InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "In your head they are dying."

Gabriel "Sylar" Gray (necessary_evil) wrote in brightlightlogs,
@ 2010-02-22 00:14:00

Entry tags:

claire bennet, gabriel gray

WHO: Gabriel "Sylar" Gray & Claire Bennet
WHAT: Fifteen years of history, even for two people with eternity on the horizon, can make all the difference.
WHEN: Monday; Early Morning
WHERE: Their Apartment
RATING: PG
STATUS: In Progress

As the morning light slipped in through the windows, Gabriel's arm moved, falling back over his eyes to try and block it out as he sighed, groaning and stretching as his mind made the best attempt to wake up his body. As his arm stretched out sideways, however, there was something that woke him rather suddenly as it hit an unoccupied spot on the bed, body jerking up and awake as he turned, staring at the bed. Claire was where she was supposed to be, where she always was, but there was one figure that he was sure had been there when they had went to sleep, a tiny body that had insisted upon sleeping in their bed the night before because of a combination of bad dreams and chills.

Gabriel was sure that he had caught the toddler when he had flung himself up onto the bed and crawled down under their covers, snuggling in between his parents and taking up the majority of the bed in his wriggling. Gabriel was sure that his son had been burrowed under the covers when sleep had finally taken him last night, and yet, as he was staring at the bed right now, that spot was unoccupied, no tiny toddler hogging the covers and leaving both him and Claire freezing by the time they woke up.

Slipping from the bed, careful not to wake Claire, Gabriel padded from the bedroom and through the rest of the suite, checking each room carefully, going through every little nook that he could find until he'd assured himself to his horror that his son was no where to be found. And what was worse? The room that they had converted to a nursery was as it had been before, none of the changes present, and their baby girl nowhere to be found. Panic running through his veins, Gabriel returned to the bedroom, grasping Claire's shoulder and shaking her, a certain frantic tone in his voice.

"Claire. Claire, wake up. I can't find them. They're not here. Michael and Sam aren't in the apartment."

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cantfeelpain
2010-02-22 06:25 am UTC (link)

Claire had been having a peaceful dream that, for once, hadn't involved some bizarre character from a cartoon or included a soundtrack that sounded suspisciously like any number of children songs with ridiculous lyrics that made very little sense. Yet at the sound of Gabriel's voice, or rather the tone of it, her green eyes snapped open and she struggled to make sense of what he was saying. "What?" she questioned thickly as she sat up. Her gaze slid to the middle of the bed where she knew for a fact their son had fallen asleep the night before. "Michael is right..."

Her voice trailed off and her eyes widened with horror when she found the area empty. "Michael?" she called out, yanking the covers back in the vain hope that he had somehow worked his way to the foot of the bed. It wasn't until she was about to get to her feet and dash from the room in a blind panic that her sleep-addled mind finally fully registered what her husband had said to her.

"What do you mean, Michael and Sam aren't here?" she demanded, fixing Gabriel with a horrified expression. Her own voice was filled with pure panic. "They wouldn't have just left! Michael knows better and Sam can't even get out of her crib yet! Not to mention that one of us would have heard the door if it had opened and-"

She paused and forced herself to draw in a breath. Panicking wasn't going to solve anything. She needed to stay calm. She needed to think rather than react. Exhaling slowly, she once more looked to the man beside her.

"Gabriel," Claire spoke in a deceptively calm tone that was half a step away from becoming completely hysterical, "where are our children?"

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necessary_evil
2010-02-22 06:33 am UTC (link)

Panic wasn't going to help this situation, but Gabriel was having a great deal of difficulty keeping himself from falling right over that edge. Not only were both his children gone, but the whole nursery had just vanished. Claire and Gabriel had been in this Zenner Corp program long enough to know that sometimes things just went weird, but this was pushing it to a point where he was more than willing to just throw off the vow that he had made to try and be better, find every person in charge of this damn place, and murder them all as violently as he possibly could.

Sinking down onto the bed next to her, Gabriel closed his eyes, raising a hand to cover his face, "I don't know," He said, a quiet weakness in his voice. "I don't know."

