InsaneJournal

WHO: Noah Gray, Elle Bishop, and Emma deLauro
WHAT: Realizing his worst fear.
WHEN: Around 2AM
WHERE: The courtyard between Apartment Buildings A and C
RATING: TBD (semi-high due to violent imagery)
STATUS: In Progress

You're too late, Noah. Always too late.

Noah woke with a start, the softly whispered words that were laced with sorrow still ringing in his ears. For a second he was disoriented, peering wildly around his room with the sort of expression typically found on the face of someone who had just witnessed a rather significant trauma and was fighting the after affects of shock. The moonlight shone through his window and bathed the bedroom in an ethereal glow that immediately set him on edge until his eyes could become accustomed to the lack of significant light. It took a few seconds but he managed to convince himself that no one else was present in the room. Slowly but surely he released his white-knuckle grip on the blanket bunched around his waist and slid his other hand out from beneath his pillow where he'd gripped his gun as though it were some sort of security blanket.

It was a dream, he realized with a great swell of relief. A nightmare, most likely born from too much caffeine and some bad Chinese food from dinner the night before. It wasn't real. His mother wasn't speaking to him from beyond the grave, her skin sheet-white and a thin line of blood trailed across her forehead.

Shivering from the imagery, the teen climbed out of his bed and wriggled his bare toes in the plush carpet that covered the floor of his room. He absently reached for a t-shirt that was tossed, haphazardly, across the back of the chair in front of his desk and tugged it on quickly. His eyes gazed about in the inky blackness once more before, with a shake of his head, he flicked on the lamp beside his bed.

As the shadows were chased away, Noah's anxiety dropped tenfold. It really had been a dream, he told himself as he padded across the floor to gaze out the window. The courtyard was empty, too, the mangled corpses of those that he knew in this city nowhere to be seen. Much like his mother, they were nothing more than figments of his imagination. And, were he to decide to trek across town to knock on his parents' door, he was certain that Sylar would be there and not on a bloody rampage born from insanity and revenge.

Noah didn't intend on doing any checking, though. Instead he made his way out of his room and to the kitchen, taking care not to make too much noise in case his grandmother was actually managing to get some of the ever-elusive sleep that she so often went without. After a glass of water and a couple of ibuprofen to ease the headache behind his eyes, he was starting to feel a little better. Not well enough to try going back to sleep but he wasn't still shaking and had overcome the sensation that someone was hiding in the darkness and watching him.

As he turned to head back to his room with the intention of doing a bit of reading to calm himself enough to attempt sleep once more, however, all of that changed.

His foot hit something that was both soft yet oddly hard and he stumbled forward, hands going out instinctively to protect catch himself as he felt. His palms landed in something warm and wet, slipping a bit as they tried to find purchase in a carpet that should have been easy to grab but instead slid between his fingers due to their saturation. With a grunt he brought one hand up, trying to angle himself to see what now coated his skin with nothing but the moonlight as light. He couldn't see it - whatever it was, it was far too dark - but he could certainly smell it and he knew, instantly, what it was.

Blood. He was covered in blood.

With a dawning sense of horror, Noah scrambled to his feet and all but dove for the switch on the wall. Light flooded the room. The first thing he saw as his eyes adjusted was his own bloody handprint upon the egg-shell white paint. Then he noticed the blood that coated his hands and forearms. Slowly, with his heart feeling as though it was in his throat, he turned around.

It was Angela that he'd tripped over. He'd known as much before he'd even turned on the light but seeing it made it that much worse. His grandmother was lying in a heap, blood surrounding her pale, still form. Two steps toward her and Noah knew what he was going to find before he'd even bothered to look. She was dead - and her scalp was simply gone.

Noah made a choked sound in the back of his throat as he spun away from the sight. His limbs seemed to move of their own accord, carrying him down the hallway to his bedroom. The gun was in his hand without him even realizing he'd pulled it from beneath his pillow. His body trembled, stomach jerked sharply, yet his expression was a hardened one as he realized with dawning clarity that his dream hadn't been just a dream. Sylar was back, killing anyone he saw fit to die. And it was up to Noah to stop him.

Re-exiting his bedroom with a determined gait, he strode out of the apartment with a determined gait. Cutting through the courtyard, he would have continued straight on with what might very well have turned out to be a suicide mission if he hadn't seen the message scrawled upon the other apartment building's wall. He didn't know how he hadn't seen it when he looked out his bedroom window earlier but it was there now, written in blood; the words made his own blood turn to ice in his veins.

She shouldn't have flinched.

Beneath the message was the bloodied, mangled corpse of his mother.

"NO!" The yell burst from his lips ashe rushed toward her, the gun hanging useless in his grasp. He dropped to his knees and quickly pressed two fingers to her neck even though he already knew the answer. She was gone. Dead. Sylar had killed her and it was all his fault.

"Mom, no." Tears blurred the teen's vision as he pulled his mother's body against his chest and began to rock her slightly, sorrow overwhelming him. Everything else faded into the background as he knelt there, holding her close, willing her back to life if only long enough so he could apologize for not having reacted soon enough. For not knowing that it wasn't a dream, that Sylar wasn't a changed man, that he should never have ignored the promise he'd made to his parents and let the monster live.

It's your fault, his mind whispered, even if it sounded as though it almost came from an external source, somewhere near his ear. He flinched at the words yet knew them to be true. She's dead. They're all dead, because of you. Sobbing brokenly, he simply clung to his mother's body and let the words etch themselves upon a soul that was, piece by piece, shattering away with each passing second he remained lost in a sea of guilt-stricken grief.