Title: Gateway

Rating: T

Genre: Drama, angst, tragedy

Characters: Leo, Marcus, a little bit of Adam at the end

Pairing(s): None

Summary: Leo never got any closure with his nemesis—and that would come back to haunt him. '"No. You're dead. I don't know how you're here, but you don't scare me." His voice was devoid of any tremble, proving his determination. His enemy just smiled. "Oh, but you scare me, Leo. You scare me."'

Warnings: Implied character death. It's pretty dark, nothing out of the usual.

Notes: I was just thinking about The Vanishing and how Leo never got any closure with Marcus. I mean, when he reassembled himself and was just the metal structure—man, that was freaky, at least to me! So yeah, I had to write a story about the aftermath. It's really intense character study—I really enjoy that stuff.

Enjoy, everyone!

~Gateway~

"Leo..."

The voice echoed around the darkened room, and Leo looked around wildly. Light glinted eerily off of something distinctly metallic—and it was moving. Leo instinctively summoned energy into his palm, illuminating the room he was in and the figure in front of him. He was standing in Giselle's lab, and even more terrifying—the thing moving was a generic android. But the familiar voice... he put two and two together. His jaw dropped.

"Marcus?"

"Hello, Leo," the metallic android said. There was a shimmer in the air, and skin grew over the metal structure. Leo watched in horror as the face of his nemesis constructed itself on the smooth metal faceplate; matched with the familiar dark camouflage clothes. "I don't suppose you missed me?"

"Not at all," he choked out.

Marcus grinned. "The feeling is mutual. Well, unluckily for you, Giselle has ordered me to terminate you."

The picture suddenly cleared in Leo's head. "But Giselle is dead. And so are you."

"But I'm here, aren't I?" Marcus countered. "How can I be here if I'm dead?"

Leo gathered up the scraps of his courage. "I don't know. Why don't you tell me?"

The android smiled, tracing metallic fingertips over a metal tabletop beside him, producing a loud screeching noise. "Well, I don't really know. There are a few options. First, there's the idea that I resurrected myself—I did it once, I can do it again. Second, it could be that I downloaded my consciousness into this lab's mainframe before I was destroyed, and this is yet another new body. Third, it could be that you, in fact, never saw me defeated in the first place—it could all be a dream starting after you were knocked out by me the first time. Who knows?" The loud metal-on-metal noise ceased, and Leo saw that Marcus's hand had stilled. In fact, the villain was standing practically completely immobile, a far-off look in his eyes. "In fact, I could just be a part of one very long dream, and everything you know is just a figment of your imagination. Everything you know to be true could be a hallucination, a fantasy—maybe you never met Adam, Bree, or Chase. Maybe nothing you experienced with the Davenport family is real. Maybe it's all in your head. Or," he paused, "maybe it's all in my head, and I'm dreaming all this up." He chuckled softly, a noise that sent chills down Leo's spine. "And I guess it's possible that all this—you, me, everyone—is all a dream inside the head of some larger being. Did you ever think of that?"

Leo didn't answer—it almost seemed like Marcus wasn't even talking to him anymore.

"Anyhow," Marcus said, eyes suddenly sharp and alert, "None of that matters. Because no matter what we are, where we are, when we are, I'm here; you're here. And I'm making amends. Because I was killed once because of you, and I'm not going to die again. This time, the victim won't be me—it's going to be you."

Something clicked in Leo's mind. "But I... I remember that you died a second time, I know you died! I saw you die!"

"Obviously not," Marcus chuckled, lifting a hand, watching as a blue orb of crackling energy formed within his palm. He held out his arm as if preparing to throw, but Leo held up his hands, eyes wide and frightened, but also defiant.

"No. You're dead. I don't know how you're here, but you don't scare me." His voice was devoid of any tremble, proving his determination.

His enemy just smiled. "Oh, but you scare me, Leo. You scare me."

Leo blinked. That wasn't the response he was expecting at all...

"Do you want to know why?" Marcus asked. Without waiting for an answer, he carried on. "It's because you have all the things I never did. It has nothing to do with power—because obviously, I have more of it—but it's about everything else. It's because you somehow managed to turn my dad to your side. You connected to him in a way I never could. You're closer to him than I ever could dream of being. It's because you have a family. A family who loves you. I never had that. My only purpose was to find Adam, Bree, and Chase for my 'dad' who never cared about me, let alone loved me. It's because all your life, you've had a free will. You've been able to do things I never was—you were normal. For me, it was train, train, train, day and night; follow my father's orders. And I'm afraid that I'm damaged because of it." He looked down at his hands—they looked like fingers, but both boys knew that underneath the skin was just metal and wires. He stared at his palms. "I'm afraid because I was designed to be as close to a human as possible. I'm better than humans, even. But... the first time I hurt someone, I discovered that I enjoyed their pain. I never wanted it to stop. And that terrifies me."

Leo just didn't know how to respond to that. "I..."

Marcus interrupted him. "I know, I know, I know. You've never done anything like that, you've never known what it's like to hurt someone and never want their pain to stop—"

"I have."

The two simple words were so quiet, Leo wasn't even sure he'd said it out loud. Marcus's face transformed into a mask of confusion. "What?"