Because even with as powerful as he was, Gabriel felt absolutely helpless and lost at the moment.

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cantfeelpain
2010-02-22 06:52 am UTC (link)

For the past fifteen years, Claire had drawn almost all of her emotional support and strength from the man beside her. No matter what Zenner Corp had tossed at them, he had helped her pull through it each and every time. To hear him sound so very lost now tugged at her heart and, for the briefest of seconds, she didn't so much as forget about their children as she set aside her fear for them and focused on her husband.

"Hey," she said softly, brushing a few locks of his hair back from his forehead and doing her best to sound much more certain than she felt. Her voice still trembled with emotion but she thought she was doing a pretty good job. "We'll find them."

Sliding her legs out of the bed, Claire stood up and pressed a kiss to Gabriel's temple. "Come on," she said, "let's get dressed and start looking. They couldn't have gotten that far. Michael can't even reach most of the buttons on the elevator."

Of course, there was always the chance that they wouldn't find them. That Zenner Corp had done something, had somehow taken their kids away from them. It was one of Claire's greatest fears - one of the main reasons she had waited so long to even have children. Yet she refused to dwell on that at the moment. Maybe later, when they had exhausted all other options. For now though she was determined to be positive.

Or, at least, that was her intention. The moment she pulled open one of her drawer's however, and peered in mild confusion at the contents within, she felt her intention evaporate and what felt like ice water rush through her veins. "This... isn't right," she mumbled quietly. Reaching into the drawer, she pulled out a shirt and held it out, arm's length, in front of her. "This..."

Pausing, Claire swallowed hard and looked to Gabriel. "This isn't my shirt," she stated numbly. "I got rid of this shirt years ago."

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necessary_evil
2010-02-22 06:59 am UTC (link)

Years ago. Gabriel turned his attention to her, trying to ignore the anxiety that was flooding through him as he stared, "I remember that shirt," He said, frowning. "Didn't you end up snagging it on something and ripping it straight up the side?" He asked, lifting an eyebrow in confusion as he stood before his thoughts slowly turned over, an idea dawning on him as he went to his own closet, pulling it open and rummaging through. It didn't take him long until he found what he was looking for, extracting the hat from the closet and turning to Claire, holding it up.

"Something is very wrong," He said, looking down at hat in his head. "I'm pretty sure you made me chuck this out."

Not to mention the whole nursery had disappeared. But they would get to that in time.

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cantfeelpain
2010-02-22 07:10 am UTC (link)

If the shirt hadn't told her something strange was going on, the almost infamous hat that he was holding would have done the trick. Claire stared at it with a look of abject horror mixed with dawning realization. Slowly she looked up at Gabriel, swallowing hard against the sudden lump lodged in her throat. "I did," she said in a near whisper. The shirt she was holding fell from her now numb fingers as Claire moved almost on autopilot through the rest of her drawers.

Peering in at his clothes, she swallowed hard once again. "It's all different," she stated after a second. She turned to face him, eyes shining with tears. "They've done something," she finally decided. "They've switched things around or... I don't know, but they took them away, Gabriel. They took our kids."

With a soft sob, Claire stopped speaking and dropped her gaze. She wrapped her arms around herself to try and keep herself from losing control entirely and tried to think of what to do next, now that her worst fears were becoming a reality right before her very eyes.

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necessary_evil
2010-02-22 07:29 am UTC (link)

"Or maybe they've taken us," Gabriel said softly, sitting the hat aside as he stepped in behind his wife quietly. It had always pained him to see her upset, pulled at his heart to see her cry, even before they had gotten as close as they had ended up being, but now, it was almost unbearable as the weight of the situation was bearing down on him as well. "Maybe they've taken us for the moment, and they're safe at home still asleep in a temporal freeze until we get back," He said, gently wrapping his arms around her waist, pulling her against his chest and holding her.

"We'll figure this out," Gabriel whispered, suppressing the fear that was coursing through his veins at the moment in order to make sure that Claire could keep herself together. His hand moved, rubbing her back lightly as he bent down, pressing a kiss to the top of her head as he always did when she was upset, tightening his hold on her as he whispered. "They're not going to take them from us without a fight, Claire."

