Part Nine: Mid March, 1997
I... oh my god you guys. We are so sorry.
College ate my life.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS PLEASE DON'T HATE US. D:
Part Nine
March 17th, 1997
There is something about always looking ones absolute best. Except better. With new shoes.
It's a good thing Petrellis can afford that sort of thing.
Angela smiles – just barely; there's really no need to be overtly expressive, ever – and straightens her jacket.
"Are you boys ready?" she calls up the stairs.
Of course Nathan is ready, practically strutting down the stairs like some stallion in his suit.
"Peter?"
"Coming, mom," he says, appearing in the doorway. "But Gabe's not here yet."
"I don't understand why that friend of yours has to come anyway," Nathan blurts out.
At least he keeps his stoic Petrelli face on.
"Yeah, well, I don't understand why we're going sightseeing in New York when we live here."
"Don't be silly, Peter. It's a wonderful day for travel." One can never straighten out ones jacket too many times.
"Travel, sure, but why not… Spain, Norway, Mongolia?"
The doorbell rings, cutting Peter's question off and making an answer out of the question.
"Well, regardless, if we're doing this, I get to take Gabe along."
She watches him open the door to reveal a tall, gangly, awkward boy who looks too big for his clothes.
The nurturing, pitying side of Angela – there really isn't much of one – wants to take him through a finishing school.
Damn good thing there isn't much of that side.
"Hello Gabriel. So nice of you to join us."
He looks uncomfortable, twitchy.
"Shall we?"
***
Gabriel hates long, awkward car rides.
Gabriel hates long, awkward car rides with people he doesn't really know and who seem to hate him just for the mere fact of his sad, pathetic existence even worse.
Awkward, he knows, because he's spent the majority of the ride in the backseat with Peter trying to come up with a formula for just how awkward it is.
(x/y) + z + (h/t) + s + a = A
Where,
x is the number of non-relatives,
y, the number of non-relative friends,
z, the number of relatives you hate,
h, hours spent driving,
t, time spent talking,
s, size of the car
a, how awkward of a person you are already
and A is the overall level of awkward resulting.
So far, for himself, he's calculated out a good level of 3,479,182.39.
Don't ask him where the decimals came from.
"I don't feel like a third wheel, Peter," he whispers, leaning over to him in his seat. "I don't even feel like the spare. I feel like the road."
He gives a pained look, and Peter pats his thigh.
Perhaps to comfort.
There is an Epic Fail sort of feeling about the whole ordeal, though, that Gabe can't seem to throw off, no matter how much he really would like to.
"They love you. Really, you can relax."
Gabriel makes a sound that may have sounded like something akin to the cross between the mating call of the Great Northern Elk and the birthing cry of a cow.
He isn't even sure whether the former exists.
"Why isn't dad coming, anyway, mom?" Peter calls out from the backseat, and Gabriel is almost grateful that he can't see her face. Something in his gut is screaming something about super-powered laser eyes that can see through his clothes, his skin, his soul.
He thinks of it as looking directly at the sun. Brilliant, but deadly.
"Arthur is meeting with friends. They have some things to discuss. Nothing you should worry your pretty little head about."
Yes, Peter's head is pretty, but that is hardly what's on Gabriel's mind right now.
Gabriel wants to ask where exactly they're going.
Keyword: wants.
It's usually that way with him, anyway. Really, he's lucky his mother agreed to let him spend the day with Peter.
As if reading his mind, Peter turns to him curiously and asks, "how come your mother is letting you stay out today, anyway?"
Gabriel sighs. He really was hoping that this would not come up.
"She's picketing a Joan Osbourne concert."
"What?" Peter's brother snaps, turning his head ever so slowly, his brow furrowing in that Petrelli way.
It's so strange. Peter is so passive – relatively, of course, his brother is so aggressive, and their mother is so passive-aggressive. As if she needed to spread her gift, dividing it equally among her two kids.
Somehow, he doesn't think it ended up all that fair.
Doesn't matter, as the brother's voice jolts him back again. "That's ridiculous, why would someone picket Joan Osbourne?"
"One of us," Gabriel says miserably, voice small, feeling like he should sort of slip into the seat right about now.
"Why are you sliding down the seat?" Peter asks curiously, and he sits up straight again.
"Leather. Ah, uuh, slippery. Especially when wet."
"So she's picketing Joan Osbourne," the irate voice reverberates from the front seat again, "because of the hit single One Of Us? Are you serious?"
"My mother doesn't want me to think that God could be the creepy guy on the subway touching himself."
"I… there is no proper response to that," the brother says, taking out his cloth tissue and rubbing at his nose.
Who still has cloth tissues, really??
"You've been on the subway, Gabe? I didn't think your mom would ever let you."
"It's, uh, a long story."
"I'm sure it is, dear, but we're here, so I'm afraid that your ideas of civilized conversation are going to have to wait until a little later. Perhaps when I'm out of earshot."
***
She slips from the safety of the room daddy has set up for her – who needs safety, anyway? – and listens attentively. The man talking to daddy is tall, much bigger than him, and yet he visibly slouches, giving off the appearance of wanting to appear much smaller than he really is. Much more insignificant.
Maybe he feels that way.
Maybe daddy made him feel that way, she thinks with a smile no almost-fourteen-year-old should ever have, and wonders whether she could make him feel that way, too. She's even smaller, after all. Small and dainty, like a flower everyone is too afraid to harm, to crush.
