Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/249006.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Fandom:
      Heroes_-_Fandom
  Character:
      Luke_Campbell, Sylar, Noah_Bennet
  Additional Tags:
      Abandonment, Canon-Typical_Violence, Post-Series, Coda, Depression,
      Sexual_Abuse
  Stats:
      Published: 2011-09-03 Words: 1839
****** In Exile ******
by babel
Summary
     Luke believes Sylar will come back for him.
You wait in that shithole diner for two full days, just in case Sylar comes
back.
On the third morning, a survival instinct you didn't know you still had kicks
in. Your lips are chapped from dehydration, and your stomach aches with hunger,
and you know the only way you'll get through this is to tell yourself you'll
see Sylar again. You have to believe in fate for the first time in your life.
Who the fuck are you kidding? You have to believe in anything for the first
time in your life. And you do.
When you see the truck coming down the highway, you believe just enough to run
out and wave your arms so the driver will stop.
                                  __________
The driver drops you off at the nearest town along his route. You're homeless
for a few weeks, but you can get water now, and if you work those sad eyes of
yours hard enough, you get some food too.
One day, while you're trying those eyes out on everyone who passes, this old
guy stops to talk with you. He has a bright smile that has, over the decades,
dug out crevices in his cheeks. He invites you to his home. You talk over a
real, home-cooked dinner. He tells you he was a cook in the army. After that,
he was a professor before he started using. He tells you he quit with the help
of Jesus Christ. He tells you this while dropping his empty beer bottle in a
trashcan full of empty beer bottles..
"You can sleep here." He's scooping a third helping of mashed potatoes onto
your plate. "Maybe do some chores around the house as rent. Only one bed,
though."
You nod, and you eat your potatoes.
                                  __________
That night, you are kissed for the first time and suck dick for the first time,
and when you fall asleep afterward, you dream of Sylar crawling through the
window of the crumbling little prefab and taking you away.
When you wake up, you tell yourself that one day it won't just be a dream
anymore.
                                  __________
The local library has this set of computers that are probably ten years old.
They whir and groan each time you use them, but you are in that musty library
everyday while Joe, the creepy old bastard, is at work. He's told you what he
does, but you don't care. You're not going to be here long.
There isn't all that much information about Sylar online. You have to work
harder to find anything than you ever worked in school. After a few months,
you've found four murders that you're pretty sure Sylar committed. You read the
details of each one, your heart thumping.
He cuts open their heads. You're not really sure how he does it, but you
imagine it would be clean, professional. No passion, no guilt.
You think about it at the dinner table. You dream about it in bed.
                                  __________
This is how the dream goes.
You are sucking Joe's disgusting little dick, with droopy skin that feels weird
in your mouth and stringy gray hair that gets stuck in your teeth, and you hear
something. It could be an animal, scratching at the door. Another raccoon,
probably, confusing the house for a garbage heap.
"Did you hear that?" you ask. Anything to get your mouth off of his dick for a
second.
He doesn't answer. He just grabs your hair and pulls you down again. He's
drunk. He's always drunk by the end of the day, just like your step-dad. He
doesn't smoke, though, so that's a plus. You have enough scars on your arms.
You resign yourself to it, like you always do. At least you know that, when
you're done, he'll fall asleep fast, and you'll be able to scrub the taste of
stale piss and putrid come out of your mouth; that's what you have to look
forward to at this point. Every night, that's what you look forward to.
You hear the scratching again. You strain to hear it over Joe's croaking.
Scritch scratch. Scritch scratch.
CRASH.
Joe scrambles up to the headboard, kicking his feet against the mattress.. You
let your teeth graze him as he pulls away. Joe doesn't seem to notice. He just
grabs his revolver out of the bedside table drawer.
He doesn't get a chance to shoot it. Sylar is there. The revolver flies from
Joe's hand and tears through the window screen. Joe can't even react before
he's slammed back into the wall over the bed. Sylar smiles at you.
You wake up with the memory of Joe's blood running down the wall, pooling on
his pillow, the top of his skull rolling onto the floor.
Joe's snore tells you that he's still here.
One day it won't be a dream. It's fate.
                                  __________
A year passes.
You've gotten used to the feel of loose skin in your mouth. Even the stale
taste. Joe says he loves you now. He says you should get your GED, because
you're smarter than you give yourself credit for. He says you're beautiful.
