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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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[viridian-hue.livejournal.com]

Isaac's head whips around, following the gun's path. It moved. It moved and he didn't touch it, no-one did. He turns to look at Death, and realises: this is the moment. It's pregnant and heavy and Isaac knows this is all there is to his last moments. The chill of his studio and the smell of the paint, the turpentine and treated canvas, the vague hum of electricity and the noises of the city outside, all of these things are the last things he will ever know. And he's ready. He's ready.

[watchmakers_son]

The telekinesis punches Isaac in the chest, throwing him backward onto the painting of the city going up in flames, and pins him down, spreadeagled like an insect.

Sylar glances at the paints, the brushes -- another sharp twist of his fingers, and two of them rise into the air, spinning like propellers before they rocket toward Isaac.

One slams straight through his right wrist and into the floor. The other does the same to his left wrist a split-second later.

[viridian-hue.livejournal.com]

It takes a moment for the pain to start in earnest, to really register, and all of a sudden, it's there in a rush, white hot and burning, a lemon-dill-bleach-vomit taste in his mouth. So he does the only thing he can do: he cries out. He's laying there, stretched out like Christ on the cross--forgive me Father, for I have sinned, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault--and he can't keep silent in the fact of that sort of pain. The cries turn into something resembling words, and a moment later, he remembers English, too. "It's already gone!"

[watchmakers_son]

He steps closer until he's level with Isaac's feet.

"Why don't you tell me all about it, then?" he growls.

[viridian-hue.livejournal.com]

Isaac's breathing hard, and he licks his lips, struggling to keep his voice steady. "I've seen enough of the future. I don't need to watch it happen," he says, coughing a little, feeling like he can't breathe. It's all threatening to drown him and he struggles, struggles, struggles, as if his efforts might purify him, even though he knows it won't. It can't. There's no absolution, none.

"I've wasted my life, destroyed everything good that ever came to me. At least I did one good thing before I died." He doesn't know if it's enough. Maybe it never could be. But he tried, doesn't that count, doesn't it?

[watchmakers_son]

That isn't an answer.

It's not an answer, and Sylar has so rarely been one to tolerate objects lacking in purpose, in use; even less so when the one thing that might be of any benefit is that sweep of a mushroom cloud over the floor. But even that one isn't anything but a single part, isolated from its others, and until he learns of the rest, there is no way for it to work properly --

Jaw tight, Sylar flicks his wrist again to lift two more brushes from the table. They shoot to the ground and impale both of Isaac's ankles with a crunch.

[viridian-hue.livejournal.com]

Isaac makes a keening, choked sound like a wounded animal. Maybe he is a wounded animal. He's being crucified with the only tools he could trust. There's irony there. He doesn't notice it, but it's there.

The pain wells up, a tidal wave of visceral red, red he could never, ever capture (not that he'll ever get the chance now), cadmium red and naphthol red and quinacridone red and red oxide and colors he doesn't even know, blends and cocktails that he wishes he could have used somewhere, somewhere. The detachment is starting to set in; the pain is too great for his body to handle, and his brain is just pulling away, drifting away. It's almost a relief. It means relief is coming, anyway. The angel of death is on his way, Gabriel, the Left Hand of God. There's no escaping his sword, and Isaac hopes for it. It's what he's been chasing all these years, after all.

"You can't fight the future," Isaac rasps.

[watchmakers_son]

Silently, Sylar steps over Isaac's foot and circles around to his side. He glances to his right at the canvases next to them, almost lifts a hand to touch the drying paint.

They all show the same thing, from different angles: Isaac with the top of his head sheared off, the skull hollowed out like a shell.

Below him, he can hear the thready, fading unevenness in the painter's heartbeat.

"Neither can you," he says at last, softly, as he turns back. Each movement careful and meticulous, Sylar laces his fingers together and crouches beside him.

[viridian-hue.livejournal.com]

Isaac's head lolls. He meant to shake it, but this is the best he can manage. His body isn't responding the way it ought to, and that should scare him. Instead, he just lets it go. "It's all right. I finally know my part in all of this. To die here with you," he says in a low voice, looking up at Death's face with wide eyes, his pupils dilated, blown out, ringed with hazel. There's almost a sort of kindness in their depths. Death doesn't know what's coming for him; Isaac at least knows.

"But not before I show them how to kill you..." he continues, breathing heavily. "And stop the bomb. I finally get to be a hero." He hears Eden's voice ringing in the last, in those words. She told him to be a hero for her. And now he is. She's gone, and Simone's gone, and now he'll be gone, all gone, all fall down, ashes, ashes, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

The blood is pooling under his arms and legs, hot and sticky and staining the floor like paint, and he's just staring up at Death, waiting. Death doesn't know what he's doing, he thinks. Death can't know. No-one knows the future, no-one but him, and he has this intense calm about it. He's the pascal lamb, the sacred feast. He's giving himself up to the salvation of the world, a hero at last. It's all he wanted, and in the end, it's all he has. Maybe his own blood will finally wash away his sins.

Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatæ Mariæ semper Virgini, his lips forming the words, but he can't get them out, he can only think them, bits and pieces of a dying confession.

[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.