She's much less fragile than she looks, and she knows the value of information.
So she listens, even though all she really wants to do is stalk around the corner and demand to just be told forthright all of the interesting shit that's going on.
Patience.
She hates patience.
"We found it on assignment. Fisherman said it washed ashore."
"What are you doing talking to an insignificant fisherman, Osbourne?"
"I-I thought you'd be—"
"Happy? About the find, yes. About your inattentive attitude, no, not particularly. Go on," he tells the man, who looks about as brow-beaten as a poodle after a bath, and she watches him leave with another secret smile.
Serves him right, she thinks, for disobeying daddy.
Oh, but seeing the man's forlorn, pathetic expression as he's lectured is hardly the prize beheld in this particular patience. It's the trinket daddy is holding in his hands now, flipping somewhat hastily through the pages, brow furrowed.
He almost looks… frightened by what's written in there, and she's more than certain that if she tries to lean around the corner any more, she'll fall over, slip, do something wrong, and her spying will be caught in the act.
If you really want to go out on assignments, sweetheart, you're going to have to remember a few things. Learn them, study them, live them like they're your air. No matter what you're doing, someone probably doesn't want you doing it. So make sure you don't ever get caught.
It's her duty to the company to not get caught. It's the only way to make daddy proud.
The shock and fear in daddy's eyes tell her something. They tell her that this is pure gold, and that she has to have it. There's power in fear, power in important things.
And something about that ratty old journal just screams important to her like that blond in his cell just screams for a few thousand good volts or two.
"Noah," daddy calls out, walking down the hallway and away from her for a moment, and she takes that time to dash to the door of his office, just a few feet, slipping inside the room and listening at the door.
She can still hear him.
Can hear him when he's coming closer to the door, making her turn around and run to hide under his desk.
Setting down the journal for a moment – don't get caught, don't get caught – she can hear the man daddy called Noah in the doorway – she doesn't like him – trying to get her heart to stop racing.
"Noah, would you mind talking to Osbourne and Morgan about insubordination? I think I want to have a little chat with our resident first man."
"It would be my pleasure."
A moment later the door closes behind them, still talking, and she feels herself breathe again as she steps out from under the table.
She grins.
There it is, brown, worn, weathered, and precious.
Elle is like the resident magpie of the facility.
***
"It's a boat," Gabriel says, feeling pathetic and probably looking the part.
"Actually, it's a ferry," Angela Petrelli contradicts, and Gabriel swallows hard.
It doesn't make him feel any better, boat, ferry, or walrus.
"Peter," he says, his voice hushed, eyes wide, tugging on his sleeve as they walk on board the ferry. "Peter, I really don't want to ride on a walrus!"
"This is a ferry," Peter reassures, nodding wisely.
Gabriel winces.
***
They're moving a bit like… ants. Except far less organized.
Like Star Trek fans.
"This is what being a Trekkie must feel like," Peter says, making a lopsided face.
Stupid face.
"I like Star Trek," Gabriel says, seemingly hurt, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly and bumping his elbow into the woman beside him, promptly gushing apologies. "I… it's very logical," he says, a moment later when he feels a bit more composed and a lot more flushed.
"More like crazed women at an 8am after-Christmas sale at Macy's," Nathan growls, frowning. "This is ridiculous, the way this line is moving. There's no organization here."
"No one to lead them," his mother says in a hushed tone, and Peter shrugs.
"The boat is… swaying."
Gabriel looks seasick already. If that's at all possible.
Perhaps it is. Peter has found by now that… Gabriel is sort of his own Guinness World Record book. He's sort of fascinating, in an upside down, confusing, pathetic sort of way, although Peter is relatively certain of the fact that Gabriel doesn't know it, and definitely wouldn't believe him if he told him.
"You really are something, Gabe," he says instead, giving his own version of a lopsided pained face.
It only takes them another twenty-two minutes and thirty-seven seconds until they reach the upper deck – Gabe was keeping track – and finally they get to take their seats.
"Where are we going, ma?" Nathan asks, and Peter looks at the ocean. Swaying.
"The Statue of Liberty," she says matter-of-factly, crossing her legs at the ankles.
"Whyyyy," Gabe moans, clutching his stomach, and Peter rubs up and down his back. He really does feel bad for him. He's sort of… well, going with the record book thing, he's his own Guinness World Record Book Of Fail.
He is Murphy's Law. If there is something that can go wrong in any given situation, Gabriel Gray will suffer to full extent.
Maybe he is Murphy.
"Maybe you were adopted," Peter wonders aloud, and Gabriel shakes his head.
"I've wondered that a lot," he says from down below. "You know, you'd think, right, but… I honestly don't think so. I wish."
"I could start calling you Murphy."
Gabriel never gets to ask the inevitable question, as the boat – ferry, right, sorry – lurches as it starts to move, and he groans, leaning his head further forward between his legs.
Peter is pretty certain that he's going to hurl.
Or eventually turn into a human pretzel.
***
Nathan feels rather fidgety, which is odd in its own right. Nathan is always composed, never fidgety or even restless. Unsettling, that.
"How's that… girlfriend of yours, Pete?" he asks, trying to ignore how he is stroking up and down the back of that strange friends' of his.
