threadbare carpet rasping against her sensitive nipples. Instinctively she tries to get up, put his power holds her down again.

She hears the rustle of cloth as he leaves the bed, the quiet clicking of an opened belt buckle, followed by the tear of a zipper being lowered. Excitement overrules any concern she might have felt, as heat and desire threaten to overwhelm her. She squirms on the floor, experimentally pushing her buttocks into the air, just to realize that he doesn’t prevent her from doing so.

He kneels behind her, and his hands press with bruising force into her waist. The fabric of his pants rubs against her backside as he lifts her hips further, any restraint he had formerly displayed rapidly eroding. He leans over her, his breath harsh in her ears, and positions her body, angling her against his hard member, before he uses one hand to guide himself to her opening.

Claire braces her palms against the carpet, mewling softly in anticipation, her breathing as erratic as her heartbeat. The first thrust doesn’t hurt, even though it should, and that fact causes the fleeting recollection that this is naught but a dream. Then coherent thought is washed away as his cock stretches and fills her, burrowing deep into her body, pushing all remaining breath from her lungs in a groan of ecstasy.

He slides smoothly into her moist heat, lingers once before he pulls back, his following thrusts hard and fast, leaving her little time to adjust to his girth. Her face is pushed against the floor. Small noises are torn from her as he pounds into her; harsh, animalistic growls breaking out from a place deep inside his own throat.

After a moment he stills, hands releasing her hips, and he bends forward, his palms resting next to hers as his coat envelopes them both, edges trailing on the ground. At this angle his zipper bites into her upper thighs, and his weight atop her own grinds her kneecaps into the chafing floor, but she soon realises that the increased leverage is worth the discomfort.

Her heart beats out a staccato rhythm in counterpoint to his renewed thrusts, the force of his intrusion making her cry out. Wetness seeps from the place of their joining, heightening the pleasure of their friction, as he drives her mercilessly to the ground. Soon she spirals out of control again, the waves building higher and higher, until she crest, plunging towards a crushing impact with reality.

She wakes, sweat-drenched and wanting, fire in her stomach, juices soaking her underwear.

Throwing off her blankets, Claire sits up, her eyes darting around the room, lingering on shadows; but with the exception of her peacefully slumbering roommate, she is alone.

As her heart calms, her mind half-heartedly throws excuses and explanations at her, ranging from post traumatic stress to her former school girl crush on Buffy the Vampireslayer’s Spike, to her roommate’s recent Hex inspired tv marathon and the ensued fawning over Azazeal, but none of these options seem to justify her apparently sanity-challenged state of mind.

With a shudder she recalls her last encounter with Sylar. How he had thrown her up against a wall, threatened to kill her, and how she had barely managed to escape with her life. She remembers his tall frame clad in a black coat, hair tousled and spiky, long finger pointing at her forehead.

She can’t fathom how one black coat can add the bewitching, primitive allure to him, which was woefully absent in the baseball cap wearing villain who attacked her at Homecoming, but she knows that this bad boy fascination is an entirely unhealthy course to pursue.

With a sigh Claire falls back onto her pillows, palms pressed against her eyelids.

Spike. Azazeal. Sylar.

She is definitely blaming it on the coat.

The End

To Weigh a Life - (Noah "HRG" Bennet) - PG-13

2007-08-29T04:33:05Z

Title: To Weigh a Life
Author: </a></a>kereia
Rating: PG-13
Characters /Pairings: HRG
Summary: An account of Bennet’s heart.
Word Count: 995
Warnings: Mentions of violence and drug abuse.
Spoilers: Up to 01x23 “How to Stop an Exploding Man”
Disclaimer: Heroes belongs to Tim Kring and NBC. I’m just borrowing.
Prompt: #13 “Love” Heroes15

Author's Note: A big Thank You to </a></a>drunken_hedghog for the beta.

To Weigh a Life

According to Egyptian mythology, after a Pharaoh’s death his heart is weighed against a feather. The feather represents truth and justice, and only if the record of his life’s deeds, which his heart accounts for, shows that his life was virtuous, will Osiris welcome him into the afterlife. However, if the scales dip against him, if his days were tainted by greed, arrogance, and sin, Ammut will devour his heart, and his soul will be cast into eternal darkness.

Noah Bennet has no illusions about which way the scales would tilt, if his own heart were to undertake this ritual. But he often wonders how much weight the sins of his life have accumulated?

The weight of death is the familiarity of the gun in his hand. It’s the crack of discharged bullets piercing the chest of someone he almost called friend. It’s the endless vivisections observed through transparent plastic windows. Scalpels, their sharpened edges glinting under florescent light. Blood on polished steel tables collecting inside the drain; a dark, red sea washing away into darkness.

The weight of faith is his initial idealism. His unshakable belief in the company’s purpose, the deceit of his wife, the absence of friends, and the carefully-observed distance to neighbors. It’s the sight of his baby girl at Kirby Plaza. The chance to hold her in his arms again, to protect her after he had thought her lost forever.

The weight of lies is in the stories he tells at the dinner table; the quiet goodbyes to his wife, before he disappears on his next business trip, not knowing if he’ll come home again, or if today will be the day he encounters someone who is too strong, too vile, too uncontrollable. It’s the betraying force of jealousy, when his daughter asks her ‘uncle’ to teach her how to ride a bicycle, how to swim, how to fry steaks and ribs during a Sunday barbecue.

