musicboxings | And if you think you won't walk on coals, you will

And if you think you won't walk on coals, you will

Realistically, Gabe shouldn't be alive. Realistically, Gabe also shouldn't be able to do what he does, let alone do it so well. But he does, and he loves it. Revels in it. There's not much else he knows how to do now, save for this. Save for twisting. Because that's what he does, he thinks--he twists knives that other people have put in each other's backs. He gets off on it, too, or at the very least it fills the strange, empty hole in the entity that calls itself Gabe.

It's the accident--the stupid accelerator accident, and all of the sudden he got his mom to kill herself and he felt happy for the first time in a long time. He remembers smiling at her funeral, remembers whispering to Natalie that she'd probably be better doing the same thing just because he craved that same feeling he got. She told him he was a freak and he disappeared, panicked, because whatever he could do--and he still wasn't sure what it was--didn't work.

Gabe, eventually, figured it out. He could make people think he'd been there their entire lives with just a little verbal coaxing here and there, ruin their lives, feed off of it--that's what he called it--feeding--and then move on. He convinced waitresses and waiters at diners that they'd known him his whole life and he can get things on the house, convinced hotel after hotel that he was just always there for as long as they can remember. He got by. And then? Then Gabe got ambitious.

He remembers a field trip he only half paid attention to to the labs, and then realized that that was his big score--his big fix. The guy that was responsible for that entire accident had to be the most miserable son of a bitch there was. He marches up right to the only crew left, convinces them he was there since the beginning, and is officially part of the team. It works--he just feeds some lie about Harrison Well's wife knowing him and recommending him and he knows he's in for keeps.

Currently, he's got his legs kicked up on a table, everyone else gone home save for him and the professor--doctor--whatever he is. He's got a Nintendo in hand, half-heartedly playing, as he goes through the facts for a hundredth, millionth time: metahumans existed. He was a metahuman. And if he scores a friendship with another one--not Barry, it would fuck with his plan--he'd probably get the biggest meal of his life.

"Hey," he brings his feet down and spins on his chair towards the man in the wheelchair. "What are you doing here, anyway? Whatcha workin' on? Shouldn't you be home?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Come on. I'm young but I'm not totally stupid." Just mostly, apparently. His eyes slip closed again, shifting so he's a little lower, scrunching up his face as he winces. He thinks his ass is going numb from how still he's sat.

He exhales through his nose and even that seems like a chore, feeling dry in almost every aspect, despite sweating from what he's fairly certain is some sort of fever. It's not withdrawal. He knows it is, deep down.

"That emotional register for meta humans. I'd take the unstable ones once you built it after I talked to them for a little. Make sure it's the ones you guys don't care about. Supply myself and help you out in the process, if you dying wasn't going to happen."

A beat.

"I don't like things without failsafes. Makes me jittery."

A slow smile twisted at Harrison's lips and he let out a soft sort of laugh through his nose. Shaking his head, he reached up to slowly tug his glasses off his face. Even as he said it, Gabe didn't seem to realize what he was describing. It fit so painfully well. It had just been a theory that he was running with, but it sounded more and more like he'd hit on the truth.

"That..." he said emphatically, gesturing with his glasses and letting them tap gently on the glass. "...is precisely what junkies say. That's basically what's happening here. But I'm afraid your little plan would have never worked."

In one fluid motion, he pushed back to his feet and settled his glasses back onto his face. "Unstable or otherwise, our guests are few and far between. You'd have dry spells and would go seeking your fix elsewhere. Why venture out of the lab, when you have so many sources for you fix right here? I'd never risk that."

It wasn't a bad one, in his opinion. Actually, it was pretty genius. Not super-level genius, but for a 20 year old who'd skipped the last year of high school? Pretty damn good.

He can feel the smugness from Harrison. Not like he can feed off of it, but it makes the hair stand up on the back of his neck as he finally moves. He doesn't move very far--just tilts his torso so he's hugging his legs and laying down in a fetal position.

"Are you just rubbing this in my face now?" It was an honest question, staring up at him, looking pale. It wasn't a particularly good look on him. "Is that why you're here?"