"She's non-existent," Peter says almost nonchalantly, intent on staring away and out at the water. "Yours?"
"Never was one."
"Ah." Pause. "You really know how to commit."
"He'll learn," their mother interjects from out of nowhere, and Nathan inwardly winces.
The cloth tissue emerges again, and he dabs his nose. "Honestly, Pete, I'm not even thirty yet."
"You're turning thirty this year," Peter says over the sound of the groans from below, looking indignant.
"Yes, well, you're only sixteen, Pete, what would you know about that?" he asks, adjusting his cuffs.
"I just turned seventeen. My birthday? Remember? Pens and… and linens and things?"
"Right."
The conversation is cut short – as if it would have lasted any longer, really – when their mother clears her throat and stands.
Liberty Island may never be the same again after that kid has relieved himself on it a couple times.
***
"I didn't know it was possible to feel colors."
"Are you feeling better, Gabe?" Peter asks, concern lining his features as they walk.
"I don't know. But I feel… distinctively green."
"At least he's stopped throwing up. Grass may never grow in those spots again." Dab. Dab dab.
Gabriel feels strangely sick again.
Gabriel feels like being strangely sick all over Peter's brother's suit.
Instead, he shields his eyes from the sun and Angela Petrelli, and looks up at the Statue.
"I should have probably brought sunscreen," he laments aloud, making a face.
"You're not going to burn from being outside for a little bit."
"You have no idea."
"Let's go see the backside, yeah?"
***
There is nothing particularly exciting about looking at the backside of a statue. Peter is pretty certain that Nathan checked at one point whether he could see up her robe at all, only to complain that the Statue was just a fad to draw in commercialism.
Peter can't argue with that. Not when there are about two-dozen Asians – he hasn't checked all of them, but they certainly look like Asians congregated in a huddle like worker-bees – cameras out and flashing away picture after picture after picture.
"I'm hungry," Gabe says, and Peter throws him a confused, wide-eyed look.
"You're what?"
"I just turned my stomach inside out several times, it's completely empty."
"And you want us to fill it so that you can do it again?" Nathan asks incredulously, and Peter flushes.
"I'm kind of hungry, too, actually," he lies through his teeth, and they're off.
***
She's read most of it by the end of that day, and when daddy comes to get her from her room, she doesn't say anything, doesn't even complain, doesn't give herself away at all.
There's power in secrets. If you get to have a secret, keep it, treasure it, because you've come this far already. You haven't given yourself away, you didn't get caught… now you have to know when to say when, and practice patience. A spilled secret at the wrong time can go very badly.
She learns. She listens. Daddy would be so proud if only he knew what she was doing, hoarding secrets close to her heart like trophies.
There's something contradictory about this truth, though. If he is to never find out… how can he be proud of her?
The thought bothers her, and she doesn't think on it any longer, discarding it with the other repressed things.
Noah Bennet has told her more than once that she's going to grow up to be Very Messed Up In The Head, whatever he means by that.
Another thought to be shoved aside.
So she leaves the journal with all its secrets, all its wonders, in her secret place, where she stashes all of her shiny, valuable possessions. Like a raccoon, in a way.
And daddy wonders why the air conditioning in the room doesn't work so well anymore. The thought makes her smile.
She doesn't even mention anything when they're sitting in front of the fireplace, fire crackling away like the own power contained within her.
Her hand crackles, a fight for dominance in a way, and she smirks.
"Elle, that's not safe, you're going to set something on fire again."
Her treasures are her freedom. Her only freedom, she thinks, and pushes that thought aside as well.
What could she possibly want with unpleasant thoughts?
***
"Mmm, French fries. My mom won't ever let me have any, this is fantastic."
Fish and chips all around for the boys, and a fruit salad for Angela Petrelli. Gabriel thinks that the way she pierces the red piece of melon onto her fork looks rather like she's digging hungrily into human flesh.
Unsettling, that.
"Ketchup?" Peter offers, and Gabriel pales.
"Have you ever noticed how much ketchup resembles human blood?"
"I…"
Apparently he hasn't. Gabriel finds rather often that… most people have not noticed any of the things he does.
He figures it's good for their sanity a much as his. It's just no good, swarms of people running around in a panic, trying to escape the wrath of janitors everywhere.
His cardigan itches, subtle, but distinct enough to bother him and make him somewhat fidgety.
"Caramel apple?" Peter asks, and he nods wordlessly.
He can feel a sugar-high coming on from a mile away. Combine that with a lethal dose – we are talking about Gabriel Gray here, after all – of fatty, delicious fried things, and you get a fidgety, but very easily excitable boy.
He wonders whether New York has anything to fear.
He vaguely decides on no, when—
"Sweet mother of God what is that?" the brother exclaims, and Gabriel looks in the same direction. "They're like vultures fighting over a pile of carcasses!"
"That's a wonderful image, Nathan, dear," Angela Petrelli says, and Gabriel can feel chills running down his spine.
"No, no, I totally get it," Peter says, talking animatedly with his hands all of a sudden. "See, the seagulls are like… the pirates, right? Andand the pigeons are the ninjas. All… darker and stuff, too. And that gigantic seagull is about to—oh god!"
It's a rather macabre sort of sight, Gabriel has to agree. "We should, perhaps, eat faster, before they run out and make us their next meal," he suggests helpfully, nodding quickly.
