Here's Your Sunset

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abby2_icon.gif gabriel_icon.gif

Scene Title Here's Your Sunset
Synopsis Former healer and former killer arrive at their expected destination, but everything has changed. There's nothing left to do but talk.
Date June 1, 2009

A Random Rooftop in the Ruins of Midtown


Sunset. Abigail's favorite time of the day. When the world is settling in for the loss of light. the city twinkles not long after. When god sets about to painting the sky the multitude of colors that would make even the greatest painter weep for being unable to capture on canvas. There was always a building within the midtown ruins, near the outskirts, that wasn't quite condemned enough that she wouldn't risk going up there. Radiation was never really a worry either and still isn't. She can always get Deckard to help her if it is. Her legs are over the side of the roof ledge, perched like some flame haired bird beside a pillar bearing a greecian woman long since chipped away by bomb, weather and manmade destruction.

There's a bar of chocolate in hand, Starbucks beside her that's gone lukewarm. Life has gone to pot, as some might say, for her of late. So she came some place to think, to watch and to on some level, be close to god that she hasn't been able to feel in a week now. Seven days, 10 hours and 42 minutes. Abigail looks at her watch to confirm. "Yup" comes softly from her lips as she breaks off another piece of chocolate. "Yes indeedy" She doesn't feel that close to him right now, not even with that blaszing swatch of scarlet that mute into orange, yellow and carefully into the encroaching midnight blue.

The air tastes like smoke, still, since the raging fires of a few days ago. Gabriel hasn't gone quite that far, but some somewhat suicidal streak of himself is urging him to go make sure the monster in the closet is dead in all ways a man of metal can be.

And he sees her instead, and is reminded of prophetic artwork.

Funny. Fate has a sense of humour.

He makes no effort to conceal the sounds of footsteps as Gabriel works his way up the cracked open building, hands out to guiding his way until he gets to the rooftop. Bypassing warning tape and aged demolition notices that were never fulfilled. He's wearing black, just to be different, and he's weaponless, weary and wounded. The gash at his head has been patched up as best as could be done without the hand of a doctor. It needs stitches to heal properly and avoid infection, but it's a clean dent of dark red surrounded by blossoming bruises, half an inch above an eyebrow.

Still wearing a collar of bruises, too, and other evidence that he's fought, perhaps, ten brawls, and only won a few of them. His shoes scrape on the debris filled floor as he approaches, and Gabriel has no eyes for the sunset, watching Abigail watch it for him.

"Only one person would come find me, on a sunset" Maybe she saw him coming from her high perch, maybe she didn't. Regardless, there's only one person that she had some sunset rendevous with. Away from the view she shifts, looking over her shoulder so she can make sure it was indeed him scurrying about down there that she saw. "You look like hell warmed over four times Mr. Gray"

"Thanks." Acknowledged, Gabriel keeps his hands tucked into his pockets and approaches, coming to stand at the edge although not about to perch on it so nimbly just yet, if at all. He is a walking bruise, and such things might be too fancy. He turns his back on the sunset, instead, and leans against the partially irradiated concrete ledge, the colours of amber and golden sunset attempting to make his black coat and hair somewhat more life-having. "This must be normal for you."

"I don't get up here often. Usually too busy. Running around, healing people, working, school. It all adds up to … a filled day" Casually, the chocolate bar is held out, Godiva it seems, squares of simple dark chocolate. An offer for him to break off a piece and enjoy it if he wants. "I can't fix you. I'm sorry. I would, but I can't"

Well if it's Godiva. Gabriel's eyes slant down to regard the chocolate bar, more studying the verb rather than the noun, then up towards Abby's face. Would but can't. Eventually, he lifts a hand to break off a piece of chocolate, seeing as it might be all he's going to get. Even his hands are bruised, the knuckles swollen from inexperienced punches thrown and a slow healing graze of skin kind, one fingernail dimming a little to dark blue.

"God stop listening?" Equal parts sardonic and sincere, Gabriel disappears the square of chocolate into his mouth.

"He's given it to someone else. My time with it, I guess, is done" That's what she's taken to telling herself now. Tomorrow it might be that god's pissed at her, day after it might be that yes, god just really isn't listening, he's got more important things to do.

"Tyler case was in the alley behind the bar last sunday. Someone else is answering God's call now Gabriel, i'm just standing on the side and watching" She breaks off a square for herself, taking only half of that small square in her mouth so she can let it melt on her tongue in all it's bitter glory.

The lingering taste of bitter chocolate is sweeter than the news, Gabriel's gaze steering away from her, across the other side of the rooftop where the sky is stained darker than the brilliant colours behind him. Of course, it would be Tyler Case. "Ray certainly knows where to hit us all where it hurts," he says, his arms coming to wrap back around himself, to the protest of his ribs. "I guess God doesn't want me to have it either." Or, you know, any of it.

"He's a little fickle at times, isn't He" God that is. The rest of her square is slipped onto her tongue and shoved into the other side of her mouth so she can suck on it while the sky keeps turning. It'll be curfew soon, but, she can still probably sneak her way back to her buidling regardless of the hour. "Dr. Ray?" it's the only ray that she knows. "That makes sense. Glasses, beady eyes. I really didn't like him for saying that I had to kill a guy."

Faint recognition filters in, along with some silence, unsure of where they're supposed to go if Abby isn't healing and Gabriel isn't killing. Stuck watching the sky turn in on itself. It's colder up here, and wind tugs at their clothes as if urging them away for that encroaching hour of curfew. "He doesn't have a talent for saying things people want to hear," he agrees, voice hollow. "Given a choice, you wouldn't have killed Kazimir?" There's doubt in his voice, a glance lending to the unspoken addition of: or is this something else?

"Given a choice? I would have tried to find someone else who would have been able to do it and not hate themselves a little afterwards. I mean, I have very mu.. had very much the same gift that Daniel Linderman. He could easily have gotten him. For a cost yes, he could have" Abigail points out, watching a helicopter beat a lazy path across their view, disrupting the skyline. "But he needed me to do it" Someone who hadn't gotten her hand wet with blood before. "And then.. there was you. He was you. Daniel Linderman might not have spared you, or tried to spare you and might have just touched you while he was in you instead of wait for a negator. He seems a bit arrogant that way, from what i've seen. I don't know. I don't hold lifes answers. I just kinda, trip the light fantastic as ai go and skip along and pray really hard that I don't fall on my face a little too often"

His eyes narrow a little, and he looks over his shoulder at the helicopter. That's where he stays, body angled awkward so as to watch the flying machine's trek across Midtown with all the watchfulness of a hawk. "That's one way to do it," he comments, voice a little absent, until Gabriel affords her a glance in between his copter-watching. "Or you could just look where you're going."

"I could" She will, she has. The chocolate bar is extended once again, sharing her late night snack. "Do you like having Gillians ability? It getting any easier to control? You can let it out up here. I really don't have anything anymore. I didn't get the other persons gift. So you don't have to worry about reigning it in up here" because sometimes, not having control on the time is a nice thing. "I don't think it's gonna fly close to us but we can head inside if you prefer. Just in case"

A shake of his head at both the offer to go inside and the candybar, and Gabriel considers her words for a second before finding that psychic knot at the back of his mind, loosening it, and augmentation, invisible to Abby's genetics, spreads out like an invisible lake of ten feet around him. The only visual cue to Abby's eyes would be the relaxing of his shoulders, by a fraction, and the way his eyes unfocus briefly to release it.

"I've figured out controlling it," he confirms. "And no, I don't like it. I use it— " A wisp of laughter from the ex-killer, a flash of a self-deprecating smile from a bruised mouth. "I use it wrong."

"You don't use it wrong Gabriel. You use it how gabriel uses it. Not how Gillian uses it. The person who has my gift" She's still calling it hers. "Doesn't pray to god to ask for it to stop, or to help themselves. Don't rightly know what does save for Alcohol and… kisses" There's a wash of faint pin to her cheeks as the bar is wrapped up and tucked away, starbucks cup picked up. "You'll learn to use it, control it as it befits you to do so" There's a gesture with the cup in one direction. "Not as it befits Gillian. It's not like they come with an isntruction manual" There's a pause. "well, no, I guess with you.. they did huh"

Gabriel's head shakes in denial. "Not anymore," he adds, gaze shifting from the presence of the helicopter, going back to watching the approaching darkness opposite the sunset. "I don't mean control. The application. It's the power to help people, to inspire them, and I turn it into a weapon. It's not a good fit, and it's going to get me killed one day."

One day, as if this were permanent. Ffff. Gabriel blows out a sigh at his own wording, but doesn't amend it.

"So, it's a harder thing for you to do. I seem to remember a persistent Man who kept trying to get what god gave me. I mean, come on, three times? And then you went off to try and take Kazimir on himself so that he wouldn't deny you it. That, Gabriel was inadvertant helping. You fought in the pancratium for Teo. You parked your butt in a news studio and pretended to be me. Dunno if you did that to help or to have a lark, but you helped. You went to Moab yes? All this was before you became the safekeeper for your new ability." The last of the hot chocolate in the cup is drained, consumed and washes with the bitterness in the side of her mouth making the drink just that much more sweeter. "Turning it into a weapon, well. When you've been living and doing what you've been doing for as long as you have.. This ability is just another hammer and all you can see is nails. Changing a personal world view, it doesn't happen overnight. Instinct is very hard to scrub out. But you've been doing it. I've seen it, heard about it. Witnessed it"

He doesn't deny what she has to say, no need to confirm such things that don't need confirmation. To be fair, he does a lot of things to maybe get himself killed, ability aside. That said. A hand travels up to tentatively run fingertips along the broken skin of his head wound, before simply rubbing the bridge of his nose in a gesture of weariness.

"And do you think you can continue on, as you are, without your ability to heal?" The redhead is placed under his scrutiny now. "Or are you climbing up closer to God for the sake of it, not because you feel like you've lost a piece of yourself? A new ability wouldn't have helped that. I promise."

"I'm sorta.. thankful that I didn't find myself with some other ability. I don't rightly think I could have handled it. I'm already handling not having his .. gift, very badly." He asks the million dollar question though. Can she keep on in her life without it. "I don't know Gabriel. Honestly. I've had it for eight years. I always said that the day God took it away, that he said I'd fulfilled what he wanted me to do with it, i'd let him take it. But every morning I wake up and.. I just.. I want it back. I want it back so badly. I wish I could just go to who has it rip it out of him and some how force it back into me" Oh lord, her eyes are starting to water. men don't know how to take crying females and so Abby turns her face away from Gabriel and his scrutiny. Not that he can't see her lift her arm up and wipe her wrist across her eyes.

"I think the thing I hate most about it, is when someone finds out, and the look in their eyes. The .. shock which melts away really quickly into pity. And they don't know how to treat me. Kinda like.. you know, seeing a guy who lost a leg. You know you shouldn't look at where it used to be, but you do. Because.. there's no leg there and then you feel bad, and feel guilty" There's a shrug of her shoulders disrupting red hair and she wipes at her other eye, fruitlessly. She hasn't really let herself cry save for that night that it happened. "Maybe there's a lesson. I can only hope. God does.. strange things and for strange reasons. I mean.. if I can survive loosing a tongue, maybe I can survive this right?"

Pity isn't necessarily something Gabriel knows. After the shock would come calculation. As if trying to make some moral decision. Pity, of course, could be in the fact that no one has yet taken the opportunity to kill him once and for all. Before Abby turns away to conceal her tears, Gabriel lifts an eyebrow at her words, but says nothing, no accusation or comfort.

He considers the others instead. "You got your tongue back," he notes.

But doesn't leave it there, as unhelpful as it might be to do so. Gabriel shuts his eyes briefly, and goes on with, "And even if you don't get your ability back, if I don't get mine back… it's not about that. It's about gaining back a purpose, a role in life, and if you don't, you may as well be dead anyway. But you can. Find purpose, I mean, just like the ability to talk."

Then, he adds, "I don't care if you cry." There's no one here to impress.

"They had a healer. Was John Logan's attempt to.. take my faith away after Is tabbed him in the eye and smacked him with a bible" There's the same kind of hesitant laughter at that, remembering the sound of the leather just connecting with the brothel owners cheek. "She regrew it. It's like.. this sinkhole in my mouth when I had to heal myself. just sucked it all up" And while he says he doesn't care, that doesn't stop Abigail from fishing for a handkerchief from her messenger bag. She's that sort of girl. Her mother did raise her right.

"Well, I figure, I'm gonna give myself two weeks to wallow in misery, and rail against God, and the guy who has my ability. Be angry with the world and.." The occasional sniffle interrupting her words. "Be angry with God a little more, and doubly angry at Tyler case and now it seem, Edward Ray. After that. Well, My anatomy classes and all my other classes start up, so i'll sorta have to abandon being angry and I can focus on that right? And work. Because rent doesn't pay itself. And if I can't lay on hands, then, i'll.. find another way to heal yes? I was working towards becoming an EMT. Just means that .."

She shrugs and pulls forth a pristine handkerchief embroidered with her honest to god initial. Love you mom. "I'm like everyone else. Not quite so special and thanks. For.. you know, telling me I can cry. I got told I need to let myself do that more. Apparently, it's really good for you, go figure. Just you know, it's like touching people normally. I just don't do it and now I'm babbling really. Run Gabriel, Abigail is babbling, the world is ending. The southern belle is running off at her mouth. Save yourself, forget the women and children, i'm gonna drown us in tears up here. Think Teo could save us in a little dinghy?"

He watches with the patience of a statue as she talks, and lucky for him, there's no supermemory filing every single word away, and even now, patches of fogginess descend down between sentences into nothingness, unrecorded words lost up here in the broken city. That used to make him panic a little on the inside, even for mundane things.

Not anymore. The corner of Gabriel's mouth hooks into a half-smirk, fleeting and small. "There are scarier things, but I'm sure he would. I've drowned before." He takes his weight off the ledge. "You should do that. Be an EMT. Understand what you used to heal, the hard way. I fixed a clock the other day." A shrug accompanies an eyebrow lift. "My first power, the ability to understand the way things work. The only one that's mine. I wanted to see if it was still a part of me somehow.

"It is. I'm not going to be taking abilities any time soon, but I can fix watches." Talk about a square one. A small moment of dry laughter.

"The hard way" She had planned that, before everything went to hell. Tears are tapering off, hanky damp on one quarter. "I almost did too. The Bridge. I fell off like you did." The white cloth is folded in halfs then half again, fiddling with it to get it down to as small as she can. "Can see why you did what you did though, I get, sticking your fingers in a persons head, it was, like sticking your fingers in a really complicated watch yes? Looking for that … battery or spring that made it all move and give it life. If you don't, ever get back what you had, if Helena and Phoenix can't wrangle it, maybe you can find some place where you're not known and just.. do that. Fix watches. The hard way"

Gabriel's eyes are a little dull as she speaks, before softly snorting. "I take it back. Some purposes are a lot like dying." His hands tuck back into his coat, and he glances towards the all but disappeared sunset. The helicopter's gone. "I'm not ready for the world to forget me yet." It's a confession, of kinds, a simple one, and shameful for anyone slightly less desensitised than he is. "You shouldn't wait for it to get dark before heading home."

"Cause tall dark haired men might be waiting in the shadows of building to do mean things to me?" Of course there are. She swings her legs over to the roof proper instead of absently dangling over the side. The strap of her bag snatched up in her slender hands and ducks her head to settle it across one shoulder. "I forgave Amato Salucci last Sunday. I forgave him, like I forgave you, Like I still do. He couldn't get god's forgiveness, but he thought that if I could forgive him, he could carry on, he could bear to live. And I did, and I gave him back his hand. My last act with god's gift." Bleu eyes lift up to meet Sylar's brown ones. "I don't know whether it being taken away was a reward, that I finally did what he wanted, and it's time for someone else to do God's work or whether… or a punishment for giving someone forgiveness from my heart when God may not even give it when he goes to stand before him" Up she heaves herself from the lip, scooping the cardboard cup. No littering.

Gabriel's black-clad shoulders shrug, expression unreadable beneath the countless bruises and cuts turning to scars in their own slow time, and the dwindling light of sundown. He starts to move for the doorway when she goes to stand, a meandering pace, brick and dirt and debris crunching underfoot as he goes. "Reward or punishment, you'll realise it when it's obsolete, when your actions have decided what it was, in the end. Depends on how you want to look back on it, when all's said and done. All that matters now is what you do next. God doesn't care if you cry either."

"God cares. He always cares. Little Italy, there's a clinic called the scraped knee's. Ask for Dr. Pepper. He'll do what I did. Only without the praying and the singing and the … walking into really dangerous places. He's a little more world aware than I am. If you ever get your ability back… try to avoid taking his if you go back to that. If only for me." She reaches out, gently bumping a fist against his arm. "Thank you. For your words. God Bless Gabriel" She's kiss him on the cheek but she has a feeling that that might be pressing the line and really, there's not an uninjured spot she'd feel comfortable doing it. "And yes, he really is Dr. Pepper" With that, and one hand in the pocket of her leather jacket and the other, fingertips cradling the cup, she's heading for the door while the sun slips with absolute certainty beneath the horizon to let the moon take center stage.

An eyebrow goes up at both the information and the disclaimer that accompanies it. And the gesture. And really everything else. "Thanks," is muttered, before Gabriel gives her time enough to get down through the building on her own, waiting enough until he sees the redheaded woman appear again on the street, he himself disappearing from the ledge before she can look upwards, and the sky continues to drain away the last of her requested sunset.


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