Harrison's gaze turned toward the ceiling, as of considering Gabe's words. Was he rubbing it in? He'd been mocking everyone around him with his intelligence since the start. Quips and jabs that would have been like grinding salt into wounds if they'd had any knowledge of the truth. It was honestly hard to say where that ended and it became simply rubbing it in out of sheer malice.

"I'm here..." he said, slowly, bringing his gaze back to the curled up form in the cell, "...to observe. As I've said. There are things that you just can't learn from bio scans."

With a slight flourish, he pulled his new ear pieces from his pocket. He'd made a few adjustments in the intervening hours, perfecting the design now that he understood exactly what Gabe was doing. He pushed it into his ear and flicked it on. On this side the glass, it didn't seem to do anything at all.

"For example..." He started to blur. From head to toe. Then in a blink, he was inside the cell, standing over the prone form. The blur faded quickly, leaving him just staring down at Gabe as the last sparks of red electricity fell away.

He would have rolled his eyes if he could--he only half notices the flourish, too wound up in his own self misery and pity. He puts something in his ears again--probably to just mock him--but the other vibrates, moves--

--and Gabe uses the last of his energy to jerk his head up from the floor, eyes wide, at the fact that Harrison was suddenly there.

It hits him like a brick--relief is evident on his face, even though he's still on the floor and confused as all hell. Can he meld through stuff, too? It doesn't matter. He's not getting pain, but he's getting feeling. He's getting the presence of another person, their aura, their hormones or whatever the fuck he'd said.

He's not alone.

"How?" He asks, not because he really wants to know but because he's floored and can't think of anything else to say as wind goes rushing back into his lungs.

A slow smile stretched over Harrison's face as Gabe reacted. This was a major risk. One small miscalculation and the effects of the ear piece could be overpowered. His speed could fail him and he wouldn't be fast enough to stop Gabe from trying something. He could end up trapped in the cell. But he had to know.

How would the emotion junkie react to being exposed to someone again? Could he still take the emotions without being inside someone's head? Were the false memories vital to the process, or were they an advantage of the young man's abilities? There were too many questions left unanswered.

"Just one power is versatile when you know how to use it properly."

He didn't move. He just watched. Waiting. Checking his own thoughts to make sure they were his own. At least as best as he could know.

"This is a carrot on a stick," Gabe says suddenly, and he already feels better. Stronger. All it took was someone's presence and he couldn't taste anything, no, but he could feel.

He's not fully to himself, but he can sit up now with only a slight amount of wincing.

"You're just doing this to fuck with me. See how fast I run with it in front of me?"

He pauses, and, after just a short moment, brings his shaky self to stand, though he's leaning heavily on the wall. He looks Wells square in the eye.

"You just mash yourself against the wall until you come back out the other side?"

Interesting. An almost immediate improvement. It was quite possible that the feeding on emotion allowed Gabe to get inside of people's heads, rather than the other way around. By duplicating a person's hormones, perhaps even brainwaves, it created a sympathetic connection. Similar to the effects of the Firestorm matrix, but temporary and more parasitic.

More importantly, Gabe seemed to be a passive feeder. Taking in whatever he could. If he could learn to control it, if he could do it without active effecting memories, he could be quite useful. But there was no way to trust someone who could change memories with a merely passing thought. Even the vague memories convincing enough to trick himself.

In a blink, he was back on the outside of the glass, his clothes settling in the wake of his sudden movement, his hands behind his back as if he'd never moved in the first place.

"Something like that," he remarked. Without knowing the real Gabe, he had no way to know if he'd even understand the concepts involved. "About the glass, not the carrot."

Gabe has a hand on the glass already, palms splayed, almost like he'd been there the entire time, just like Harrison had seemingly been behind the glass his entire conversation. The only reason Gabe knows it's not true is because he saw it with his own eyes, really.

"I'm right about both," he mutters, and he's sure of it almost as much as he's sure about Harrison keeping him here and monitoring him instead of just killing him.

"Did I hurt your ego that bad, Wells? Did I emotionally shank you?"

"My ego is not so nearly as fragile as you think," Harrison admitted with a vague smile. "You only get to be a good scientist by being able to admit when you've been wrong. Or misled. What matters is finding the right path again."