"Perhaps," Peter agrees.
"You know, it looks like that giant seagull buttraped that pigeon."
"Did he just shit on that saltshaker?" the brother asks after a long period of silence from both the maternal devil-figure and himself, and Gabriel's eyes go wide.
"This needs to be commemorated," Peter says eagerly, gesturing for pen and paper to his mother before tearing out a piece and scribbling away.
"What are you doing?" Gabriel asks, an interesting mixture of fear and anxiety girding his loins.
"Here, hold on," he says, finishing his last fry and running over to the table.
One (1) commemoration, left on the table where pirate-ninja war took place, to be found by an innocent bystander.
"You're insane."
"I know," Peter says, and grins wide.
***
"It's a sign from God!!!" Gabriel shouts, arms flailing excitedly.
"I—what?" Peter turns and stares.
"No janitors!"
"I think it means no littering."
"No, no, I like my idea much better!"
"I rather like this one, personally. Could get difficult, I imagine."
"Oh my."
"Let's go get a bite to eat, yeah? Anyway, I'm pretty sure that it means—"
"Yes, Nathan, thank you."
***
"You're done already? That was surprisingly fast."
There is something about perfecting the art of… subtle phone conversations. Not giving anything away. Lies covered up by more lies, or, sometimes, just lack of truth. If no one asks any questions, there can be no false answers.
"Yes, well, perhaps you should talk to him again—oh? Really? Well… that's certainly interesting. Tell him to bring it to New York, I'm sure a fair few of us would like to see that up close and personal."
With that, she hangs up the phone and walks back over to where her sons and that boy are standing.
"There's the Museum of Financial History just around the corner. Or we could go see the World Trade Center, or even Wall Street."
"Think we could see the Empire State Building after it gets really dark?"
"We can do that, too," she tells Peter, giving him a small smile.
***
It takes them ten minutes to get back on the road. Nathan's stomach is growling.
"I bet your papayas are excellent, Gabe," he hears Peter say from the backseat, laughing, and frowns.
"What??"
"Look!"
"Nobody serves a better Frank than Gabriel Gray!" Peter declares loudly.
"Let's just pull in here," Nathan grumbles.
***
"What do you mean you can't find it?" he bellows over the phone, pacing the room. "I left it right there, on my desk! This is ridiculous! I have a great deal of people that are going to be very upset when they find out that they aren't getting what they asked for!"
Bob drums the pen against the desk of his study impatiently, frown marring his features.
"Well, I don’t care. You will keep searching or you will lose your job!"
Uttering profanities under his breath, he shakes his head, hanging up.
"Daddy?
"Go away, Elle, I need to think."
Angela Petrelli is not going to be pleased in the least.
***
"We're going to the Museum of Natural History after this, so—"
"Oh god!" Gabe exclaims, eyes wide.
"What, what is it?" Peter asks, rushing to his side, looking through the glass pane before them.
"It's following me!!"
"I… have no idea what to say to that."
"Oh god, that's not even the worst thing," Gabe says, pointing in horror.
"Ooh," Nathan says, scratching his chin, "yeah, you're right, that looks fantastic. I'll have a ham sandwich."
Gabe whimpers helplessly.
***
"It looks like it would be a very long way down," Gabriel says, fingers laced through the cool steel fence separating them from a painful death.
"Yes."
"They say that a penny dropped from up here could kill someone if it hit them on the head," the brother says, and Gabriel makes a face, imagining that very strange impact. Penny, meet head. Penny: 1, Head: 0.
Game over.
"It's also supposed to be a very romantic spot," Angela Petrelli mutters, leaning on the stone barrier, varying heights all around the outside.
"It's like the perfect night to be up here," Peter agrees, nodding. "The only thing that could make it better would be music, maybe."
Gabriel sighs. Music and someone to share the moment with. He looks around.
Angela Petrelli makes him fear for his loins. The brother is radiating tension and making him feel uncomfortable.
His cardigan itches.
Peter… well, Peter is nice. And a bit confusing. But then again, who isn't?
"Maybe you should have brought your girlfriend," he thinks to comment, finding this to be a particularly fitting thing to say.
"Ex-girlfriend. I doubt she would want to be up here with me. Anyway, she seemed more interested in you."
Wait, what?
Be kind, rewind. Gabriel Gray hasn't caught up with your unexpected incredulous statements yet!
He whimpers.
"Wonder why we don't come up here more often," Peter says quietly with a sigh.
"No loved ones to bring," Nathan says, and Peter shakes his head.
"That's not true."
Gabriel feels so detached, removed, as he watches the subtle silent exchange between the two brothers, and his cardigan itches terribly as he turns away. A whole different tense altogether, a sort of tense that makes him feel lonely and forgotten and insignificant.
As if reading his mind, Angela Petrelli clears her throat and does the first thing that hasn't made him want to experiment what a human upon human impact after a drop from the Empire State Building would have.
Gabriel Gray, meet the ground.
The earth always wins.
If he's kept track so far – and he has – the score is something akin to;
Earth: 79,482; Gabriel Gray: -2
He didn't think negatives were possible until he had a rather unpleasant run-in with a polar bear.
Those Coca Cola commercials make them seem so huggable. And that is not a good idea.
"Perhaps we should leave," Angela Petrelli offers, and Gabriel nods, turning away from the view. If Peter and his brother are close behind, he doesn't notice, doesn't turn back to look.
***
College ate my life.
HAPPY CHRISTMAS PLEASE DON'T HATE US. D:
March 17th, 1997
There is something about always looking ones absolute best. Except better. With new shoes.
It's a good thing Petrellis can afford that sort of thing.
Angela smiles – just barely; there's really no need to be overtly expressive, ever – and straightens her jacket.
"Are you boys ready?" she calls up the stairs.
Of course Nathan is ready, practically strutting down the stairs like some stallion in his suit.
"Peter?"
"Coming, mom," he says, appearing in the doorway. "But Gabe's not here yet."
"I don't understand why that friend of yours has to come anyway," Nathan blurts out.
At least he keeps his stoic Petrelli face on.
"Yeah, well, I don't understand why we're going sightseeing in New York when we live here."
"Don't be silly, Peter. It's a wonderful day for travel." One can never straighten out ones jacket too many times.
"Travel, sure, but why not… Spain, Norway, Mongolia?"
The doorbell rings, cutting Peter's question off and making an answer out of the question.
"Well, regardless, if we're doing this, I get to take Gabe along."
She watches him open the door to reveal a tall, gangly, awkward boy who looks too big for his clothes.
The nurturing, pitying side of Angela – there really isn't much of one – wants to take him through a finishing school.
Damn good thing there isn't much of that side.
"Hello Gabriel. So nice of you to join us."
He looks uncomfortable, twitchy.
"Shall we?"
Gabriel hates long, awkward car rides.
Gabriel hates long, awkward car rides with people he doesn't really know and who seem to hate him just for the mere fact of his sad, pathetic existence even worse.
Awkward, he knows, because he's spent the majority of the ride in the backseat with Peter trying to come up with a formula for just how awkward it is.
(x/y) + z + (h/t) + s + a = A
Where,
x is the number of non-relatives,
y, the number of non-relative friends,
z, the number of relatives you hate,
h, hours spent driving,
t, time spent talking,
s, size of the car
a, how awkward of a person you are already
and A is the overall level of awkward resulting.
So far, for himself, he's calculated out a good level of 3,479,182.39.
Don't ask him where the decimals came from.
"I don't feel like a third wheel, Peter," he whispers, leaning over to him in his seat. "I don't even feel like the spare. I feel like the road."
He gives a pained look, and Peter pats his thigh.
Perhaps to comfort.
There is an Epic Fail sort of feeling about the whole ordeal, though, that Gabe can't seem to throw off, no matter how much he really would like to.
"They love you. Really, you can relax."
Gabriel makes a sound that may have sounded like something akin to the cross between the mating call of the Great Northern Elk and the birthing cry of a cow.
He isn't even sure whether the former exists.
"Why isn't dad coming, anyway, mom?" Peter calls out from the backseat, and Gabriel is almost grateful that he can't see her face. Something in his gut is screaming something about super-powered laser eyes that can see through his clothes, his skin, his soul.
He thinks of it as looking directly at the sun. Brilliant, but deadly.
"Arthur is meeting with friends. They have some things to discuss. Nothing you should worry your pretty little head about."
Yes, Peter's head is pretty, but that is hardly what's on Gabriel's mind right now.
Gabriel wants to ask where exactly they're going.
Keyword: wants.
It's usually that way with him, anyway. Really, he's lucky his mother agreed to let him spend the day with Peter.
As if reading his mind, Peter turns to him curiously and asks, "how come your mother is letting you stay out today, anyway?"
Gabriel sighs. He really was hoping that this would not come up.
"She's picketing a Joan Osbourne concert."
"What?" Peter's brother snaps, turning his head ever so slowly, his brow furrowing in that Petrelli way.
It's so strange. Peter is so passive – relatively, of course, his brother is so aggressive, and their mother is so passive-aggressive. As if she needed to spread her gift, dividing it equally among her two kids.
Somehow, he doesn't think it ended up all that fair.
Doesn't matter, as the brother's voice jolts him back again. "That's ridiculous, why would someone picket Joan Osbourne?"
"One of us," Gabriel says miserably, voice small, feeling like he should sort of slip into the seat right about now.
"Why are you sliding down the seat?" Peter asks curiously, and he sits up straight again.
"Leather. Ah, uuh, slippery. Especially when wet."
"So she's picketing Joan Osbourne," the irate voice reverberates from the front seat again, "because of the hit single One Of Us? Are you serious?"
"My mother doesn't want me to think that God could be the creepy guy on the subway touching himself."
"I… there is no proper response to that," the brother says, taking out his cloth tissue and rubbing at his nose.
Who still has cloth tissues, really??
"You've been on the subway, Gabe? I didn't think your mom would ever let you."
"It's, uh, a long story."
"I'm sure it is, dear, but we're here, so I'm afraid that your ideas of civilized conversation are going to have to wait until a little later. Perhaps when I'm out of earshot."
She slips from the safety of the room daddy has set up for her – who needs safety, anyway? – and listens attentively. The man talking to daddy is tall, much bigger than him, and yet he visibly slouches, giving off the appearance of wanting to appear much smaller than he really is. Much more insignificant.
Maybe he feels that way.