You listen, because you have to. You perfected that blank stare early in life,
but it's pretty much the only expression you have anymore. You listen to him
with a blank stare, and he can't tell you're straining to hear the scratching
that is never there.
One day, while Joe's at work, you call your mom. She says she never wants to
hear from you again. You expected that, but it shifts some of the blame to her.
If you could go home...
But you can't, so you work on another plan. You can't just sit here forever
waiting for Sylar to find you. You have to send out a signal.
Even fate needs a little help, right?
The guy at the hardware store doesn't ask why a just-turned-eighteen year old
boy (who maybe looks fifteen at best) is buying a big fucking saw. He doesn't
care.
                                  __________
It's not as easy as you expected it to be.
Joe's passed out after the blow job--the last one he'll ever have--and he
doesn't wake while you tie him to the bed. He does wake up when you start
sawing, though.
You've hardly even started, you're just barely through the skin, and there's
blood and tears all down your face. He keeps asking why you're doing this to
him. He keeps saying that he gave you a home and love, and how could you do
this to the only person who gives a shit about you.
"There's someone else who gives a shit about me," you say in a low voice, your
expression as blank as ever.
"Then where the fuck is he?" Joe's voice tears from his throat. You never heard
him say fuck before.
Once you start sawing through the skull, Joe doesn't ask anymore stupid
questions. The sound of the saw's teeth raking through his bone soothes you.
Scritch scratch.
                                  __________
You're in the house with Joe's corpse for three weeks before the police show
up.
Those three weeks go by slow; slow as the smell creeping outward from the bed,
through the windows, and across the street to the neighbors who will eventually
call the cops. You spend most of your time with the TV on low volume, sitting
sideways in the armchair with your knees pressed into your chest. Sometimes you
sleep, most of the time you don't. Sylar doesn't show up in any of your dreams,
though. Just Joe. Sometimes he comes back to life like a zombie and tears your
head open too.
You're half awake, head lolling off to the side now and then, when the rerun of
some stupid medical show cuts out and a news item pops up about a girl jumping
off a Ferris Wheel and regenerating right there in front of the cameras.
When the police show up, you make sure there will be another news item. This
one about two police officers and the subsequent SWAT team being cooked alive
by a scrawny kid from New Jersey before they finally took him down.
                                  __________
They don't take you to a normal prison, of course. You think of them as "them"
because you don't know who they are. Not police, not FBI, not CIA. They take
you to a little room with big thick walls. They keep you chained down, your
hands wrapped up in some kind of material that locks in your power. When you
try to use it, it just starts burning your own skin.
One day, the heavy door opens and a rat-faced guy with dorky glasses comes in.
Sylar is with him.
You look at him with that same blank expression you used to level on Joe. You
could blame it on the medication they give you, but that's not why.
"I saw what you did to that old man," Sylar says, not bothering with any
bullshit.
The line of your mouth cracks. "I saw it too." Sylar isn't amused by the joke.
It was a stupid pun anyway. You shrug, as much as your able with your arms
chained back. "I did my research. You do it with telekinesis, though, don't
you?"
"I don't do that anymore."
You actually laugh. It's been a long time since you did that. It comes out
weird, like strumming a guitar that's gone out of tune.
Sylar's eyes narrow, and you see a guilt in them that turns your stomach. Maybe
Sylar thinks he's a better man now, but all you see is is something broken and
desperate. A man trying to be what people want him to be. Not improved. Not
redeemed. Lonely.
And even then, even with Sylar breaking himself in pieces to be accepted, the
man next to him doesn't trust him. There isn't one ounce of trust in that tense
posture, that tightly stretched face.
"Don't act so mad. It got your attention, didn't it?" you say, finally.
Sylar watches you for a moment longer, then he turns away, leaving. The man
with the dorky glasses smiles at you with hard, cruel eyes before he leaves
too.
                                  __________
They up the medication. You're constantly in and out of consciousness, always
half in dream. Your head lolls forward and jerks you awake, just to do it
again.
Your cell is silent. They only come in to give you food and medication. The
food is never as good as what Joe used to make, but the price isn't as high.
It's just after that mix of shitty food and tranquilizers that you hear it.
Your head is bobbing as you drift in and out. You keep trying to keep your head
up, trying to keep yourself awake. Trying to strain your senses. Your vision is
blurry, your hearing muffled.
But you swear you hear it. The scratching. Scritch scratch, just outside your
cell door.
You close your eyes and, for one last time, you let yourself believe.
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