The weight of fear is the knowledge that they are out there, free and anonymous, and that some of them are dangerous. It’s the sheer terror in his gut, when he finds out that one of them is coming for Claire. It’s the ice cocooning his heart as he watches the gentle smile of the wife he just kissed morph into the mocking smirk of Candice Wilmer. It’s the constant anxiety and caution of everyday life as he navigates the company’s bleak, impersonal hallways, knowing that his silence is the only protection his daughter has.

The weight of despair is a dream of mushroom clouds and walls of fire. Of shockwaves and unbearable heat stripping flesh from bone. Of his wife, his daughter, and his son glowing like stars among the lethal radiation before fading away to smoke and ashes. It’s
the nightmare of Sylar laughing behind the bulletproof glass of his concrete cell, Claire’s dead body at his feet, blood dripping from her golden hair.

The weight of shame is the joyous smile on his daughter’s face when Claude presents her with her first teddy bear. It’s her unabashed delight whenever he comes to visit; in whispering secrets, and making up bedtime stories, and wild adventures. It’s in the frustration of watching from the outside as a stranger becomes an uncle, adopting the role of surrogate father that should have been his. It’s the threat in his voice, the needle in his hand, and the wide eyes of an ex-junkie, full of disbelief and betrayal.

The weight of doubt is in the big, liquid eyes of a little girl, cowering behind her bed as he points his gun at her. It’s in this moment of pushing every notion of ethics and decency down, down, down, deep into the abyss; while he wonders whether there still is a line he will not cross in order to keep his family safe.

The weight of pride is the reluctant respect for his daughter’s ingenuity, covering her search for identity and truth with school reports and the supposedly tedious collaboration with the only friend she has left. It’s the new scientific discoveries and increased arrests, which make him believe that he is part of something significant, that he helps to protect, to make a difference. That in this small way, he is a hero.

The weight of truth is the soft click of a subconsciously pulled trigger, followed by an unexpected thunderclap. It’s the realization that he can take another’s life. It’s the thousand excuses not to report Claire’s manifestation to his employers. It’s on a remote bridge, when a bullet tears into his abdomen, and the Haitian’s hand touches his forehead to erase the last image of his daughter’s face. It’s the anxiety in his stomach, when he tells her that she is adopted, and dares to hope, against all orders, that she will still call him father.

The weight of hope is her choice of glasses for him and five little words, which touch a part deep inside his heart, which he had sworn he would never let her reach. “You look like my dad.” It’s in the everyday squabbles between Claire and Lyle, the small moments when he can’t deny that they are growing up; when he feels a bittersweet pang remembering times gone past.

The weight of love is the breathless wonder when his wife, whose mind he has violated too many times to dare hope for redemption, tells him that she knows the truth and loves him still. It’s the absence of memories, erased, wiped out, destroyed, to guard what is most precious to him. It’s in the trust he gave to a man, whose allegiances are more convoluted and uncertain than his own; the charge to keep Claire safe.

Ends and means. Duty and sacrifice. Fear and trust.

On some days, he wonders if love is enough to justify his actions; if love can balance the scales.

On some days, he can almost believe it.

The End

Don't Fear the Reaper - (Sylar, Claire) - PG-13

2007-08-29T04:31:21Z

Title: Don’t Fear the Reaper
Author: </a></a>kereia
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Sylar, Claire
Summary: Sylar is on his way to Kirby Plaza, when he runs into Claire.
Word Count: 2472
Warnings: Violence
Spoilers: Up to 01x23 “How to Stop an Exploding Man”
Disclaimer: Heroes belongs to Tim Kring and NBC. I’m just borrowing.
Prompt: #17 “Hate” Heroes50

Author's Note: Lots of thanks to </a></a>drunken_hedghog for the beta.

Don’t Fear the Reaper

Sylar was not a man, who was easily impressed.

Once you had killed over half a dozen people, cut open their skulls to acquire almost God-like powers, and were on your way to ensure the destruction of the entire width and breadth of New York City, life held few surprises for you.

So when he was crossing the street, and heard the shattering of glass from one of the high-rises buildings in lower Manhattan, he didn’t break his stride.

A disinterested glance along the dark street revealed a body-shaped silhouette crashing onto the grime covered pavement, glass raining on blond hair. The cracking of bones was caught inside the stone and concrete canyon, echoing between the walls of office buildings.

He reached the sidewalk and was about to continue on his way to Kirby Plaza, when an oddly familiar noise drew his attention back towards the woman’s body.

He heard the snapping sound of realigning fractures and remembered.

A school gym. Homecoming night. One cheerleader dying by his hands, while another one picked herself up from what should have been a fatal, telekinesis-enhanced impact
with a yellow tile wall.

Sylar smiled as he watched Claire Bennet push herself to her feet and run down the street into an alley, leaving the fading illumination of the street lamps behind her.

It wasn’t difficult to overtake her. He had been able to fly since he’d invited himself to a romantic, candle-lit diner, which Josh McNelly had planned for his fiancee on the roof top garden of his San Francisco apartment building . Of course, once the future bride had stepped beneath the star strewn sky, the sight that had greeted her had lost most of its charm and allure.

He intercepted Claire at the end of the alley, saw her eyes widen in surprise and recognition, and used his telekinesis to slam her up against the wall.

“Hello, Claire,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

***

Claire struggled valiantly against the pressure constricting her throat. Her feet thrashed against the rows of crumpled, torn, and dirt smeared campaign posters, which had been plastered on the wall. The stern, earnest counterfeits of congressional candidates vying for election votes.