"I have done that. I know what it's like," Leo said, louder. "I remember. I know what it's like to hurt someone and I know what it's like to just want to keep screaming and shouting and inflicting pain. I know what it's like. I'm not proud of what I did, but I did it anyway. I can't change the past." He sighed. "Her name is Taylor. Back then, they called her S-1. She was evil, of course, but there was a fight... I blasted her. I thought she died, but in that moment, I wished she hadn't. I wished she hadn't just because I wanted to blast her over and over and over again. I wanted to see her stop breathing, I wanted her to crumble to pieces. I wanted to watch the light leave her eyes." He shook his head, eyes haunted and disgusted with himself. "She's actually my friend now. It's crazy... I once thought I could never be friends with my enemies. I was untrusting. That was because of you. Even though I know I can trust people now, I still can't change my mind about you. And I know that this isn't real. I know it's not."

"But again, how do you know what the definition or 'real' is? Reality is just a concept created by you humans," Marcus pointed out. "And technology has only made it more complicated. How do you know that everything you've experienced isn't some large simulation? You don't. So how do you what's real or not?"

"I don't know what reality is, not anymore," Leo replied. "You're right—bionic humans seem impossible. So do androids and superheroes. But I don't care. I don't care whether it's 'real' or not. I know what I believe in, and I believe in this. I just have to trust that I'm doing the right thing. As long as I have my family and my friends, it's enough."

"I don't know how to trust," Marcus murmured, almost ignoring Leo. "It's in my programming, and I can't change my programming. That's another reason I'm afraid—I'm a slave to my coding. You... you can change over time. I can't. I'll always be like this. And even worse, I can't change this... bloodlust. I need to watch buildings topple and people crumble by my own hand, because if I don't..." he trailed off.

"If you don't?" Leo prompted.

Marcus shook his head. "If I don't, then... I feel like I don't have a reason to live."

"Then you're as good as dead," Leo said coldly. "Marcus, there's no way that, if this is 'real', even if you're somehow still alive, we can't let you keep hurting people. I can't let you keep hurting people."

"And then I have nothing to live for," Marcus said simply.

"Exactly."

Marcus met his eyes, and Leo was startled to see how human he looked. "What do you think I should do, then?" Marcus asked him.

Leo shook his head. "It's up to you."

Marcus looked down at his palm, still clutching the ball of energy. Slowly, his hand came up until it was level with his chest. Leo realized with a horrible certainty that Marcus knew exactly what he was doing. "Marcus..."

"No. I want this—I need this," the android said, determined. "If I don't, I'll be just a shell for the rest of my life—and since I'm an android, that life could be very, very long." He looked up, and Leo knew right then and there that Marcus was terrified—his face was very pale, leaving no traces of the slight freckles on his nose—but he was still going through with it. "I still hate you, you know," Marcus said, fixing Leo with his stone-cold gaze. "But not enough to kill you, not anymore."

"Likewise," Leo decided to say simply.

Marcus laughed without humor. "Yeah, right. Like you could ever defeat me."

I could, and I already have, Leo realized silently. It was true. Marcus was leaving, for good, Leo knew that. Whether the whole situation was a dream or not, he knew that Marcus would no longer be visiting him in his nightmares.

Marcus drew in a breath and held up his hand, the blue orb almost doubling in size. The energy seemed to weaken him, and sparks of electricity began to spring from his artificial skin. "No turning back now," he muttered to himself.

Despite his hatred for the guy, Leo didn't think he would be able to handle watching him... well, off himself, android or not. He squeezed his eyes shut. "Goodbye, Marcus."

There was a loud explosion noise and an unbearable heat, and then Leo's eyes snapped back open.

I'm home.

~Gateway~

Hours later, he was still lying on the couch that he still slept on despite a couple empty capsules behind him.

Adam was still slumbering deeply, but Leo admitted, it still felt weird without Bree there constantly texting or Chase there doing work. He missed them; he hadn't heard from them since they left weeks before. He still didn't even know where they'd gone!

Somehow, though, the shadows in the corners of the room looked a lot less threatening than they had the night before, as if his mind had lost the ability to fool him into thinking that a melted puddle of melted-android-Marcus goo would come out of the wall and attack him.

Leo laughed softly. It seemed that he had retained some of his old humor—he'd been afraid that after the seriousness of the recent weeks, he would be permanently caught in a dark shroud of gloominess. Fortunately, that didn't seem to be the case.

He thought back to his dream—yes, it must have been a dream... unless it wasn't. That whole 'what-is-real versus what-is-not-real' thing was still very confusing to him. Either way, he thought back to his dream, and how Marcus was definitely gone, both in his mind and in reality—whatever it was. Reaching out, he picked his phone up off the table beside him, opening to the pictures. Scrolling back two years—had it really been two years?—he found the pictures of Marcus he'd taken for his secret report back when they were in high school.

Those pictures were the last pieces of evidence anyone in their family had of their android brother/cousin (except for Marcus's eyebrow, which was in Douglas's possession as a bracelet). Leo pressed a button on the file, and the confirm button popped up. Hesitating for barely a second, he accepted it.

41 pictures: confirmed deleted.

Silently, he threw his phone back on the table and sat up at the exact moment Adam started awake.

"Hi, Adam," he sighed.

"Hey, Leo," Adam greeted him drowsily. After rubbing his eyes a few times, he seemed to register Leo's deep-in-thought expression that was common on Chase's face, not anyone else's. "Are you okay?"

Leo blinked, startled. He'd been thinking... then he registered the question. In response, he looked at Adam, then to his phone, then back. "Yeah." He smiled, wider and more at peace than he'd been for a very long time. "I'm better than ever."

~Gateway~

Reviews are appreciated.