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cantfeelpain
2010-02-22 11:46 am UTC (link)

She wanted to believe him. If there was ever a time that Claire wanted to simply blindly agree with what Gabriel was saying, now was that time. The thought of their children simply being gone was almost too much for her to bear. The idea that Zenner had somehow just made them cease to exist - a fear she'd had since before she'd even become pregnant with Michael nearly five years earlier - was enough to make her want to curl up into a ball and give up right then and there.

However, she knew he was right. No matter what had happened, no matter what the reason was for their world to have been turned upside down, they were not going to take Michael and Sam without a fight. Claire didn't care what she had to do, or how many times she might have to die doing it, she was going to make sure she was reunited with her children. And she knew, without even having to think about it, that Gabriel felt the same way.

For a brief moment, she simply leaned into his embrace and drew comfort both from his presence and the knowledge that they would figure this out together. She did find a small sliver of gratitude that Zenner hadn't separated the two of them as well. It wasn't much, yet at the same time it meant more than she could say. Inhaling deeply, she sighed before stepping back enough to peer up at him with watery eyes.

"So what do we do now?" she asked. "Should we just stay put? Should we go look for them? Just in case they are out there, somewhere?" She trailed off, allowing her uncertainty and helplessness to show both in her tone and gaze. The only thing she was certain about was that she didn't want to split up. It was hard enough imagining going through this at all. She didn't think she could handle trying to brave it alone, nor did she want to even consider it. They were a team. It was that simple.

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necessary_evil
2010-02-24 02:25 am UTC (link)

"We should go and look," Gabriel said, raising a hand to gently brush the lingering tears out of her eyes with a soft sigh. "Maybe Claudia came and got them this morning and didn't bother to wake us up," He said, squeezing her shoulder. "Remember when she did that with Michael on our anniversary, and we spent half the morning panicking for nothing?" It was a logical enough possibility in his head, one that he could see happening. Claudia was incredibly thoughtful when it came to allowing them "private time," wink included.

Moving his hand down, Gabriel laced his finger's with hers, offering her a reassuring smile as he squeezed her hand, "Just breathe, Claire. Breathe and hope that this is another case of your sister's poor planning and lack of understanding of a motherly protective urge."

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cantfeelpain
2010-02-24 02:39 am UTC (link)

Breathe. She could manage that. She could. Yes, it wasn't as easy as it should be, given the panic that had seized her heart and was making it all but impossible to think clearly, but she could do it. For her kids, she could do damn near anything.

Plus, she knew Gabriel was right. The slight smile and nod to show she agreed with him proved as much, too. Claudia always had the best of intentions that led to the most disastrous of results. Much like Claire had always been, when she was younger. Acting without thinking was apparently a Bennet female trait, or something. However in this instance, the blond swore if her sister was to blame for the kids being gone, she was going to find herself on the receiving end of a verbal smackdown the likes of which she'd never before experienced.

"I'm going to contact my dad," she finally said out loud. With a slight tug on his hand, she led him to the bedside table where her PDA sat. She eyed it for a second, frowning lightly at the older version that was where her much newer one had been just the night before. It was yet one more strange occurrence that made her think, with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, that there was far more going on than a simple case of the kids being taken out for breakfast without her consent.

Shoving the thought away for a moment, Claire quickly sent a message to her dad then glanced back up at her husband. "I really hope she has them," she said, albeit a bit unnecessarily. "If she doesn't..."

She swallowed, not wanting to really entertain the thought yet unable to ignore it any longer. "Gabriel, what if we're just caught up in some experiment?" she ventured, tears once more filling her eyes. She held up her PDA as though that proved her point in and of itself. In a way, she supposed it did.

"This isn't the same one I had last night. This looks like the one I had when I first showed up here. Then there's our clothes, too." She stopped and swallowed once more, meeting his gaze as she whispered, "What if the kids aren't here because... they don't even exist, yet?"

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