Fear raced through her bloodstream, sending her heart into an erratic cacophony. It was difficult to breathe, impossible to stay calm, but she knew that panic would sign her death certificate.

She looked into the shadowed eyes of the man, who had threatened her life, and the lives of her family, and a distant part of her found a vague amusement in the fact that she saw her own life flash before her eyes. Little moments, dredged from her memories, mundane, common, unaccountably precious.

Her mother, admiring Mr. Muggles’s new haircut. Lyle, fighting with her over the last ice cream in the freezer. An Englishman, smiling, gifting her the first teddy bear, in what was to become a gargantuan collection. Her father, feeding her chicken soup, when she’d come down with measles, two years ago.

She held on to those memories, cradled them to her, and found her courage.

“Well, since you weren’t looking for me, you could just let me go,” she choked out, his invisible stranglehold robbing her voice of strength.

He looked at her in bemusement, but did not answer.

She tried to shrug, but being suspended three feet above the pavement, and pinned against a wall, as if she were a butterfly in a glass display, considerably impeded her ability to move.

“Can’t blame a girl for trying.”

The corners of his mouth twitched. Then he raised his hand, focused his mind, and a thin line of blood appeared where his finger pointed at her skull.

Her chocked gasp turned into a pain filled scream. He broke skin and bone along an imaginary line on her forehead, but the blood dried instantly, and her skin re-knitted itself.

Sylar did not look particularly surprised.

“I thought so,” he said. “ You know, your brave little knight used that same trick, just a few days ago. I guess he got that from you.”

Claire fought for breath, but a dull throbbing inside her head, and the fact that her vision was drowning in grayscale, left her in little doubt that she was suffocating.

Suddenly, the pressure on her throat ceased, and she slid down the brick wall until her eye line matched her attacker’s. Now, she found herself supported by invisible hands around her waist.

“It seems, that I’m on my way to meet him, actually,” Sylar continued, unabashed, and Claire realized that he was studying her with curiosity.

For a moment, she was confused, then realization dawned.

“Yeah, Peter is alive.” she said, adding unfelt bravado to her voice. “And he’s going to stop you.”

Her facade of confidence crumbled beneath his predatory smile. Sylar approached her, his head tilted to the side, his eyes never leaving hers.

“What do you think Peter can do to me, once I’ve taken his last advantage as mine?”

Defiance rose inside if her. She had died once before. She had seen her family threatened, and torn apart by secrets, and lies, and fear. She thought of her father, always trying to protect her, despite the cost of betrayed trust and pain to himself. Her father, who was trying to stop Sylar even now from destroying this city.

Too much had happened in the past two months to give up now.

“You’ll never get my healing ability,” she ground out between clenched teeth, her eyes swimming in tears, despite her intentions to be brave. “I heal too fast. There’s nothing you can do.”

Sylar shock his head in mock disappointment.

“Now, Claire. There’s no point in lying. That glass shard in Peter’s brain seemed to put him down just fine.”

Claire’s thoughts raced inside her mind, and she decided to take a chance. There was nothing she had to lose.

“You just knocked him out, it didn’t kill him. And it doesn’t stop the healing. It’s a subconscious thing.”

His expression became pensive, and she realized that she might have a chance to buy some time, to come up with a plan and save her own life. She rifled through her memory, hunting for any scrap of useful information that she might have acquired since her life had turned upside down.

A picture of Zach, sitting on the sidewalk, materialized inside her mind; she recalled a conversation they had shared, about comic books, clones and villains, spaceships and mutants.

“It’s like cryogenics, without the freezing,” she hazarded, hoping the explanation sounded more convincing to him, than it did to her.

“He was just unconscious, but if you’d tried to... to,” ‘open up his brain’. I can’t believe I’m actually going to say that. I am talking to a serial killer about amateur lobotomies like we’re chatting about the latest choice of ribbons for my cheerleading pompom.

She suppressed the sudden urge to laugh, knowing that hysteria was waving at her from across the road.

“...to open up his brain,” she continued, “he would have just healed over again.”

He didn’t believe her. She could see it in his face.

His gaze roamed around the alley, then focused on the drainpipe of the building next to her. With a protesting screech, the metal was torn from its fastenings and a piece of rusted pipe measuring the length of her forearm was twisted and compressed into a needle sharp spear, which then floated into Slyar’s outstretched hand.

He approached.

Claire flinched, cold sweat running down her back. “It’s not going to work,” she said, well aware that she was about to die.

“Then you shouldn’t be afraid,” he replied.

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“We’ll see in a second.”

He flicked his fingers and her head was forcefully turned to the side, exposing the back of her head. Claire closed her eyes against the tears, whispering a quiet farewell to her family, before making a last attempt to stall him.

“Damn it, I woke up during my own autopsy!”

For a moment, nothing happened. Then her head was released, and she snapped it around to look at Sylar. What she saw instead, was the tip of the spear hovering in front of her eyes.

She swallowed convulsively, realizing how close she had courted death.

The spear fell to the ground.

***

He had an appointment.

Peter Petrelli would be at Kirby Plaza. A nuclear explosion was fated to take place tonight. Since he had returned to New York, he had followed the path laid out before him by Isaac Mendez’s precognitions.

He could not afford to linger here any longer.

And yet, he hesitated.

Curiosity killed the cat.

The thought came unbidden and brought a self deprecating smile to his lips. Unable to resist, he succumbed to human nature.

“How did that happen?” he asked.

