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...yeah, it just occurred to Stephen that he counts as a flier. You know, seeing as he owns an antigravitational device and is reaching the final leg of jet construction.

Go team him?

Anyway, he's now having a look around for Nathan Petrelli (the real one, please and thanks), for whom he also has some news on the making-holes-in-reality front. Not terribly exciting news, but a plan, at least. (He's also keeping an eye out for Thrust, for the purposes of getting blueprints. Yes, he's building a fighter jet and a kind of cross-reality teleport and a bit of alien robot tech in the same lifetime. It's possible that he's overbooked himself.) Plus: he's totally botherable by anyone with a hankering to chat.

Catch him anywhere, twirling a well-used spanner between his fingers and humming to himself as he walks.

[ooc: slowtimes will be the order of the day, I am afraid.]

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...all right, so this situation requires a degree of wariness.

Or several such degrees.

An entire pie chart of the things, in point of fact.

Stephen glances around, and then tells himself firmly that there is no evidence that this Gabriel is another overpowered sociopath. Thus, there is a careful: "Hello?"

The swinging of the spanner has ceased.

Gray raises his eyebrows.

"Hello."

No 'do I know you?', because he doesn't.

And he's not going to comment on the wariness. Not until Steve does, at least.

Steve clears his throat. 'So have you ever killed anyone?' just doesn't seem to be a great conversation-starter.

"I guess you're new here?"

...oh god, and he just got the irony of the name.

"Somewhat."

The shrug is small, reserved. Hardly anything like Gabriel, and well removed from Sylar's arrogance, for that matter.

Surely, if Sylar was going to disguise himself, he'd do a bit more than making himself look calmer and colourless. Not that Steve doesn't consider double-bluffs, but then the question arises: why, and for what reason?

Gray gets the benefit of the doubt. You know. Until further notice.

"Flash and bang?"

"Precisely."

For obvious reasons, he's reluctant to introduce himself.

"Um," says Steve, who speaks fluent Awkward.

"You might want to know... there are doubles of you about. Although they're all in glorious Technicolour, so you might not have the same problems with being confused with them."

"I've been made aware of the circumstance, yes."

There's a space of time in which he queries his girlfriend, and then his face clears and an honest smile drops onto it like rain on dry soil.

"I go by Gray. The name came a good twenty years before the achromatism, I assure you."

All right, so now Steve is wondering (a) why he dropped the first name and (b) just what caused that crazy greyness.

"I'm Stephen Bell. I'm trying to work out a way out of here."

After a hesitant second, he offers his hand. No point being rude just because you're not yet sure of someone's credentials.

The handshake is familiar. The stillness and the quietness aren't.

"It's good to meet you, Stephen."

A genuine smile never looked so out of place on Gabriel, that's for sure. But Gray... it's not an expression he has call for that often. More frequently since he got here, yes, but still not that often.

"That's quite the project. I wish you well of it, though I won't have much use for it myself."

And wouldn't Gabriel be disappointed?

That... that is a question which Steve has been trying very hard not to answer. As long as there are people who want to go home, he's going to try to give them a way to do it, but there could possibly also be a reason why he's not been giving it his all as much as he should have. He doesn't want anyone to have to say goodbye to anyone else-- but he couldn't ask Val and Marley to come to Gabriel's universe, and though he has little visions of bringing Gabriel into theirs, there's a worm of guilt telling him he can't expect Gabriel to give everything up for him. There must be things he'd miss. So as long as it remains unfinished, that decision doesn't have to be made-- but as long as it remains unfinished, he's also breaking his promise to try.

Though none of that has really found its way into words yet, to a large extent not even unspoken ones.

In the meantime: "Thank you. ...At the moment it involves predicting the points of transference, and I'm reliably informed that that's impossible-- but then they also said that I couldn't possibly build a perpetual motion machine, and did I let that stop me?" Grin.

"Perpetual motion." Gray blinks. "I'd love to see that."

All right, so he's made his peace with his love of all things mechanical, too.