Maybe daddy made him feel that way, she thinks with a smile no almost-fourteen-year-old should ever have, and wonders whether she could make him feel that way, too. She's even smaller, after all. Small and dainty, like a flower everyone is too afraid to harm, to crush.
She's much less fragile than she looks, and she knows the value of information.
So she listens, even though all she really wants to do is stalk around the corner and demand to just be told forthright all of the interesting shit that's going on.
Patience.
She hates patience.
"We found it on assignment. Fisherman said it washed ashore."
"What are you doing talking to an insignificant fisherman, Osbourne?"
"I-I thought you'd be—"
"Happy? About the find, yes. About your inattentive attitude, no, not particularly. Go on," he tells the man, who looks about as brow-beaten as a poodle after a bath, and she watches him leave with another secret smile.
Serves him right, she thinks, for disobeying daddy.
Oh, but seeing the man's forlorn, pathetic expression as he's lectured is hardly the prize beheld in this particular patience. It's the trinket daddy is holding in his hands now, flipping somewhat hastily through the pages, brow furrowed.
He almost looks… frightened by what's written in there, and she's more than certain that if she tries to lean around the corner any more, she'll fall over, slip, do something wrong, and her spying will be caught in the act.
If you really want to go out on assignments, sweetheart, you're going to have to remember a few things. Learn them, study them, live them like they're your air. No matter what you're doing, someone probably doesn't want you doing it. So make sure you don't ever get caught.
It's her duty to the company to not get caught. It's the only way to make daddy proud.
The shock and fear in daddy's eyes tell her something. They tell her that this is pure gold, and that she has to have it. There's power in fear, power in important things.
And something about that ratty old journal just screams important to her like that blond in his cell just screams for a few thousand good volts or two.
"Noah," daddy calls out, walking down the hallway and away from her for a moment, and she takes that time to dash to the door of his office, just a few feet, slipping inside the room and listening at the door.
She can still hear him.
Can hear him when he's coming closer to the door, making her turn around and run to hide under his desk.
Setting down the journal for a moment – don't get caught, don't get caught – she can hear the man daddy called Noah in the doorway – she doesn't like him – trying to get her heart to stop racing.
"Noah, would you mind talking to Osbourne and Morgan about insubordination? I think I want to have a little chat with our resident first man."
"It would be my pleasure."
A moment later the door closes behind them, still talking, and she feels herself breathe again as she steps out from under the table.
She grins.
There it is, brown, worn, weathered, and precious.
Elle is like the resident magpie of the facility.
***
"It's a boat," Gabriel says, feeling pathetic and probably looking the part.
"Actually, it's a ferry," Angela Petrelli contradicts, and Gabriel swallows hard.
It doesn't make him feel any better, boat, ferry, or walrus.
"Peter," he says, his voice hushed, eyes wide, tugging on his sleeve as they walk on board the ferry. "Peter, I really don't want to ride on a walrus!"
"This is a ferry," Peter reassures, nodding wisely.
Gabriel winces.
They're moving a bit like… ants. Except far less organized.
Like Star Trek fans.
"This is what being a Trekkie must feel like," Peter says, making a lopsided face.
Stupid face.
"I like Star Trek," Gabriel says, seemingly hurt, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly and bumping his elbow into the woman beside him, promptly gushing apologies. "I… it's very logical," he says, a moment later when he feels a bit more composed and a lot more flushed.
"More like crazed women at an 8am after-Christmas sale at Macy's," Nathan growls, frowning. "This is ridiculous, the way this line is moving. There's no organization here."
"No one to lead them," his mother says in a hushed tone, and Peter shrugs.
"The boat is… swaying."
Gabriel looks seasick already. If that's at all possible.
Perhaps it is. Peter has found by now that… Gabriel is sort of his own Guinness World Record book. He's sort of fascinating, in an upside down, confusing, pathetic sort of way, although Peter is relatively certain of the fact that Gabriel doesn't know it, and definitely wouldn't believe him if he told him.
"You really are something, Gabe," he says instead, giving his own version of a lopsided pained face.
It only takes them another twenty-two minutes and thirty-seven seconds until they reach the upper deck – Gabe was keeping track – and finally they get to take their seats.
"Where are we going, ma?" Nathan asks, and Peter looks at the ocean. Swaying.
"The Statue of Liberty," she says matter-of-factly, crossing her legs at the ankles.
"Whyyyy," Gabe moans, clutching his stomach, and Peter rubs up and down his back. He really does feel bad for him. He's sort of… well, going with the record book thing, he's his own Guinness World Record Book Of Fail.
He is Murphy's Law. If there is something that can go wrong in any given situation, Gabriel Gray will suffer to full extent.
Maybe he is Murphy.
"Maybe you were adopted," Peter wonders aloud, and Gabriel shakes his head.
"I've wondered that a lot," he says from down below. "You know, you'd think, right, but… I honestly don't think so. I wish."
"I could start calling you Murphy."
Gabriel never gets to ask the inevitable question, as the boat – ferry, right, sorry – lurches as it starts to move, and he groans, leaning his head further forward between his legs.
Peter is pretty certain that he's going to hurl.
Or eventually turn into a human pretzel.
Nathan feels rather fidgety, which is odd in its own right. Nathan is always composed, never fidgety or even restless. Unsettling, that.
"How's that… girlfriend of yours, Pete?" he asks, trying to ignore how he is stroking up and down the back of that strange friends' of his.