It was obvious, that she was still shaken. He watched as she drew several deep breaths and steeled herself. The expression on her face clearly displayed her awareness of the situation’s absurdity.

“I fell on a tree branch,” she began. “They thought I was dead, but when they tried to do my autopsy, I just kept healing over and over. They panicked for a bit and finally got the idea to pull out the branch. So, I woke up.” She shrugged. “ My dad had all their memories wiped. ”

Sylar remembered Bennet’s associates, the Haitian and Eden, all too well. His temporary incarceration had been a disconcerting experience. It had been the first time since he had started on his quest that he had been forced to discover that he was not invincible. Reviewing her story, his attention was drawn to one detail.

“You fell on a tree branch?” he asked, his voice laced with incredulity.

Her gaze shifted away from his.

“Yeah.”

“That was very clumsy of you.”

She didn’t reply.

“Claire?” he said, his voice a soft purr in the dead of night.

The girl remained stubbornly silent.

“Claire,” he repeated, stepping closer, “what happened?”

Defiance and anger flashed in her eyes.

“I was pushed, all right?”

“Who pushed you?”

He couldn’t really explain why he wanted to know, why he kept pushing the subject.

“None of your business,” she ground out, real anger deepening her voice, giving her courage. She met his gaze unflinchingly, as if daring him to pry further.

Secure in the knowledge that he had the upper hand, he found himself fascinated, that despite her current predicament, she seemed more riled than terrified. Inside him, amusement warred with reluctant respect.

He shifted his concentration and was rewarded with a small gasp, as the pressure against her throat increased again.

“Who pushed you, Claire?”

She fought him, grunts and choked cries escaping her mouth, feet thrashing barely a foot above the ground. She fought until there was no air left in her lungs, until her muscles felt as if they were weighed down with lead, until she heard nothing but the rushing of her own blood, pumped through her veins by a straining heart.

When she finally ceased her struggles, and hung defeated in his ghostly grasp, he slowly reduced the severity of his hold on her.

“Brody... It was Brody Mitchum.” She blinked away tears, but he was unable to tell whether they were caused by hopelessness or hatred towards him. And he didn’t care.

“We were together on bonfire night, and he didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.” Her voice was quiet and resigned. But then, she looked up at him expectantly, almost challengingly.

“Is there anything else you want to know?”

Sylar blinked at the sudden change in her manner. He didn’t know if this rapid interchange of emotions was idiosyncratic for her, or simply a common recurrence for all teenagers, but her constant migration from fear to anger, from caution to standoffish defiance, unnerved him.

Especially since he was unable to justify his own actions to himself. He had never participated in the kind of cat and mouse gamesmanship in which he was currently indulging. It was true that his ire had been raised when she had escaped him in Odessa. And it had been a blow to his ego, that she had managed to elude him for so long. But wasting time with this recount of teenage drama was out of character for him.

He knew that he should just finish what he had started and take her ability.

Leaning towards her, he forced himself to focus on the situation at hand.

“Looks like you have some experience being a victim.”

Claire had recoiled from him but at his words, she stilled immediately. There was an odd expression on her face, neither fear nor fury; and the fact that, once again, he could not decipher her mood, put him on his guard.

“You know, I have to admit, I was a bit worried about whether or not I’d survive tonight. But meeting you? It really is like fate. Like all things are finally coming together.”

“You mean... destiny?” There was a forced, neutral quality to her voice, and Sylar had the sudden impression that she was physically restraining herself from rolling her eyes at him. It was a surreal reaction for someone, who was about to die. Too comfortable, too at ease in its casual annoyance.

He braced his hands on either side of her face; seeking to intimidate, to remind her of the danger she courted.

“Do you believe in destiny, Claire? That there are things beyond our control? Things we cannot change?”

“No,” she said. She appeared uncharacteristically certain.

“And yet, you are here. With me. On this night, of all possible nights. I’ll take your ability, Claire. Thanks to you, I will survive.”

“I told you...”

“I don’t believe you, Claire,” he interrupted. “You were destined to be the victim in this story.”

Her eyes flashed barely restrained fire. “I make a very poor damsel in distress. Brody learned that the hard way.”

Sylar smiled, unfazed. “And what have you learned, little Claire?”

“I’ve learned, that I am sick and tired of people using ‘destiny’ as an excuse to be a total jerk,” she ground out.

Then she kissed him.

The sudden move caught him so entirely off guard that he froze. A second later he jerked away from her, but her distraction had broken his concentration. His telekinetic hold had evaporated, and her hands had fastened around the lapels of his coat. Before he could react, before he could even form a thought, pain exploded in his groin as her knee came up, her desperation and adrenalin adding extra force to the blow.

Air rushing from his lungs, stars becoming supernovas behind his eyelids, he crumpled to the ground, as the echo of rapid footsteps faded from his senses.

The End

Introspection Over Coffee - (Sylar, Gabriel Gray) PG-13

2007-08-29T04:29:17Z

Title: Introspection Over Coffee
Author: Kereia
Characters/Pairings: Sylar, Gabriel Gray
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence
Summary: A brief biography of Gabriel Gray, while Sylar watches his next victim.
Spoilers: Up to 01x21 “The Hard Part”
Word Count: 3843
Disclaimer: Heroes belongs to NBC and Tim Kring. I’m just borrowing.

Prompt: #27 “Life”, Heroes50

Introspection over Coffee

Tick.

The clock is broken.

The second hand is moving an infinitesimal fraction of a second to slow.

Tick.

It’s driving him crazy.

Tick.

Gabriel Gray has always been a little odd.

When he was five, his kindergarten teacher asked him why he kept drawing spider webs into his notebook and who the stick figure in its center was. Not knowing how to answer, Gabriel shrugged, and smiled, and looked at Mrs. Call-me-Annie-and make-sure-to-clean-up-after-yourself with big, brown, puppy dog eyes, and stopped drawing pictures of himself.

At seven he dreamed. At night, at school, at his father’s workshop, at the dinner table. Wonderful dreams. Dreams of saving the world. Of being a hero. Of being special.
He so wanted to be special. He dreamed of flying. High above the city, watching people and cars scurry around like ants inside the vast, labyrinthine hive that was New York.

He dreamed about walking trough walls, about being super strong, and super fast, about leaving Timothy Thooms a little return present for the bloody cow eyes he had found in his gym bag the other day. Timmy’s father was a butcher.

When he was nine years old he played with the assembly of broken clockwork pieces that he had found in a paper carton in the recesses of his father’s workshop. He was sitting on the floor fiddling with the wheels, and gears, and springs, humming under his breath, engrossed in the possibilities, the potential that he saw in all those broken pieces before him. His father had abandoned them as useless, but to him they were beautiful.

His father came over and knelt beside him. In his hands he held a broken antique pocket watch, plain by comparison to some of the more valuable, elaborately designed pieces he had seen in the display cabinets behind the counter.

Even then, he didn’t care much for those ornate casings, wrought with silver and bronze, gold and platinum, studded with splinters of pearls and rubies. Some with real diamonds, some so laden with precious stones and broad, gleaming, metallic bands that the watch itself appeared almost as an afterthought to the jewelry.

He always preferred the plain ones. They didn’t try to hide what they were. They didn’t pretend.

A watch was a watch. Its function was to tell the time. Its purpose was to be exact, constant, and infallible.

“Look Gabriel, I fixed it. It’s a Vieyres.“ His father’s face was alight with pride and satisfaction. “It’s over a hundred and fifty years old, and now it works perfectly again. A beautiful piece of work, don’t you think?”

He smiled at his son and extended the watch towards him. “It should fetch a pretty price.”

Gabriel frowned in confusion. His eyes fixed on the blue steel hands that continued their measured pace around the clock face, indifferent to his scrutiny.

“But dad, the clock is broken.”

His father looked at him askance.

“What do you mean?”

“The escapement isn’t working right.”

Gabriel couldn’t have explained how he knew. It was just something that happened to him more and more frequently lately. He would look at one of the clocks or watches in the workshop or in the glass cabinets and there was this itch, this tick in the back of his mind.

I’m not working properly. Fix me!

At first he hadn’t paid any attention to it. After all, his father was the watchmaker. He had the experience, the expertise, and he was the parent. And when you’re nine years old, you still think your parents know everything. In any case, clocks didn’t talk to people. Even people who were nine years old and a little odd.

Thus, Gabriel had kept his observations to himself, and had continued to play with abandoned, rusty, and broken timepieces.

Until now.

“Why do you say that?” his father asked.

Gabriel shrugged, suddenly not sure if he should have said anything. “It just is,” he mumbled.

His father gave him a long look then, his expression changing from curiosity to disappointment. “I guess you're still a bit too young to understand.”

He ruffled his son’s hair and returned to his desk. Gabriel watched how his father held the pocket watch up to the light that filtered through the high stained glass windows, a smile of accomplishment returning to his face.

“A true piece of art,” he whispered.

Tick.

Wrapping his long, slender fingers around the hot coffee mug, he tried to ignore the siren call of the clock above the diner’s counter.

His mother had always said that he had the hands of a pianist. Her expectations for his future profession were as eclectic as her choice of collectibles. For every concert pianist, lawyer, doctor, investment banker, celebrated artist, to which she had wanted him to aspire, there was a postcard, novelty mug, or snow globe displayed with pride on her shelves. Anything would have sufficed for her son, as long as he would be lauded and revered, “...as God intended,” she would say.

Just like him, his mom had always been a little odd, too.

Tick.

On his thirteenth birthday his parents took him on a four day trip into the Colorado mountains. They stopped in Boulder for one night, and that was the night everything changed.

It was a quiet evening. The day had been warm, blue skied, and sunny, with only a light breeze to caress the autumn foliage of a seemingly endless woodland vista.

Just as the last rays of sunshine melted away from the reflecting surface of the road, Gabriel stepped out of the diner, where he had eaten his supper, and felt the world tense around him.

It was an odd feeling. As if reality had the hiccups. There was a soft tick in his brain. Just one. And then something inside of him snapped, and he was uprooted, torn asunder, and reassembled in the space of a heartbeat.

Shaken, he turned around, still feeling as if currents of electricity were washing along his skin.

But his parents were still waiting at the car and were smiling at him in that meaningless, pleasant way, that people use when they have nothing new to say to you.

“There is a clock!” The statement burst out of him so fast that it took him a moment to realize, that he had said it out loud.

His father gave him that quizzical, slightly bemused look again.

“Of course there is. An atomic clock. They built it at the Institute.”

Gabriel nodded as the fuzzy memory of a science class knocked politely at his brain.

He felt it.

The ticking. The atoms. Electrons spinning around protons, going round and round, without losing one second in thirty million years. Without ever having seen it, without ever having been able to touch it, Gabriel felt breathless and overwhelmed by its beauty.

