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[watchmakers_son]

The door of apartment number seven at 215 Reed Street isn't locked. Sylar rests three careful fingers on the edge and pushes it open; it moves silently, without resistance.

Completed canvases rest everywhere in the studio, on the walls, the floor, arrayed in a circle around Isaac Mendez, who's feverishly painting another one with his back turned to Sylar. It's of the two of them: Isaac on the ground in a pool of his own blood, Sylar standing above him, regarding the corpse dispassionately.

It's more than mere painting, though. He can (tick) see that. And on the floor beneath the painter's feet, as he continues to work --

Sylar freezes mid-step when he recognizes the shape to the spirals of yellow and orange.

New York, Frank Black had rasped. The explosion.

There had been truth to it, hadn't there.

Two seconds pass before he raises his eyes back to Isaac and takes another step closer, still listening.

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[watchmakers_son]

As Isaac speaks, Sylar regards him steadily, unmoving. This one, too, is someone who knows; he can see the discrete pieces of the world better than any of the others could hope to see it, and there is a peace and a steadiness to that kind of knowing. Sylar will not say that it isn't supposed to go like this.

Yet to maintain that calm, even in death...

(Beato Michæli Archangelo, beato Ioanni Baptistæ, sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo: it's like a distant echo when he recognizes what Isaac is struggling to say, a reflection in a smudged mirror. He remembers it. He's spoken it himself.)

...and to believe yourself a hero in your sacrifice.

He shakes his head, slightly, and rises back to his feet. One more step, to place him near Isaac's shoulder.

Sylar will have to see for himself how much the painter truly understands.

He points.

[viridian-hue.livejournal.com]

The last words Isaac's lips ever form are a mea maxima culpa that turn into a long, drawn out scream. He didn't want to scream. He didn't want to lose that calm. He wanted to be a worthy sacrifice. But Christ cried out from the cross and Isaac's screams turn into a liquid gurgle.

Death throes. These are death throes. His body strains, heaves, struggles, protests the dimming of the light. Put out the light and then put out the light, but once put out thy light, I cannot give it vital growth again...

And then, that's it. That's all of him. All of his blood and his passion and his hopes and his pain, all of his fears and his needs and his love and his efforts. It's all spilling across the floor, spilling out of his head like an overturned chalice, blood for the world outpoured. The world goes white, blindingly white, white as the Virgin's mantel, white as the Magedelene's ointment jar, white as the Lamb's coat. White, white white white white...

...and then he's gone. Silent, still. Gone.