"...I didn't quite finish it yet," admits Stephen. "But the principle is sound."

You know, unlike the principle of solidifying light, which still seems to work just fine. The universe is unfairly bloody-minded, sometimes.

"Of course."

He grins again. It looks just as rusty as the first one, but friendlier.

Getting along with his younger alternate's boyfriend. Who knew?

"Let me know when you build it, then."

Teasing? From Gray? Nawwwwww.

Then again, he is a natural master of the deadpan.

Shh. That wasn't teasing, that was utter belief and support!

"I will."

No, really.

He can and will.

Just give him time and maybe a gun to hold to the head of the laws of physics.

...all right, so Gray can tell what Gabriel sees in this kid.

It's not a path he'd pick himself, Ish or no Ish, but he can still tell.

The grin fades into a small smile, and he nods.

It's not an 'I have complete faith in you' smile, but neither is it a 'you're going to crash and burn and I mock you for it' smile, so Stephen's going to take it and be grateful.

...Sorry, Gray, but Steve has to indulge his curiosity.

"What happened with your name? I mean-- not with the colour thing, sorry, with the first name-- see, I know a couple of your doubles and Gray is a surname..."

...oh, damn. And did he not learn his lesson with Sylar? At least he waited until they were introduced this time?

"...it's a long story," he says, and only someone who knows him well would be able to sort out hesitation from his usual reserve.

Well. Damn.

A breath, and a reassuring check of his connection with Ish, as he waits to see whether Steve would like him to tell it.

So hesitation looks the same, even with x added years and spontaneous greyness.

"If it's... personal," he backtracks, "don't worry. Sorry."

A Gabriel's happiness > his curiosity.

"Under the circumstances," he says, smiling just a little, "you can hear it if you like."

Not an offer made to just anyone, but then Stephen's not just anyone, is he.

Well, if it's being offered.

(Shh. He's a nosy kinda guy.)

"...if that's all right?" :D

"Well."

--He doesn't know about the Company? Damn, that's going to make things more difficult.

"Back in my world there's a company that concerns itself with the capture, imprisonment, and exploitation of people with abilities."

If Steve is smart, he'll pretty much be able to extrapolate the gist of the tale right there. But Gray will wait to see if he needs to explain further.

Steve is a Genius.

A genius who is running through the implications and looking gradually more and more horrified.

"Oh."

And now he's imagining this happening to his-Gabriel and oh my God.

"Yes."

Has Steve ever seen Gabriel's lip-nibble of worry? Well, here it is. In, as they say, black and white. With an edge of Gray's reserve, to be sure, but still.

"They didn't take an interest in me," he begins, reassuring himself through the medium of Ish that this revelation will not be news, "until I started killing people."

The words and the expression are incongruous. It's a quieter, more self-assured Gabriel discussing the activities of a Sylar, with something that a keenly observant individual might call the barest hint of regret. But: "Then they caught me, and kept me for twenty years, and locked away every ability I'd stolen except for one. Cellular regeneration. It made me... useful."

As a combination human bloodbank and source of necromancy.

"I can't say the stay was pleasant," as the torture kind of precluded that, "but it gave me some time to think about things. I'm not Sylar anymore; you might say I grew out of him. You can ask the colourful Intuition to verify that if you like. I'm told you know her."

With a ghost of a smile, he finishes, "As for the name - it's what they called me. Twenty years of habit will tend to stick."

"Yrwk?" says Steve, in reply to the first sentence, because whilst 'Sylars-killing-people' might not be a revelation, 'hi-I-was-one-of-them' is an unpleasant thing to be told. Were it not for the particularly un-Sylar-like tone of confession, he's be making his excuses right then and there.

And from anyone not a viciously unrepentant serial murderer, that's a story to inspire pity. Hell, Steve suspects that you could even remove the disclaimer altogether.

...his face isn't quite sure what to do with itself.

Much like the rest of him.

"...God," will do for a start. It's chiefly sympathetic in tone.