Tick.

When the coffee isn’t hot enough to scorch his lips anymore, he takes a long, slow sip, letting the liquid linger in his mouth before allowing its passage down his throat. There aren’t many people inside the diner. He is sitting at the window, and the tables closest to him are unoccupied.

He lets his gaze wander around the room while he waits. The buzzing, that the broken diner clock causes inside his mind, becomes more insistent.

A teenage couple holding hands and throwing coy smiles across their chocolate and peach deserts at each other. Two Asian men chatting excitedly in a booth to his left. Three man and a woman sitting at the counter, grabbing a quick lunch before returning to their offices or heading back on the road. A family with two children. The mother trying to keep the peace between squabbling siblings and a stressed out dad.

Tick.

He wasn’t able to sleep, that night in Boulder. He stayed awake, sitting on the paint chipped window ledge, watching the moon travel its languid path across the night sky. Watching velvety black turn to dark, deep blue, watching streaks of violet, amber, and pink stain an azure ocean.

And during all this time he listened. Not with his ears, but with something indefinable inside of him. He listened to the clock. That perfect, mesmerizing atomic clock.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

He listened until the sound filled him up, resonated with his heartbeat, his breathing, his thoughts.

When his parents got up for breakfast, he could only look at them with wide, glassy eyes, moisture clinging to long, dark lashes.

Tick.

When he turned fifteen, he started to help his father in his workshop after school. His acquisition of skills was almost instinctive. With the exception of refining the motor skills needed to wield pincers, gears, wheels, mainspring winders, sleeve wrenches, and balance tacks, he mastered all the disciplines of a watchmaker apprentice uncannily fast.

Within three weeks, he had memorized all the minuscule variations according to brand or time period of construction. One week later, his father, not a little awed and intimidated by his son’s progress, allowed him to assemble his first clock unsupervised.

From that very first clock onwards, through the next fourteen years, every timepiece that left his hands kept perfect time.

Tick.

He finds his eyes drawn to the broken clock again. A fraction of a second behind. Maybe one second every thirty hours. One minute every seventy-five days. It isn’t much. It shouldn’t be significant, but with every tick, tick, tick the buzzing inside of him becomes louder. An itch inside his skull, a vibration beneath his skin, a whisper in the back of his mind.

Fix me. Fix me. Fix me!

Briefly, his hands convulse around the coffee mug, as he fights the compulsion to get up and heed the unspoken command.

As a child, that whisper in his mind used to be so soft as to be almost inaudible. It was easy to ignore, especially since he didn’t know how to acquiesce to its request. Once he had learned the skills of a horologist, the voice adapted a gentle, urging insistence, like a feathery caress across his synapses. And Gabriel enjoyed complying to its wishes.

Tick.

When he was seventeen his father became sick.

Gabriel tried his best to support and, as time passed, to stand in for him at the shop. His mother cared for her husband as well as she could, but as the illness deteriorated his body, her despair scattered her already fragile mind.

Harold Gray died three months before his son’s graduation.

The prospect of selling watches had never held Gabriel’s interest. His sole joy was to obey the voice in his head, to erase the dissonance he felt whenever his eyes beheld a broken timepiece; to align the continuous motion of the watch hand to the beat of his heart.

For the first few years his focus rested exclusively on his work. He sold off all the gaudy, pompous pretenders in the glass cabinets and focused on repair and restoration.

His profit margin diminished at first, making it difficult to support his mother, who required constant care for the first year after his father’s death. Their savings were depleted, but before necessity could force him to relinquish his position on the sale of jeweled watches, his reputation spread beyond Queens and the surrounding city, favoring him with acquaintances of private collector’s, who valued his precision and dedication.

In time, his mother recovered her physical strength, if not her mental balance, and began to reclaim command of her own affairs.

Surrounded by clocks, fully occupied with the ceaseless pursuit to mend, to rebuild, to perfect, Gabriel Gray was certain he had found his vocation.

Tick.

He is staring at the young waitress, who approaches to refill his coffee. He doesn’t acknowledge her questioning glance, as he listens to the sharp, screeching, cacophony inside his mind, which drowns out the conversations around him. Like fingernails rasping across a chalkboard.

Her eyes drop quickly away from his, as she suppresses a shiver. She hurries away, his gaze following her, as a new sound blankets the high-pitched whine echoing inside his skull.

Tick.

For seven years he was content.

Then the dreams came back.

He was flying over New York, watching the sun chase the horizon, watching the moon followed by another ball of fire, their eternal correlation alternating faster and faster, until he was blinded by the flashes of pulsating light exploding on his retinas.

When time slowed down again, he realized he was plummeting towards the ground, and barely managed to slow his descent, before shattering his body on the pavement. He arrived on a stretch of grass among the glass and concrete giants, and fell to his knees, his hands enveloping his aching head.

Struggling for composure, blinking to regain his star-blinded sight, he took deep breaths and, as he looked around, realized that he was in a cemetery. His legs shook, as he forced himself to rise, and his gait remained unsteady as he walked towards the overgrown, lichen and ivy covered headstones.

Marble angels and slate crosses rose above the uniform height of white, grey, and black stonework, engraved testaments to human mortality.

Still dizzy, he stumbled. He braced himself against marble white stone, tinted green with age and neglect. The lights before his eyes were fading and, as he shivered against the cold, his gaze rested on the rows of buried remains in his path.

