Fic: New Wounds, Part I
As promised, I'm taking a break from In the Forests of the Night this week, but here's a Season One-inspired one-shot for your reading pleasure. Written for Prompt #9: "Always wondered what this'd be like" for un_love_you
Title: New Wounds, Part I (formerly known as "Holding On")
Summary: Set in an AU version of the Five Years Ago universe (make a left turn before Past Hiro arrives on the scene). Peter learns to deal with captivity and his “brother.”
Pairing: Sylar-masquerading-as-Nathan/Peter, Nathan/Peter implied
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Spoilers for Five Years Gone. Graphic violence, harsh language, slash, dubious consent. Dark fic. You’ve been warned.
I remember the first time I thought there was something really wrong with Nathan. He looked no different, although I hadn’t seen him in person for almost two years. I expected him to look… I don’t know. More presidential, maybe. Matt Parkman, who’d been running my interrogation, leapt to his feet when Nathan burst into the room, attended by three secret service agents. Seeing him here, I felt a familiar push-pull thrill: half frustration that Nathan was coming to rescue me, and half-relief at being rescued. But Nathan didn’t speak to me. Instead, he said to Matt, “Any progress?”
Matt shook his head. “He hasn’t told us anything useful, Mister President.”
Nathan looked me over with a derisive head-to-toe sweep that didn’t meet my eyes. “If he doesn’t cooperate, hurt him,” he told Matt, and swept back out of the room.
Matt, who until now had confined his menacing to the verbal variety, smiled at me. I was simply confused. The Nathan I remembered would never let his brother be hurt, if for no other reason than that I belonged to him, and he didn’t like other people touching his property. I knew things had been different between us since the bomb, but we were still brothers, weren’t we? If we were, though, blood had clearly ceased to mean as much to Nathan as it used to.
After that, it didn’t take me long to cooperate. It was ridiculously easy to hurt me, after all. They didn’t have to be careful. I remember the first time Matt shot me in the knee. I wished I were dead, I wished I could actually die, the pain was that bad. Digging the butt of the gun into the wound, he said, “Tell me where they are, and this can all stop.” He must have said that twenty times, his voice horribly calm and reasonable, but sharp enough to break through the red haze of pain. He kept this up until I died.
I couldn’t die for long, of course. My powers didn’t work in this room, an ugly white box with one glass wall. They must have had a way to reverse whatever blocked my powers just long enough for me to come back to life, every time. Whether it was some new technology or that damned Haitian, I never knew. Not that it mattered: trapped and powerless was trapped and powerless, no matter how it was happening. They could kill me as many times as they needed to. I stopped counting after twelve.
After I told them everything, life improved a little. Matt hurt me a few more times, just to be sure he’d gotten everything, or maybe because he’d grown addicted to the sound of my hoarse screams, the sick, wet sound of a heavy blow crushing a joint. There were a few blessed days of nothingness, in which no one came to torture me or ask me questions. It was then that my mind began to work again, and I came to realize the absolute hopelessness of my situation. I had told them everything, and I knew with a certain, sinking dread that they’d been able to use what I told them. Niki was dead. Hiro, Hana, dead. Probably Noah, too. I wasn’t sure if they’d actually kill Claire, her being the president’s illegitimate daughter and all. Maybe that was reason enough to wipe her out, assuming that they could find a way. I was reasonably certain they could find a way.
This was the point at which I started weighing my options. If my friends were gone: dead, now, even those I hadn’t killed in New York… If Nathan, the most important person of all, had abandoned me… But I couldn’t believe that, yet. Nathan had to be playing some angle. I just had to wait and see what he would do.
So when Nathan came back to me, I’d been expecting it. I wasn’t sure how long it was after Matt left for the last time. Days, I’m sure. It was hard to tell day from night in the constant brightness of my little white box, but I slept when I was tired, and no one bothered me.
I didn’t hear when the door opened; I was locked in my own little world when I suddenly became aware of Nathan smiling down at me. He wore a very nice suit.
“I’m glad you decided to cooperate,” he said. His secret service escort wasn’t with him today: he was alone. I was sitting on the floor in the corner of my cell, knees drawn up to my chest.
“Hi,” I said, not realizing until I’d said it how ludicrous a thing it was to say. I pushed off of the floor, wrenching myself upright. I felt stiff, sore; I must have been sitting in that corner a long time. I stood looking at him, and he at me. Apparently, he expected me to say something. I didn’t really want to beg for help. Always, always, Nathan knew what needed to be done. Always. I’d come to him, tell him what was happening, and he would do something about it. It may not be the thing I wanted him to do, but he always tried to help. I never had to ask. I never had to beg.
Now Nathan offered no advice, no commands. He just watched.
“Are you going to help me?” I asked finally.
Nathan smiled: an amused, smug smile. “Why should I?”
I was puzzled. The way to understand Nathan was to understand his goal; there was something he wanted me to do. Act a certain way, do a certain thing. That was how you got what you wanted from him; pay attention to what he wanted. He wasn’t giving me any hints here. Why should he help me? An excellent question. After a moment, I decided I should try an answer I knew would appeal to him.
Nathan wasn’t expecting the kiss, I guess. He pulled back quickly and stared at me for a long time, his smile vanished and replaced with calculating coldness. “Peter,” he said. “You still have the power to surprise me.”
I waited. Nathan said nothing more, did nothing more, but he didn’t leave. There was still something he wanted me to do. “Are you going to help me or what?” I asked.
“Do I have a reason to help you?” he asked, all infuriating aloofness.
I thought I had it figured out then. I had put the right key in the lock; now I had to turn it. I watched him for a second, and when he kept looking at me expectantly, I pulled off my shirt. Something flashed in Nathan’s eyes-surprise, or maybe just interest-as he watched me drop my pants to the ground as well and turn away from him, bracing myself against the wall.
I heard him move, closing my eyes as I felt him loom behind me. He placed one hand on my back, tracing the line of my spine. Next he ran his hands down my sides, leaning in close to my ear as if to inhale my scent. Then he was against me, the soft, expensive cloth of his suit against my back, his arms wrapped around me, his face buried in my neck. “Is this the way you usually get my attention?” he murmured.
“What else do you want me to do?” I asked, and winced at the desperate edge to my voice. Submission. That was the way to bring out the protector in Nathan. Be vulnerable. Need his help. I’d told myself I wouldn’t beg, but I was getting close.
“This is fine,” he whispered. “This is good.”
He held me for a moment, his chest pressed to my back. I could feel him breathing. I turned within the circle of his arms, facing him. I kissed him again, and he let me, but it was different than usual. He didn’t demand, didn’t take what had been his for years. It seemed he’d forgotten all that had happened between us, all we’d done together. I felt a faint nervous flutter at that idea: that I was forgettable to Nathan.
I had no back-up plan, though, so I’d have to make Nathan remember why I was worth helping. I kissed him again, this time pressing against him. Pushing a knee gently between his legs, I could feel his hardness. At least I still had that effect on him. I pulled out of the kiss, resting my forehead against his. “Well?” I asked.
Nathan let go of me and took a step back. He unbuttoned his pants, let them fall, pushed down briefs-and since when had it been that instead of boxers? Maybe it was a Presidential thing. Then he just waited, unhurried, for me to make the next move.
I spit into my palm, took him in my hand. Nathan stared at me as I worked, and his eyes were so calculating I couldn’t meet them. I watched my hand instead, concentrated on the hot, heavy feel of him, on firm strokes pulling gently, the way he’d always liked it. Nathan grabbed my wrist to stop me and pulled me around to face away from him again. A firm hand on my shoulder guided me to the floor. He knelt behind me and fisted a hand in my hair, dragging my head down to the floor so my ass was raised obscenely.
I heard him spit, heard the sound of flesh on flesh as he stroked himself. Then the head of his cock was at my entrance, one hand gripping my hip. I had expected Nathan to be more careful-he’d always cared about his own comfort, even if he didn’t always give his full attention to mine, but he’d made no effort to prepare me at all. “Nathan?”
“Shh,” he hissed in my ear, pushing into me, almost dry but for a little saliva.
My pain tolerance was high, but it was different knowing I wasn’t going to heal immediately, with my powers not working. I gritted my teeth, but I couldn’t help a tense whimper as he shoved brutally into me, one thrust to take him just inside, that first sharp-painful push past tight muscle. “Shh,” he repeated, and he stroked my belly gently as I trembled, trapped between him and the floor.
I tried to relax, tried to make it easier, but it burned, and when Nathan moved to go deeper I cried out again. It had never been like this before with Nathan. Yes, it was always about power, always a bit of a mind-fuck, but this felt different. This felt cruel.
I suddenly regretted not doing this face-to-face, because now I was constantly repeating to myself, It’s okay, it’s Nathan, whatever he does is okay because you know he loves you, deep down, in the end, he does what he does because he loves you. If I didn’t know better I’d think it was a stranger on top of me, inside me, each brutal thrust different from my memories of the feel of Nathan, the rhythm of his body.
Once he was all the way in, he held still for a moment, right hand still clutching my hip, left hand tracing swirling patterns my chest. “Always wondered what this’d be like,” he whispered.
What the hell was that supposed to mean? I tried to pull back to ask him, but then Nathan began to move, and I concentrated on breathing, on fighting through the pain, on not hating him. Each long, smooth stroke burned inside of me, and Nathan kept it up, not going slower or faster, just relentless, like clockwork, whispering “Shhh” whenever I cried out.
At last, when I thought another moment of pain might break me, he clutched my hips with bruising force, shuddering as he spilled into me. He pressed against my back, then, still buried inside me, and wrapped his arms around my waist. “Good boy, Peter,” he whispered. Then he pulled out, the loss so swift and painful it made me gasp. He straightened his clothes and he left. He didn’t say anything about helping me, and I couldn’t ask. I knew Petrellis kept promises, but after that, I wasn’t sure there was anything left of the brother I’d known, if I could count on anything I knew about him to be correct.
Nathan came to me whenever he needed a lift. Fucking me into the ground seemed to cheer him up. He barely spoke to me. I promised myself I wouldn’t ask him for help again, but I couldn’t stop speaking to him. The brother I loved was in there somewhere, and the fact that he kept coming back to see me meant that he still loved me too, at least in some small way.
Once, when he was on his way out, I tried to ask him about my friends. “What happened to Hiro?” I asked. He hit me, the back of his hand flying against my cheek, and walked out without a word. Strangely, that was the thing that at last made me sure something was wrong with my brother.
The next time Nathan came to see me, I spoke to him again. After we fucked, I took his hand gently, respectfully, before he could walk out. “Nathan?”
He smiled at me. For some reason he liked to hear his name, to hear me whisper it when we kissed, to hear me scream it when he was inside me. It seemed to have won me a moment of indulgence, at least. “What, Peter?”
“Remember the day Dad died?” I asked.
He narrowed his eyes at me, but he didn’t leave. “Yeah.”
“You remember how you stayed with me that day?”
“Sure,” Nathan said, buttoning up his pants distractedly.
I began to feel ill. “You had so much to do, but you stayed with me because I was so upset. You said you needed to be with me.”
“Yeah, I remember,” he said. He began to re-tie his tie. “Is there a point to this story?”
You’re not my brother, I wanted to say, but “I need you, Nathan,” was what came out of my mouth.
Nathan smiled, but it was a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Great. That’s great, Pete.” He tousled my hair. “I need you too.” He swept out of the room.
I had my answer. Sure, he remembered that day. Remembered how he’d left immediately after giving me the news. Remembered how he’d refused to stay and comfort me, lost in his own grief and guilt. Nathan would never have forgotten any of that. This meant the man who’d been fucking me for weeks wasn’t Nathan. All this time, he hadn’t been Nathan. And if he wasn’t Nathan, that could only mean… Something I’d known already, something I’d been learning for weeks: Nathan was dead. I went through all this for nothing, because Nathan was dead.
I retreated to the corner of my room. I would fix this. Whoever the man was-the man who wasn’t Nathan-I would find a way to make it right. If Nathan was dead, then every stab of rage and hurt I’d felt in the last few weeks, every urge to lash out that I’d repressed because I would forgive Nathan anything, every one of those could now find an outlet. I had no reason to hold back anymore. With Nathan gone, I had nothing left to lose. I would find a way to kill the man wearing Nathan’s body.
On to Part Two!
Title: New Wounds, Part I (formerly known as "Holding On")
Summary: Set in an AU version of the Five Years Ago universe (make a left turn before Past Hiro arrives on the scene). Peter learns to deal with captivity and his “brother.”
Pairing: Sylar-masquerading-as-Nathan/Peter, Nathan/Peter implied
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Spoilers for Five Years Gone. Graphic violence, harsh language, slash, dubious consent. Dark fic. You’ve been warned.
I remember the first time I thought there was something really wrong with Nathan. He looked no different, although I hadn’t seen him in person for almost two years. I expected him to look… I don’t know. More presidential, maybe. Matt Parkman, who’d been running my interrogation, leapt to his feet when Nathan burst into the room, attended by three secret service agents. Seeing him here, I felt a familiar push-pull thrill: half frustration that Nathan was coming to rescue me, and half-relief at being rescued. But Nathan didn’t speak to me. Instead, he said to Matt, “Any progress?”
Matt shook his head. “He hasn’t told us anything useful, Mister President.”
Nathan looked me over with a derisive head-to-toe sweep that didn’t meet my eyes. “If he doesn’t cooperate, hurt him,” he told Matt, and swept back out of the room.
Matt, who until now had confined his menacing to the verbal variety, smiled at me. I was simply confused. The Nathan I remembered would never let his brother be hurt, if for no other reason than that I belonged to him, and he didn’t like other people touching his property. I knew things had been different between us since the bomb, but we were still brothers, weren’t we? If we were, though, blood had clearly ceased to mean as much to Nathan as it used to.
After that, it didn’t take me long to cooperate. It was ridiculously easy to hurt me, after all. They didn’t have to be careful. I remember the first time Matt shot me in the knee. I wished I were dead, I wished I could actually die, the pain was that bad. Digging the butt of the gun into the wound, he said, “Tell me where they are, and this can all stop.” He must have said that twenty times, his voice horribly calm and reasonable, but sharp enough to break through the red haze of pain. He kept this up until I died.
I couldn’t die for long, of course. My powers didn’t work in this room, an ugly white box with one glass wall. They must have had a way to reverse whatever blocked my powers just long enough for me to come back to life, every time. Whether it was some new technology or that damned Haitian, I never knew. Not that it mattered: trapped and powerless was trapped and powerless, no matter how it was happening. They could kill me as many times as they needed to. I stopped counting after twelve.
After I told them everything, life improved a little. Matt hurt me a few more times, just to be sure he’d gotten everything, or maybe because he’d grown addicted to the sound of my hoarse screams, the sick, wet sound of a heavy blow crushing a joint. There were a few blessed days of nothingness, in which no one came to torture me or ask me questions. It was then that my mind began to work again, and I came to realize the absolute hopelessness of my situation. I had told them everything, and I knew with a certain, sinking dread that they’d been able to use what I told them. Niki was dead. Hiro, Hana, dead. Probably Noah, too. I wasn’t sure if they’d actually kill Claire, her being the president’s illegitimate daughter and all. Maybe that was reason enough to wipe her out, assuming that they could find a way. I was reasonably certain they could find a way.
This was the point at which I started weighing my options. If my friends were gone: dead, now, even those I hadn’t killed in New York… If Nathan, the most important person of all, had abandoned me… But I couldn’t believe that, yet. Nathan had to be playing some angle. I just had to wait and see what he would do.
So when Nathan came back to me, I’d been expecting it. I wasn’t sure how long it was after Matt left for the last time. Days, I’m sure. It was hard to tell day from night in the constant brightness of my little white box, but I slept when I was tired, and no one bothered me.
I didn’t hear when the door opened; I was locked in my own little world when I suddenly became aware of Nathan smiling down at me. He wore a very nice suit.
“I’m glad you decided to cooperate,” he said. His secret service escort wasn’t with him today: he was alone. I was sitting on the floor in the corner of my cell, knees drawn up to my chest.
“Hi,” I said, not realizing until I’d said it how ludicrous a thing it was to say. I pushed off of the floor, wrenching myself upright. I felt stiff, sore; I must have been sitting in that corner a long time. I stood looking at him, and he at me. Apparently, he expected me to say something. I didn’t really want to beg for help. Always, always, Nathan knew what needed to be done. Always. I’d come to him, tell him what was happening, and he would do something about it. It may not be the thing I wanted him to do, but he always tried to help. I never had to ask. I never had to beg.
Now Nathan offered no advice, no commands. He just watched.
“Are you going to help me?” I asked finally.
Nathan smiled: an amused, smug smile. “Why should I?”
I was puzzled. The way to understand Nathan was to understand his goal; there was something he wanted me to do. Act a certain way, do a certain thing. That was how you got what you wanted from him; pay attention to what he wanted. He wasn’t giving me any hints here. Why should he help me? An excellent question. After a moment, I decided I should try an answer I knew would appeal to him.
Nathan wasn’t expecting the kiss, I guess. He pulled back quickly and stared at me for a long time, his smile vanished and replaced with calculating coldness. “Peter,” he said. “You still have the power to surprise me.”
I waited. Nathan said nothing more, did nothing more, but he didn’t leave. There was still something he wanted me to do. “Are you going to help me or what?” I asked.
“Do I have a reason to help you?” he asked, all infuriating aloofness.
I thought I had it figured out then. I had put the right key in the lock; now I had to turn it. I watched him for a second, and when he kept looking at me expectantly, I pulled off my shirt. Something flashed in Nathan’s eyes-surprise, or maybe just interest-as he watched me drop my pants to the ground as well and turn away from him, bracing myself against the wall.
I heard him move, closing my eyes as I felt him loom behind me. He placed one hand on my back, tracing the line of my spine. Next he ran his hands down my sides, leaning in close to my ear as if to inhale my scent. Then he was against me, the soft, expensive cloth of his suit against my back, his arms wrapped around me, his face buried in my neck. “Is this the way you usually get my attention?” he murmured.
“What else do you want me to do?” I asked, and winced at the desperate edge to my voice. Submission. That was the way to bring out the protector in Nathan. Be vulnerable. Need his help. I’d told myself I wouldn’t beg, but I was getting close.
“This is fine,” he whispered. “This is good.”
He held me for a moment, his chest pressed to my back. I could feel him breathing. I turned within the circle of his arms, facing him. I kissed him again, and he let me, but it was different than usual. He didn’t demand, didn’t take what had been his for years. It seemed he’d forgotten all that had happened between us, all we’d done together. I felt a faint nervous flutter at that idea: that I was forgettable to Nathan.
I had no back-up plan, though, so I’d have to make Nathan remember why I was worth helping. I kissed him again, this time pressing against him. Pushing a knee gently between his legs, I could feel his hardness. At least I still had that effect on him. I pulled out of the kiss, resting my forehead against his. “Well?” I asked.
Nathan let go of me and took a step back. He unbuttoned his pants, let them fall, pushed down briefs-and since when had it been that instead of boxers? Maybe it was a Presidential thing. Then he just waited, unhurried, for me to make the next move.
I spit into my palm, took him in my hand. Nathan stared at me as I worked, and his eyes were so calculating I couldn’t meet them. I watched my hand instead, concentrated on the hot, heavy feel of him, on firm strokes pulling gently, the way he’d always liked it. Nathan grabbed my wrist to stop me and pulled me around to face away from him again. A firm hand on my shoulder guided me to the floor. He knelt behind me and fisted a hand in my hair, dragging my head down to the floor so my ass was raised obscenely.
I heard him spit, heard the sound of flesh on flesh as he stroked himself. Then the head of his cock was at my entrance, one hand gripping my hip. I had expected Nathan to be more careful-he’d always cared about his own comfort, even if he didn’t always give his full attention to mine, but he’d made no effort to prepare me at all. “Nathan?”
“Shh,” he hissed in my ear, pushing into me, almost dry but for a little saliva.
My pain tolerance was high, but it was different knowing I wasn’t going to heal immediately, with my powers not working. I gritted my teeth, but I couldn’t help a tense whimper as he shoved brutally into me, one thrust to take him just inside, that first sharp-painful push past tight muscle. “Shh,” he repeated, and he stroked my belly gently as I trembled, trapped between him and the floor.
I tried to relax, tried to make it easier, but it burned, and when Nathan moved to go deeper I cried out again. It had never been like this before with Nathan. Yes, it was always about power, always a bit of a mind-fuck, but this felt different. This felt cruel.
I suddenly regretted not doing this face-to-face, because now I was constantly repeating to myself, It’s okay, it’s Nathan, whatever he does is okay because you know he loves you, deep down, in the end, he does what he does because he loves you. If I didn’t know better I’d think it was a stranger on top of me, inside me, each brutal thrust different from my memories of the feel of Nathan, the rhythm of his body.
Once he was all the way in, he held still for a moment, right hand still clutching my hip, left hand tracing swirling patterns my chest. “Always wondered what this’d be like,” he whispered.
What the hell was that supposed to mean? I tried to pull back to ask him, but then Nathan began to move, and I concentrated on breathing, on fighting through the pain, on not hating him. Each long, smooth stroke burned inside of me, and Nathan kept it up, not going slower or faster, just relentless, like clockwork, whispering “Shhh” whenever I cried out.
At last, when I thought another moment of pain might break me, he clutched my hips with bruising force, shuddering as he spilled into me. He pressed against my back, then, still buried inside me, and wrapped his arms around my waist. “Good boy, Peter,” he whispered. Then he pulled out, the loss so swift and painful it made me gasp. He straightened his clothes and he left. He didn’t say anything about helping me, and I couldn’t ask. I knew Petrellis kept promises, but after that, I wasn’t sure there was anything left of the brother I’d known, if I could count on anything I knew about him to be correct.
Nathan came to me whenever he needed a lift. Fucking me into the ground seemed to cheer him up. He barely spoke to me. I promised myself I wouldn’t ask him for help again, but I couldn’t stop speaking to him. The brother I loved was in there somewhere, and the fact that he kept coming back to see me meant that he still loved me too, at least in some small way.
Once, when he was on his way out, I tried to ask him about my friends. “What happened to Hiro?” I asked. He hit me, the back of his hand flying against my cheek, and walked out without a word. Strangely, that was the thing that at last made me sure something was wrong with my brother.
The next time Nathan came to see me, I spoke to him again. After we fucked, I took his hand gently, respectfully, before he could walk out. “Nathan?”
He smiled at me. For some reason he liked to hear his name, to hear me whisper it when we kissed, to hear me scream it when he was inside me. It seemed to have won me a moment of indulgence, at least. “What, Peter?”
“Remember the day Dad died?” I asked.
He narrowed his eyes at me, but he didn’t leave. “Yeah.”
“You remember how you stayed with me that day?”
“Sure,” Nathan said, buttoning up his pants distractedly.
I began to feel ill. “You had so much to do, but you stayed with me because I was so upset. You said you needed to be with me.”
“Yeah, I remember,” he said. He began to re-tie his tie. “Is there a point to this story?”
You’re not my brother, I wanted to say, but “I need you, Nathan,” was what came out of my mouth.
Nathan smiled, but it was a half-smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Great. That’s great, Pete.” He tousled my hair. “I need you too.” He swept out of the room.
I had my answer. Sure, he remembered that day. Remembered how he’d left immediately after giving me the news. Remembered how he’d refused to stay and comfort me, lost in his own grief and guilt. Nathan would never have forgotten any of that. This meant the man who’d been fucking me for weeks wasn’t Nathan. All this time, he hadn’t been Nathan. And if he wasn’t Nathan, that could only mean… Something I’d known already, something I’d been learning for weeks: Nathan was dead. I went through all this for nothing, because Nathan was dead.
I retreated to the corner of my room. I would fix this. Whoever the man was-the man who wasn’t Nathan-I would find a way to make it right. If Nathan was dead, then every stab of rage and hurt I’d felt in the last few weeks, every urge to lash out that I’d repressed because I would forgive Nathan anything, every one of those could now find an outlet. I had no reason to hold back anymore. With Nathan gone, I had nothing left to lose. I would find a way to kill the man wearing Nathan’s body.
On to Part Two!