"She's non-existent," Peter says almost nonchalantly, intent on staring away and out at the water. "Yours?"
"Never was one."
"Ah." Pause. "You really know how to commit."
"He'll learn," their mother interjects from out of nowhere, and Nathan inwardly winces.
The cloth tissue emerges again, and he dabs his nose. "Honestly, Pete, I'm not even thirty yet."
"You're turning thirty this year," Peter says over the sound of the groans from below, looking indignant.
"Yes, well, you're only sixteen, Pete, what would you know about that?" he asks, adjusting his cuffs.
"I just turned seventeen. My birthday? Remember? Pens and… and linens and things?"
"Right."
The conversation is cut short – as if it would have lasted any longer, really – when their mother clears her throat and stands.
Liberty Island may never be the same again after that kid has relieved himself on it a couple times.
"I didn't know it was possible to feel colors."
"Are you feeling better, Gabe?" Peter asks, concern lining his features as they walk.
"I don't know. But I feel… distinctively green."
"At least he's stopped throwing up. Grass may never grow in those spots again." Dab. Dab dab.
Gabriel feels strangely sick again.
Gabriel feels like being strangely sick all over Peter's brother's suit.
Instead, he shields his eyes from the sun and Angela Petrelli, and looks up at the Statue.
"I should have probably brought sunscreen," he laments aloud, making a face.
"You're not going to burn from being outside for a little bit."
"You have no idea."
"Let's go see the backside, yeah?"
There is nothing particularly exciting about looking at the backside of a statue. Peter is pretty certain that Nathan checked at one point whether he could see up her robe at all, only to complain that the Statue was just a fad to draw in commercialism.
Peter can't argue with that. Not when there are about two-dozen Asians – he hasn't checked all of them, but they certainly look like Asians congregated in a huddle like worker-bees – cameras out and flashing away picture after picture after picture.
"I'm hungry," Gabe says, and Peter throws him a confused, wide-eyed look.
"You're what?"
"I just turned my stomach inside out several times, it's completely empty."
"And you want us to fill it so that you can do it again?" Nathan asks incredulously, and Peter flushes.
"I'm kind of hungry, too, actually," he lies through his teeth, and they're off.
She's read most of it by the end of that day, and when daddy comes to get her from her room, she doesn't say anything, doesn't even complain, doesn't give herself away at all.
There's power in secrets. If you get to have a secret, keep it, treasure it, because you've come this far already. You haven't given yourself away, you didn't get caught… now you have to know when to say when, and practice patience. A spilled secret at the wrong time can go very badly.
She learns. She listens. Daddy would be so proud if only he knew what she was doing, hoarding secrets close to her heart like trophies.
There's something contradictory about this truth, though. If he is to never find out… how can he be proud of her?
The thought bothers her, and she doesn't think on it any longer, discarding it with the other repressed things.
Noah Bennet has told her more than once that she's going to grow up to be Very Messed Up In The Head, whatever he means by that.
Another thought to be shoved aside.
So she leaves the journal with all its secrets, all its wonders, in her secret place, where she stashes all of her shiny, valuable possessions. Like a raccoon, in a way.
And daddy wonders why the air conditioning in the room doesn't work so well anymore. The thought makes her smile.
She doesn't even mention anything when they're sitting in front of the fireplace, fire crackling away like the own power contained within her.
Her hand crackles, a fight for dominance in a way, and she smirks.
"Elle, that's not safe, you're going to set something on fire again."
Her treasures are her freedom. Her only freedom, she thinks, and pushes that thought aside as well.
What could she possibly want with unpleasant thoughts?
"Mmm, French fries. My mom won't ever let me have any, this is fantastic."
Fish and chips all around for the boys, and a fruit salad for Angela Petrelli. Gabriel thinks that the way she pierces the red piece of melon onto her fork looks rather like she's digging hungrily into human flesh.
Unsettling, that.
"Ketchup?" Peter offers, and Gabriel pales.
"Have you ever noticed how much ketchup resembles human blood?"
"I…"
Apparently he hasn't. Gabriel finds rather often that… most people have not noticed any of the things he does.
He figures it's good for their sanity a much as his. It's just no good, swarms of people running around in a panic, trying to escape the wrath of janitors everywhere.
His cardigan itches, subtle, but distinct enough to bother him and make him somewhat fidgety.
"Caramel apple?" Peter asks, and he nods wordlessly.
He can feel a sugar-high coming on from a mile away. Combine that with a lethal dose – we are talking about Gabriel Gray here, after all – of fatty, delicious fried things, and you get a fidgety, but very easily excitable boy.
He wonders whether New York has anything to fear.
He vaguely decides on no, when—
"Sweet mother of God what is that?" the brother exclaims, and Gabriel looks in the same direction. "They're like vultures fighting over a pile of carcasses!"
"That's a wonderful image, Nathan, dear," Angela Petrelli says, and Gabriel can feel chills running down his spine.
"No, no, I totally get it," Peter says, talking animatedly with his hands all of a sudden. "See, the seagulls are like… the pirates, right? Andand the pigeons are the ninjas. All… darker and stuff, too. And that gigantic seagull is about to—oh god!"
It's a rather macabre sort of sight, Gabriel has to agree. "We should, perhaps, eat faster, before they run out and make us their next meal," he suggests helpfully, nodding quickly.