The cemetery was deserted, an eerie silence filling up the island space between the towering, monochrome skyscrapers. He pushed on, withered leaves and suffocated grass thick beneath his shoes.

The headstones became more weathered the farther he walked, creases widening into cracks, splintered by the patient frost of ages past.

Bare trees stretched their spindly arms against a cloud-domed sky of grey and silver. His breath rose in little puffs from his dry lips, as he approached the last row of graves.

He already knew what he would find.

With the certainty of dreamers who walk the paths of clarity, defying the laws of time, and space, and gravity, he knelt before the overgrown patch of soil to look at his own grave. Engraved in grey slate, the letters obscured by skeletal vines of evergreen, his name was barely legible. He felt no surprise, no shock, no curiosity. Instead resignation spread through him, as he bent his head and sighed.

He woke up then, inside the workshop, moonlight falling from a starless sky onto his face.

He was twenty-four.

And as he looked around the small space, where he spent most of his days chained to his work, Gabriel Gray felt unsatisfied.

He had tried to dismiss the dream, had blamed it on overwork and loneliness, except that in the preceding seven years of his life, he had never felt lonely or unhappy. Now, there was a gnawing restlessness growing inside of him, clenching his stomach, constricting his heart.

As the months past, he realized, that he had grown bored by the mundane monotony of his life. The constricted routine of his days left him short of breath, with a bland, dusty taste in his mouth. The clocks still called to him, and even though he continued to heed their requests, a discord had slipped into their whispers, which became increasingly jarring, as three more years passed him by.

Tick.

He adjusts his baseball cap and shifts slightly on the plastic chair. Sunlight is falling through the front window of the diner onto his black clad back. The heat becomes uncomfortable, but he won't move. He knows he doesn’t have to wait much longer.

Noon is long past and the diner is almost deserted now. The Asian men he noted earlier are still tucked away in their booth, conversing avidly in broken English with the friendly waitress he’s been watching all day.

Her shift will be over soon.

Tick.

From the day Chandra Suresh stepped into his workshop, his life was never the same again. The Indian professor left him with a book and a phone number, which opened his mind to previously unconsidered possibilities. Possibilities that filled him with near untamable excitement and wonder.

His elation was followed by crushing despair at his inability to prove what he knew with unwavering certainty to be true.

He was special.

As Suresh’s attentions to him waned, the first seeds of frustration and fear blossomed into anger. He did not want to be left behind. The mere thought of returning to his workbench, to pick up the tools he had wielded for over a decade, to fade into obscurity again, filled him with resentment.

Suresh’s final, disappointed rejection, sent him stumbling into the crowded street, a note of yellow paper clutched in his hand. Breathing in staccato, he listened as the nearby church clock tolled out the hour, the screeching of its inaccurate mechanism, for the first time, physically painful to his senses. He felt as if his brain was turned into a pincushion.

Clenching his teeth, he looked down at the paper in his hand. In rigid black lettering it held the address of one Brian Davies.

Tick.

The young waitress throws a last smile at her new friends, then heads towards the storeroom in the back.

He swallows the last of his coffee, his mouth drawn into a mask of disgust. The cooling temperature sharpened the liquid’s bitterness. Standing, he throws two bills on the table and leaves the diner.

Tick.

Brian Davies was uncomfortable. His shifted his weight, fiddled with his tie, and flicked his gaze around the room, like a caged bird trying to escape the fate it had been dealt.

“Can you help me?” he asked, hope and uncertainty warring in his face. “I want to get rid of it.”

Gabriel looked thoughtfully at the coffee mug on the display case. He was barely able to contain his own excitement. With just a thought the ceramic vessel had wobbled across the wooden surface, as hesitant and unsure as Davies’s frame of mind.

Gabriel could not comprehend how anyone could refuse to embrace such a gift, how anyone could fail to realize the potential such an ability held. Davies’s lack of appreciation for his own ability angered him.

He walked around the fidgeting man, almost overcome by frustration at his own fate. He’d been so sure he was special, so certain that in time he would discover his own ability, that he would rise above this dusty, little life and leave the watchmaker behind him. He had hoped by observing someone like him, he would be able to discern the method, the secret to access his own power.

But Brian Davies wasn’t like him. Brain Davies was afraid to be anything but a businessman, a stock broker, a suburban dad, with a wife, a dog, two point three children, and a white picket fence.

Afraid to be anything but a watchmaker.

Gabriel took a deep breath, closed his eyes, ...and heard the dissonance.

He froze, half-convinced that he had imagined it.

As he concentrated, the world around him faded into unnatural silence. The ticking of the clocks and watches, the noise from the busy street outside the window, the rasping sound of Brian Davies’s breathing was sucked into a void of quiet peace.

And there, deep down, at the very edge of sound...tick.

I’m broken. Fix me.

Tick.

It was easy to open the diner’s locked back entrance. He concentrated on the gears inside the lock, reached out with his mind and with a soft clicking sound the lock aligned, and he pushed the door open. Slipping inside the room, he allowed himself a moment to enjoy the coolness of the hallway, a welcome change from the merciless October sun.

He continued his way towards the storeroom, where the waitress went about her work, oblivious to his intrusion.

Tick.

Brian Davies was broken.

The more Gabriel concentrated on the irregular ticking, the more prominent it became, until it echoed through his eardrums, until he could taste the sound in his mouth, feel it whisper against his skin.

Fix me. Fix me! FIX ME!

Gabriel raised the stone paperweight and brought it down heavily on the back of Brian Davies’s head. The man’s body crumbled to the floor.