He leaned closer to the glass again. "And you..." Another quirk of a smile, "...have shown me exactly what I need to find the right path. In fact, you're just what I needed for another....experiment of mine. So it comes down to a choice. You can stay here in the lab, but I cannot allow you to continue altering the memories of my staff. The only catch is that you will be wearing....a device. It will monitor and regulate what you take from others. Or, you can refuse, and I leave you to whither away."

Gabe's brows knit, and it's obvious he's not trying to grope for some sort of well-placed lie. He's weighing the pros and cons, weighing a very heavy and hefty price for an equally appealing deal.

He has no way of knowing if Harrison will fuck him over or not. That's what's causing him grief.

"I have to come clean to the rest of the lab?" He asks. Still cautious. Still weighing. Even if he doesn't really have a choice. Give him just a bit of his pride, would you?

Harrison gave a slow shake of his head. "I never said that. As far as I can tell, even without your direct influence the memories remain. I said to not continue altering them. If you come clean, it could be quite messy, explaining just how I found you out. You'll continue to act as though nothing has changed."

He tilted his head slightly in a not quite nod, as if encouraging the other to continue. "It's up to you."

"Then we have a deal," he says softly. Gabe forces himself to stand, mostly because he felt a little degraded having to sit in the cell, and he leans against the wall. He tries to mask it as a simple move, something subconscious, but he's still tired. He still needs someone there, and close.

"I won't tell your dirty little secret, or spill mine, and i'll stay with...whatever you're doing with that. Fine. Yes--I'll do it. Works better for both of us."

Thank God. He can do his usual thing, now--and maybe get something good out of it. Maybe it's not a lost cause.

"If I even suspect you've breathed a word of it, you will sorely regret it." There was a tone to his voice that went beyond cold. The sort of warning that went beyond merely killing. The sort of tone that spoke volumes of just how much suffering he knew how to inflict and he wouldn't even feel bad about it.

He lingered for a moment, gaze boring into Gabe, before he was simply gone, leaving behind nothing but red sparks of electricity. Minutes ticked by, the Pipeline left in utter silence. And when it seemed he would be gone for good, he was back just as fast. Not just to the cell, but inside it. Shoving Gabe hard against the glass as he wrenched a collar around the young man's neck.

"Fine," Gabe repeats, and there's frustration fitting of a 20 year old laced in his voice. He'll do it. He'll do it to survive and then find a way to leave this entire shit can behind him. Maybe Coast City. His parents got married there.

What seems like hours tick by and, suddenly worried, and he puts a hand to the glass to try to peer around. He's nowhere to be seen. Wells has ditched him. Injected him with a nice round ofhope and then--

And then he's practically slammed against glass and something's being put on him. A collar, and Gabe's hands fly up to grab at what it is. He's about to pull it off when his brain catches up with how fast Wells is going. Almost immediately he drops his hands, brows wide, showing it was completely unintentional. That he's doing this willingly.

"Something tells me you're going to fuck me over," he mutters, but on his face is still that sweet, all-american smile.

The clasp of the collar didn't seem to need to be manually buckled. It let out a mechanical sort of hiss, vibrating faintly against Gabe's neck, before going silent and still. If he dug at the thing, he'd find a faint seam where everything met, but no apparent means of unlatching the thing. Only once it was secure, Harrison moved back half a step, as the cell didn't allow for much else. He stood rigidly, watching Gabe with a cold gaze.

After a moment he gave a faint shrug, the chilly look melting into vague amusement. "I find people often see themselves in other people, so that would really be a reflection on your own intentions, would it not? Though I doubt what's about to happen will do much to assuage your doubts. Very soon, in fact, as in three...two…"

Just as he would have said "one" the collar seemed to let out a high pitched whine. No, it wasn't the collar. It was something inside Gabe's head. Because that same moment, it would feel as if he'd been suddenly kicked in the back of the head. No actual physical pain, but a rather intense wave of vertigo and for a few moments it would be like his body forgot how the mechanics of breathing worked.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

And if you think you won't walk on coals, you will

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject