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There's a flash and a bang and a very confused man with ridiculous hair appears, hovering a few feet above the rubble of a destroyed parking lot.

Hey, when you can cast illusions, you don't need a comb.

"...The hell?" Sylar starts to say, and before he's quite done with the sentence it's President Nathan Petrelli who's making the quizzical exclamation to empty air, settling gently to the ground.

You can never be too careful.

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Stephen, your heartbeat says you're not being straight with Sylar here.

Not being straight with Sylar is a good way to get yourself killed.

"You know him, don't you? And as you so astutely realized, I am him. Therefore, you know me. Unless of course there's something you're not telling me."

Never mind that Sy's reasonably certain the version Stephen knows is from at least six years in the past.

Let it be known that he is disturbingly good at faking his younger self's cheerful, open innocence when he tries. The mask only cracks around the last five words or so.

His aptitude is really quite frightening.

Hurriedly: "Yes, but the whole point of split-off universes is that there are differences, you know, so I doubt you're exactly the same person, and who says you're not from different timelines?"

Steve continues to be bendy with Sylar!

...Oh, hang on. Shit.

"...I mean, you look older."

Backtracking Steve is backtracking.

"Your hair's..." Gesture.

Give a man enough rope, or so the saying goes.

...Hair?

Sylar runs a hand throu--oh dear lord.

Gabriel's embarrassed look is one with which Steve is no doubt familiar.

But he has probably never seen this version. It's considerably subtler and tinged vaguely with disgust.

Nevertheless: slightly too set off-balance to think of a verbal response in time to close the widening gap in both the conversation and his upper hand thereon.

NEW POSSIBLE DISTRACTION, BE LEAPT UPON.

"It's a mess," says Steve apologetically, because he knows how much Gabriel likes order and neatness and he is so totally ready to exploit that in this very special case (he forcibly ignores the guilt, because this is not his Gabriel). "I guess it's too much to hope you had a comb in your hand when you got pulled here?"

He doesn't have a death wish, we promise. He is actually going somewhere with this.

"...No."

DO YOU HAVE A COMB, STEVE?

On Gabriel this level of interest would be cute. On Sylar it's just plain creepy.

NO, BUT HE KNOWS WHERE A COMB CAN BE FOUND.

"A lot of people loot things from a city I know. Could find one there."

What, Smallville? Pah! Metropolis is waaaaay off in the other direction, or so he hears. It shouldn't be too hard to find from the air. Possibly. Hopefully.

Sylar raises his eyebrows.

Notably, the earth fails to rumble at this catastrophic shift.

"Lead on."

...He can't quite believe that it actually appears to be working. And that he is not currently being eviscerated. Neither situation, however, is one he is going to question lest it change dramatically.

(As he lifts off the ground a few inches, he can't stop himself from glancing in a farm-ish direction, but he does manage to turn it into a general all-around look of a hopefully unsuspicious bearings-getting nature.)

"...This way." He demonstrates by nodding his head in the direction he imagines Metropolis (or, hell, anywhere far far away from Smallville) will be. As he starts off, not looking away from Sylar, his fingers' temporary fumble on their switches reminds him unpleasantly of the amount to which he's scared.

The amount to which Stephen is scared is a source of great amusement to Sylar's sensitive ears.

But he can't help admitting to a grudging admiration for the way he keeps it in.

Worthy, he muses, of being a friend to his younger self.

The silent, graceful midair glide is totally not showing off. Not at all. Nope.

It would be nice if Steve could show off in turn, and normally he would, but normally he's not flying feet from a man who's almost certainly a villainous version of his boyfriend (if Val was here she'd have kicked his ass by now), nor so nervous that he's having to consciously remember combinations of dials and levers that have been second nature to him for ages.

...The glide is, he's forced to admit, impressive. (If it was his Gabe he'd be able to enjoy it and congratulate him and explore new sets of directions with him, not fly along wondering whether he's going to be attacked from behind.)

...

Metropolis is not yet in evidence. But Steve swears this is just because they're not flying high enough to see it. Swears it.

And Sylar is not getting impatient!

Yet.

...Steve, you're not going to like this, but Sylar has another one of those looks on that's familiarly Gabrielesque only a thousand times less telegraphed.

From Gabriel, it's quite a flattering look.

From this man...

Well. At least you can be fairly sure Gabe's taste isn't going to change in the next decade?

When Steve glances uncomfortably back (he's doing it a lot; one would even imagine that he does not entirely trust Sylar!), he does a midair double-take. This is an entertaining manouvere which involves a momentary swerve to the side as the head is unthinkingly turned too far into the slipstream in the name of confirming that yes, that's the face he's wearing.

...Um. He's just going to get back on course and wonder whether to be immensely disturbed.

It's at about this point that Sylar cottons on to the fact that Stephen has been recognizing his subtle mood shifts this whole time.

Surprisingly, he laughs.

A few things are starting to come together here.

"So when you say you know the younger me...?"

For all it's delivered lightly, the don't bullshit me on this one is a strongly implied undercurrent.

Sylar wants to know.

Ah. That's what they call an academic question.

Steve's shifty-eyes are lost on the birds.

...for obvious reasons, he'd rather announce this to everyone back home through a tannoy from the school roof than to the guy flying behind him, but the undercurrent is quite clear and he's already pushing his luck with this decoy.

"...We, uh..."

His ankles just tangled, Sy. There's your answer.

Ever heard Gabriel giggle?

Yes you have.

So the sound coming from behind you should be really quite familiar.

D'aww. Gabe has a boyfriend. How cute.

Okay, Steve is officially through the looking-glass here. He's pirouetting in midair just to remind his stupid brain exactly who it is that's soaring along behind him.

The narration admits to the possibility that Sylar may freak him out a little.

This narration cheerfully proclaims that at least he's still got his shirt on.

And really, the whole "black trenchcoat" bit is a clue.

God, Steve wants out of here. (This may have been mentioned before.)

At least, perhaps, temporary escape can be found in this way: "I'm going to go a little higher, and see if I can spot the city from there," he says clearly, before starting to cautiously ascend. It's the tiptoeing attitude that he's seen adopted by policemen in documentaries, where they have to deal with armed hostage-takers, and treat them as if they might go off at any second.

...Maybe that was an unfortunate analogy. He really doesn't want to start thinking about hostages, not in this situation.

Might go off at any second, eh?

*ahem*

Sylar is a showoff. (This may have been mentioned before.)

That's why he's suddenly nowhere to be found-- no, wait. Up there. That little black dot.

Mmm, farsightedness. So useful.

~~QUIET YOU.~~

Stephen suffers a fair amount of distress when he realises where Sylar's gone, because if the man is able to see Metropolis (and from that far up, it should be as easy as finding it on a map) from up there, then it logically follows that a little way in the other direction he should be able to see the Cooper farm.

Though perhaps it's not so bad as all that -- it's not like the farm has a flashing neon sign reading 'GABRIEL LIVES HERE' hanging over it. (Though it does have the skyscraper-ship-fort. And Steve wouldn't put it past the mad intellect behind it to make it glow at some point.)

"Hey!" he yells, rising more swiftly, though he hardly expects to be heard at this distance.

And just like that, Sylar drops down beside him again.

Mildly: "You needn't shout. Yes?"

@_@, goes Steve.

This version of Gabriel is a regular grab-bag of tricks, it would seem.

"...wait for me?" he says weakly, though it's rather pointless now.

(It wasn't what he was going to say, but seeing as he doesn't know what he was going to say, that will have to do.)

"Did you see -- the city?"

"Looks like it's this way."

He heads off.

There he goes! Gosh that man is fast. Sorry, Steve.

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