Stunned, he hesitated, his mind hiding away from the deed he had committed, his heart racing, blood rushing through his veins so fast that he felt dizzy. Agonizing minutes passed, as he became aware of the magnitude of his actions.

You killed. You killed a man. Is this what you wanted? Do you feel special now?

His rising panic was washed away by a second, cold, discordant voice inside of him.

He was broken. You can fix him. You are broken, too. Use him to fix yourself.

He knelt by the body as if in a trance, raised the paperweight again and again, until Brian Davies’s brain lay open before him. Uncontrollable spasms wrecked his body, as he bent to inspect the tissue, some small, fading part of him fighting a futile battle against the overwhelming tide of compulsion the cold voice had unleashed inside of him.

His eyes focused and he beheld the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

Clockwork. An intricate, delicate mechanism, breathtaking in its unique complexity, unfolded before him, and Gabriel Gray understood all its secrets.

Joy rose inside of him, as he adapted, changed, became.

With a smile, Sylar rose from the floor, his beatific smile bidding farewell to the last rays of the setting sun.

Tick.

The waitress’s body lies forgotten on the ground, her blood staining the grey linoleum floor.

He loves these first moments, when he hasn’t discovered the boundaries of his new ability, yet. It feels as if an electric current is running through his body, just beneath his skin. He takes a deep breath and smiles.

Memory.

He has acquired the ability to remember everything, ever word spoken, every sentence read; every smell, color, shape and thought stored inside his mind forever. It’s not as grand, not as flashy as Brian Davies’s telekinesis, but such distinctions are far from his mind. Every ability is useful, every single one of them makes him special. More than special, they make him unique.

His command is absolute. He knows which synapses he needs to spark, which thoughts to activate, and how much control to modulate. Telekinesis, Flying, Freezing, Memory. It is beautiful. It is easy.

Too easy.

He pushes the thought away.

I’m broken.

He pushes harder, trying to bury the soft voice in his mind.

Fix me.

A fading whisper, which his new memory won’t let him forget.

He leaves the diner, the same way he entered it, taking care to lock the back door behind him.

As he walks down the street, away from this town, on to the next, where a young girl has an appointment with him on her Homecoming night, the first screams from the diner are unable to drown out the discordant sound of a broken clock inside his mind.

Tick.

The End

Prompt Table, Heroes

2007-08-29T04:23:19Z

Here it is then. Irrefutable proof of my insanity. Let's see if I can actually complete these tables.

Heroes15 - Fanfiction Table - General Series
Prompts #1 - 5 are an ongoing series. Everything else is standalone.

Spoilers up to 1x23 "How to Stop an Exploding Man", PG-13 for the entire table.

To Weigh a Life - Noah "HRG" Bennet, PG-13 - 06/16/2007 - #13

01	Secret.	02	Silence.	03	Fire.	04	Beyond.	05	Stars.
06	Rage.	07	Never.	08	Pain.	09	Tears.	10	Ruin.
11	Courage.	12	Laughter.	13	Love.	14	Belong.	15	Want.

Heroes50 - Fanfiction Table - Sylar
Mostly standalone fics. Series will be listed below.

Spoilers up to 1x23 "How to Stop an Exploding Man", Some Character Vignettes, Some Sylar/Claire (as I said "irrefutable proof"), Sylar/Mohinder if you squint, or Sylar/OFC if the mood should strike me. Rated PG - 13 - NC-17.

Introspection Over Coffe - Sylar, Gabriel Gray, PG-13 - 05/29/2007 - #27
Don't Fear the Reaper - Sylar, Claire, PG-13 - 06/06/2007 - #17
Tribute - Sylar/Claire, NC-17 - 07/24/2007 - #2
Do You Want To Be My Superman? - Sylar/OFC, NC-17 - 07/28/2007 - #3

01	Wish.	02	Need.	03	Dream.	04	Search.	05	Destroy.
06	Fly.	07	Swim.	08	Freeze.	09	Jump.	10	Run.
11	Mother.	12	Father.	13	Brother.	14	Sister.	15	Child.
16	Love.	17	Hate.	18	Sex.	19	Apathy.	20	Work.
21	Second.	22	Minute.	23	Hour.	24	Day.	25	Year.
26	Birth.	27	Life.	28	Death.	29	Heaven.	30	Hell.
31	Earth.	32	Air.	33	Fire.	34	Water.	35	Spirit.
36	Rain.	37	Snow.	38	Wind.	39	Sun.	40	Moon.
41	Crimson.	42	Mask.	43	Breath.	44	Sacrifice.	45	Devour.
46	Writer's Choice.	47	Writer's Choice.	48	Writer's Choice.	49	Writer's Choice.	50	Writer's Choice.

Introduction

2007-08-25T22:36:20Z

So, Heroes drew me back into online fandom recently, and I've actually been inspired to write fanfic again.

My current fandoms are Heroes, Supernatural, Harry Potter, Discworld, and Doctor Who. I am a fairly slow wirter but plot bunnies for the first three fandoms on that list are running rampant at the moment, so I will get those stories posted eventually.

Other than fanfic, I've recently discovered the joys of Photoshop and started making icons. I'll use this journal as a mirror to my LJ one (same username, in case anyone cares) and apart from fandom post there will be reviews of books, movies and tv episodes, rants about anything and everything, as well as recs and random links I find of interest.

I'm going to use the next few days to backup my LJ posts over here. Shouldn't take me more than a couple of days.