| Fanfic: "Stars" |
[May. 24th, 2007|09:30 am] |
God, I love Heroes. I haven't been this inspired by a story since Lord of the Rings.
Title: Stars
Rating: U
Disclaimer: Heroes still isn’t mine.
Character: Gabriel Grey.
Table/Prompt: Table 4, Prompt 05 (Stars).
Word Count: 563
Spoilers: “Six Months Ago”
Summary: After being visited by Chandra Suresh, and reading the man’s book, Gabriel Grey reaches an epiphany about what he must become.
Author's Notes: Everyone, come love yourselves some just-about-pre-evil Gabriel! :D
The visit from Doctor Suresh had given him a lot to think about.
Gabriel shifted in his bed, unable to get to sleep, and in many ways unwilling to. His heart was fast and loud in the ticking silence, and his mind was racing as his eyes blindly picked out every detail of the darkened ceiling.
Yes, a lot to think about.
A possibility that he really was special, unique, important, somehow above all the humdrum realities of ordinary human lives. What had the doctor seen in him, to seek him out? He wondered eagerly. The powers detailed in his book were astounding. Telekinesis—to pick up things and even people and move them around like chess pieces? Super-intelligence—his mind evolved beyond normal human capacity? Mind-reading? Flight? All of these at once, and more? The book had implied that this was impossible, but who was anyone to say what was impossible in the next evolutionary step? Rather, they should be embracing his limitless potential!
Gabriel kicked off his blanket and stood up, the cold night air hitting his body like water, and grabbed the book from where it lay beside his pillow. Activating Evolution. It fell open in his palm as he carried it to the window, on no particular page: each was as dog-eared as the next, devoured a thousand times since he’d been given it that morning.
Resting the book on the windowsill, he pushed back his curtains to stare into the midnight face of New York City, as noisy and bustling as at any hour of the day. From his fifth-floor apartment, the people below looked nothing more than ants, scurrying mindlessly from one mundane task to the next. Drones, destined for nothing more than a family, a pension and oblivion. There were millions of them in New York alone.
Watching them scuttle, he was struck by a nasty thought. How many of them had Suresh visited? How many people, in New York, in America, in the world, had abilities like Gabriel’s? What—what if he wasn’t unique after all?
No. He was. He had to be.
Still, the view made him suddenly nauseous, and he pulled his gaze from the city to look at the purple-grey sky. There, through the clouds and the smog and the glaring city lights, he noticed a tiny prick of white like a half-open flower.
A star.
And suddenly, it was clear to him. That was what he had to be. A star. Humans came dime for a dozen, but stars were seen by billions, recognised, admired. Written about, sung about, immortalized. That star—that fiery blossom—was powerful, dangerous, huge and ancient beyond belief, and strong enough to shed its light even through the crass, ugly fog that tried to hide it.
That was him. Not Gabriel the watchmaker, Gabriel the clone of his father, Gabriel the insignificant. He was Gabriel the strong, the important, the special.
He just had to find out how.
The staccato tick of a clock, absolutely in time, maintained to nothing less than perfection, reported that it was only seventeen minutes past twelve. Gabriel tore his attention from the sky, and fixed it on Suresh’s book, whose pages were dimly lit by the glow from outside.
It was no good. He couldn’t wait ‘till morning—hang his routine.
He found Suresh’s number, and picked up the phone. |
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