Slave Verse 3, Chapter 5: Poisoned
A/N: Many of the incidents I recount here in Peter's life are drawn from Trekker's fanfic of Peter/Nathan. She had a lot of stories involving them and I've used them liberally to populate this AU. You can find them at http://unexpectedplaces.us (assuming FFn allows the link to come through, you'll need to remove the spaces and use a period for "dot"). It's weird that so much of what she had Nathan doing seemed hot and sexy in her stories, but when you step back and actually think about what kind of person would really do that… and what effect it would have on Peter… ew.
Oh, and because I've been thinking about the fact that I haven't given warnings on my fics lately, here's some warnings: Mentions of child sexual abuse and underage sex, mentions of sexual abusiveness, lack of actual sex in the chapter, bad language. (It feels silly to give warnings at this point. If you've read this far… sheesh.)
"So… your plan is for me to look like Nathan most of the time and assume the role of president, right?"
"Right." Peter sounded distracted, but he was probably paying more attention to Sylar than to what he was doing.
Sylar wasn't real sure what Peter was doing. They were both hanging in the air near the tops of the palm trees on the island and Peter was looking over the foliage very carefully. "I'm going to need to know how he acts," Sylar said.
Peter grunted and didn't say anything, so Sylar went on, "For example, do I get to kiss you?"
Peter's head came up, peeking over the patch of fronds he was sorting through. "As Nathan?"
"Yes," Sylar said. Peter stared at him for a long while, so Sylar added, "It doesn't have to be yes, Peter."
Peter went back to his task, whatever that was. "Yes, you can." His voice was a little terse, but not enough to put Sylar off. It did make him uncertain.
"Well… it's just… I didn't know… what with the way he… Does… Did he ever show you affection?"
"Yeah." Peter moved on to a different tree, relaxing again.
Sylar stroked his chin. He needed a shave, badly. It was on the day's agenda, but right after gentle, languorous and fantastic morning sex that Peter hadn't been terribly into but had put up with, had come breakfast and right after breakfast Peter had been looking at one of the pamphlets while Sylar cleaned up the kitchen and then Peter had lifted off the balcony without explanation and Sylar had followed him and here he was - looking for something in the trees.
Sylar asked, "Was it ever real?"
Peter looked up at him, his eyes narrowing slightly. Sylar met his gaze with a blank, open expression. He wasn't sure if he had a right to this information, but Peter knew everything about him - not just his memories like Charlene could pull up, but his thoughts and feelings about those memories. Sylar hadn't reciprocated that little empathy power of Lydia's because frankly, he wasn't sure he could handle what he'd see. It was better to take it in small doses, verbally.
"It was always real, Sylar," Peter said quietly, moving down to the overlapping, almost woven bark of the palm tree and beginning to examine the crevices carefully.
"Real? People don't… they don't do that sort of stuff to people they love."
"Didn't say he loved me. I said it was real. Though he loved me too."
Sylar exhaled sharply, wondering what the difference was and doubly wondering what the difference was if, as Peter said, they were both true. "When did it start?"
Peter slapped at his side, then looked down at some bug that had landed on him. He brushed it off. "When did what start? Him loving me? Probably when I was born."
"No." Sylar looked away and then back. "I mean when did he start… abusing you? Sexually."
Peter started to run his hand through his hair, then thought better of it and wiped off his hand a little more thoroughly on the bark in case it still had dead bug on it. "That's… you know, that's really open to interpretation. I guess clinically it started when I was twelve, when he talked to me about the birds and bees and he jacked me off."
"Wha-?" Sylar blinked and caught himself, then asked anyway, "Um… wait, what?"
Peter looked over at him and didn't bother to repeat himself. Sylar had heard him clearly. He just didn't understand.
Peter explained, "There was some touching and the occasional tease until I was fifteen. Then I finally got him to have sex with me. He was kind of drunk at one of mom and dad's parties. I was too. He blew me. That's all I wanted, but by the end of that he was pretty worked up and it's not like I put up much of a fuss until he had me down. Even then I wasn't going to get him in trouble." Peter shrugged like this was old news. But he'd stopped whatever it was he'd been doing with the trees. He was just staring off into the distance now.
"How long did that go on? I mean… did you… just stay away from him after that?"
"Stay away from him?" Peter laughed. "I was fucking fifteen, Sylar. If you'd had someone when you were fifteen who would suck you off and fuck you, would you have stayed away?"
"But… didn't he hurt you?"
"Fuck no. I mean, yeah, sometimes, but not bad. He wouldn't leave marks, after all. We didn't have abilities. It was just normal fooling around."
Sylar considered the inadvisability of saying what was on his mind: Normal fooling around doesn't include screwing your brother, or getting screwed by him, when you're fifteen and he's twenty-seven. And so he just hung in the air silently with a disapproving look on his face.
Peter huffed and went back to searching the leaves at the top of the trees, digging around at the base of the fronds where they joined the trunk. He kept talking though. "We kept in touch while I was in college and then nursing school. He'd come by or I'd look him up. We used hotels, mostly. Then there was that time in his car in the parking garage." Peter chuckled. "I was in drag. That was so hot."
Peter wasn't looking at Sylar, so he didn't see him clench his teeth and tense so much that his hands shook. His silence apparently encouraged Peter to go on. "He had me break up with a guy once while he was fucking me. Poor Scott. He really didn't deserve that, but Nathan always was an ass."
"Wait… just wait. You were having sex with someone and Nathan barged in and made you break up with him?"
Peter looked back over his shoulder at Sylar and laughed. "No… um… no." He shook his head and breathed out, then said, "I was dating Scott. Nathan got jealous, so he tied me up, fucked me, called Scott on the phone and had me break up with him. While he was fucking me."
Sylar was silent again. All the moreso because Peter honestly seemed to think that was funny and endearing of Nathan, rather than psychotic. He was beginning to have second thoughts about being with Peter, though he didn't entertain them very seriously. He suspected the relationship might not be… healthy. Then again, he was a serial killer, so was it really right to judge?
While he was pondering that, Peter's mood shifted to morose. He said, "I think that was when it started. That's what you were really asking for, wasn't it? He started to get real controlling after that - not just who I could see, but what I could wear and where I could go." He shook his head and sighed. "I finished nursing school, but just barely. There was all that crap with his senate election. When he learned he could fly, that kind of put him off for a while and I didn't see him much during his campaign. Then I got my ability."
Peter was silent for a while, his eyes dull. "He came back for me, there at Kirby Plaza. I wish he hadn't. Even though I know I wouldn't have died and a lot of other people would have… I owed him after that. He never let me forget it. I think you were dead at the time, so I don't think you saw him. Or whatever it was that happened to you."
Peter turned and his brows furrowed. "Whatever happened to you there, anyway?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Sylar said quietly, still trying to figure out what to do with this information about Peter's life. On the positive side, if Peter was willing to put up with Nathan, then it kind of explained why pairing up with someone like Sylar wasn't that disagreeable to him.
Peter looked distracted for a moment and Sylar realized that between Lydia's empathy ability and his eidetic memory, Peter could figure out anything he wanted to know about Sylar whenever he wanted. A few moments later Peter said, "Huh," and went back to his search in the tree. Sylar frowned at him.
Peter said, "We didn't agree on stuff - Nathan and I. It was a kind of philosophical thing. We fought around for the next year or so while all that other crap went down - the early stuff. After he killed dad… you knew that, right?"
Sylar nodded. He had his sources for information. Peter went on, "So after that I had ability draining too and… I don't know," he waved one arm in an exaggerated, juvenile expression of drama, "I got depressed about the family and everything and what I'd become. Nathan kept me drugged up most of the time and I thought it was because I couldn't always control my powers, but really I couldn't control my powers because I was stoned so much. Once I got away, it started to clear up, but I was addicted pretty hard to that crap he'd been giving me. Took a while to shake it. I still want it sometimes.
"Then he got in charge of Homeland Security and I tried to fight him. You know how that went." Actually, Sylar didn't, but he was listening carefully. "It was once he got me in that camp that it really went bad. He was having a lot of trouble holding it all together and he thought I would help him… if I was just properly motivated. And controlled. I guess, because of all the stuff he'd done to me before, with the sex and the relationships and the drugs, that it wasn't that big of a deal to have Kelly come in and give me mental commands to obey him, not to hurt him, not to betray him, put his needs above my own, that sort of crap.
"It just seemed like- ow!" He jerked his hand back and bent forward to see what had hurt him. Peter examined his hand for a moment, then went back to checking the old, dead fronds he'd been sorting through. "It just seemed like prudent stuff to do. Made sense. And that was pretty much how he got to be president. For a while he had me drain people's abilities as they came in and they kept a lid on it, pretending to the public that abilities didn't exist, because after anyone saw me, they didn't. That had a whole lot to do with him becoming president. I thought I was helping. I mean, they were still alive, right? And after I drained them, they were free, right?"
Sylar said nothing. He'd heard a great deal of Peter using his abilities in this way. He'd never judged it and he didn't now. He'd assumed Peter was doing it to deny him victims, but he supposed it was possible Peter had motivations that didn't revolve around himself.
"California was my fault," Peter said, a sad, hollow note to his voice. Sylar tilted his head in confusion. Peter explained, "Samuel started saying he'd kick my ass and he had this mob of specials to help him do it. Nathan had me alter the guy's girlfriend so she dumped him and he… well, Samuel kind of overreacted. That wasn't the only thing Nathan had done to set him off, but it was enough. After the thing with California, Samuel's allies all dropped him like a hot rock and I took him out. Once they were split up, we went after them piecemeal."
Sylar blinked. It was close to the story he'd heard, but he hadn't known Nathan or Peter had had a role in provoking Samuel. For obvious reasons, that part hadn't been offered for public consumption. He thought about what he'd do if someone stole Peter from him. He felt an uncomfortable sympathy for Samuel. Still, he offered, "If he did it, then it's not your fault."
"Yes, it is. There were other things I could have done. There's always been… other things I could have done." Peter exhaled and gave Sylar an angry look through narrowed eyes. Sylar's brows drew together, not understanding what he'd done to deserve the hairy eyeball.
Peter scowled and turned away from him, leaning forward and putting his face closer to the vegetation. "There it is." He picked up some small, wriggling creature with telekinesis. Sylar drifted closer. Peter lowered the insect onto his hand. The second it touched his skin, he vanished. Sylar blinked at the suddenly empty space where Peter had been.
"Peter?" That was stupid, he thought. He's gone. He can't hear me. "Damnit." He didn't think Peter had gone anywhere important, but he was gone regardless and Sylar had actually been really interested in the conversation. Or the monologue. Maybe I should have been saying more? He'd heard bits and pieces from different people about Peter's role in things, but to hear it direct from the source was much more reliable.
Sylar internally scrolled through his abilities, looking for the one that had originally belonged to Molly Walker. He found it, used it, and determined that Peter had gone no further than the interior of the bungalow.
Sylar flew down. "What are you doing?" Peter had a bowl out and was looking at the tiny creature inside of it. Sylar looked too. It wasn't an insect - it was an arachnid. A scorpion, specifically. It was reddish brown and about an inch long. It looked pissed, if the agitated motions it was making were any indication.
Peter's expression was much harder to read. His voice was uninflected as he said, "The brochure said the venom from one of these can kill a man in twelve hours." He looked at his finger. It was beginning to swell noticeably. "Hurts like a bitch."
"Peter!" Sylar reached out and took Peter's hand, looking at it with concern. "Heal it."
Peter gave a smug, self-satisfied smile and said simply, "No."