"Perhaps," Peter agrees.
"You know, it looks like that giant seagull buttraped that pigeon."
"Did he just shit on that saltshaker?" the brother asks after a long period of silence from both the maternal devil-figure and himself, and Gabriel's eyes go wide.
"This needs to be commemorated," Peter says eagerly, gesturing for pen and paper to his mother before tearing out a piece and scribbling away.
"What are you doing?" Gabriel asks, an interesting mixture of fear and anxiety girding his loins.
"Here, hold on," he says, finishing his last fry and running over to the table.
"You're insane."
"I know," Peter says, and grins wide.
***
"It's a sign from God!!!" Gabriel shouts, arms flailing excitedly.
"I—what?" Peter turns and stares.
"No janitors!"
"I think it means no littering."
"No, no, I like my idea much better!"
"I rather like this one, personally. Could get difficult, I imagine."
"Oh my."
"Let's go get a bite to eat, yeah? Anyway, I'm pretty sure that it means—"
"Yes, Nathan, thank you."
"You're done already? That was surprisingly fast."
There is something about perfecting the art of… subtle phone conversations. Not giving anything away. Lies covered up by more lies, or, sometimes, just lack of truth. If no one asks any questions, there can be no false answers.
"Yes, well, perhaps you should talk to him again—oh? Really? Well… that's certainly interesting. Tell him to bring it to New York, I'm sure a fair few of us would like to see that up close and personal."
With that, she hangs up the phone and walks back over to where her sons and that boy are standing.
"There's the Museum of Financial History just around the corner. Or we could go see the World Trade Center, or even Wall Street."
"Think we could see the Empire State Building after it gets really dark?"
"We can do that, too," she tells Peter, giving him a small smile.
It takes them ten minutes to get back on the road. Nathan's stomach is growling.
"I bet your papayas are excellent, Gabe," he hears Peter say from the backseat, laughing, and frowns.
"What??"
"Look!"
"Nobody serves a better Frank than Gabriel Gray!" Peter declares loudly.
"Let's just pull in here," Nathan grumbles.
"What do you mean you can't find it?" he bellows over the phone, pacing the room. "I left it right there, on my desk! This is ridiculous! I have a great deal of people that are going to be very upset when they find out that they aren't getting what they asked for!"
Bob drums the pen against the desk of his study impatiently, frown marring his features.
"Well, I don’t care. You will keep searching or you will lose your job!"
Uttering profanities under his breath, he shakes his head, hanging up.
"Daddy?
"Go away, Elle, I need to think."
Angela Petrelli is not going to be pleased in the least.
"We're going to the Museum of Natural History after this, so—"
"Oh god!" Gabe exclaims, eyes wide.
"What, what is it?" Peter asks, rushing to his side, looking through the glass pane before them.
"It's following me!!"
"I… have no idea what to say to that."
"Oh god, that's not even the worst thing," Gabe says, pointing in horror.
"Ooh," Nathan says, scratching his chin, "yeah, you're right, that looks fantastic. I'll have a ham sandwich."
Gabe whimpers helplessly.
"It looks like it would be a very long way down," Gabriel says, fingers laced through the cool steel fence separating them from a painful death.
"Yes."
"They say that a penny dropped from up here could kill someone if it hit them on the head," the brother says, and Gabriel makes a face, imagining that very strange impact. Penny, meet head. Penny: 1, Head: 0.
Game over.
"It's also supposed to be a very romantic spot," Angela Petrelli mutters, leaning on the stone barrier, varying heights all around the outside.
"It's like the perfect night to be up here," Peter agrees, nodding. "The only thing that could make it better would be music, maybe."
Gabriel sighs. Music and someone to share the moment with. He looks around.
Angela Petrelli makes him fear for his loins. The brother is radiating tension and making him feel uncomfortable.
His cardigan itches.
Peter… well, Peter is nice. And a bit confusing. But then again, who isn't?
"Maybe you should have brought your girlfriend," he thinks to comment, finding this to be a particularly fitting thing to say.
"Ex-girlfriend. I doubt she would want to be up here with me. Anyway, she seemed more interested in you."
Wait, what?
Be kind, rewind. Gabriel Gray hasn't caught up with your unexpected incredulous statements yet!
He whimpers.
"Wonder why we don't come up here more often," Peter says quietly with a sigh.
"No loved ones to bring," Nathan says, and Peter shakes his head.
"That's not true."
Gabriel feels so detached, removed, as he watches the subtle silent exchange between the two brothers, and his cardigan itches terribly as he turns away. A whole different tense altogether, a sort of tense that makes him feel lonely and forgotten and insignificant.
As if reading his mind, Angela Petrelli clears her throat and does the first thing that hasn't made him want to experiment what a human upon human impact after a drop from the Empire State Building would have.
Gabriel Gray, meet the ground.
The earth always wins.
If he's kept track so far – and he has – the score is something akin to;
Earth: 79,482; Gabriel Gray: -2
He didn't think negatives were possible until he had a rather unpleasant run-in with a polar bear.
Those Coca Cola commercials make them seem so huggable. And that is not a good idea.
"Perhaps we should leave," Angela Petrelli offers, and Gabriel nods, turning away from the view. If Peter and his brother are close behind, he doesn't notice, doesn't turn back to look.