.07%/The Hard Part
Jun. 11th, 2007 02:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
watchmakers_sonOnce he's finished with Isaac Mendez, Sylar lays a palm flat on the air and squeezes it into a fist. The paintbrush shoved through the artist's right wrist loosens itself; he opens his hand, turns it over, and the brush leaps into his waiting fingers.
Blood's already dripping to the floor in a quiet, erratic patter, like falling rain.
Paints are next: a palette already prepared, unused, and a blank canvas leaning on an empty easel. Sylar examines the surface critically. For an instant, shadows and shapes flicker over it; then, an eyeblink later, it's unmarred.
He closes his eyes, delving deep to search for the new gear that ratchets two degrees differently from the others.
And he
(Sylar's eyes snap open so sharply that it convulses his entire body, the pupils and irises covered in a filmy white glow.)
watches as the walls of the loft sluice away in streaky ribbons of color, as if melting under an intense heat; underneath it
(He grips the brush tighter and begins to outline short, precise strokes over the canvas.)
is the Oval Office, a man, Peter Petrelli's politician of a brother, stepping from around the table that holds Isaac's paints as it dissolves into the President's desk; Nathan folds his arms and tucks his chin in contemplation,
and underneath that -- in silent observation, Sylar tilts his head as the layers of color continue to drip away --
(He's smiling.)
he can see another man.
It would itch at his skin like the sound of an ill-wound spring, if Sylar had the capacity to notice it: the way time and body have ceased to exist outside of this, the movement of the brush, the broad splashes of color.
He doesn't. He can't. In Isaac's loft, his eyes are still clouded as he casts the first canvas aside and props up a new one, the paintbrush rapidly turning into a hindrance as he continues to ferret out the images. Giving up, he drops it to the ground and daubs the paint onto his fingertips instead, Isaac's blood smearing through a finger's width of green to turn it an ugly brown.
He pauses, watching, then traces out a fresh set of lines as
the vision abruptly stutters to a stop and begins to rewind like old film. A noise thunders behind Sylar, a thousand car horns blaring in unison, and his hands flinch upward to his ears as he turns around.
The entire back wall of the Oval Office is gone, replaced by a high balcony looking out at the nighttime New York skyline. The open air and the harsh smell of smoke beckon him closer; he walks forward to its edge and peers down into the wash of pinprick lights. Around him, the wind whips by cold enough to be autumn, but when he rests his hands against the waist-high brick wall, it feels like it's been baking under the summer sun for hours.
Dark clouds scud across the sky time-lapse fast, and the sun quickly follows them in a blurry arc as a yellow gleam snakes out over the city. Except it's --
Sylar blinks, and that's all it takes for him to be at street level in midday, the scenery buckling around him and the sun morphing to a fierce reddish glow radiating from a man's hand. It flickers and stammers to light up the bones just beneath his skin like an X-ray. Soot lashes up the buildings on either side with each pulse. The man gasps.
The reek of smoke hasn't abated. He can still hear the car horns.
Then, suddenly, in time with the next pulse of energy, fresh blood twists away from the man's feet and streaks over the ground toward Sylar; it meets him, clambering up his shoes like a living thing and soaking through the ash that's sweeping higher and higher to cover the sky entirely. Sylar brushes his fingers through the black dust coating a pillar next to him -- his hands are lit bright and burning, too, more blood running into his coat sleeve in a thick warm wetness. Three white lines hold, just for a moment, then stitch themselves shut into uniform darkness again.
That's when the ground bucks, sending him to his knees, and the air seems to compress around him in a sudden unbearable heat before it rushes outward in a deafening
BOOM
The palette clatters to the floor as Sylar shakes himself back to awareness, breathing hard.
Carefully, he touches a paint-spattered hand to his brow as he sees what he saw in the throes of the vision. He turns his head, first to another canvas Isaac painted of a red figure, arms outstretched, surrounded in light; then to the floor as he steps backward, staring at the violent bursts of an atomic cloud breaking over the Chrysler Building.
I have sinned, someone is chanting, faintly, the sound reverberating as if carried on the shockwaves of some nearby detonation; father, I have sinned, forgive me, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa --
Sylar can taste copper in his mouth. He's bitten through the inside of his cheek.
Both of you, says the agent again as the chanting melds with his roughened voice. Somehow it's both of you.
"No," Sylar breathes, and something twigs dully at the base of his spine, churning upward through his stomach. It takes him a second to recognize it.
Fear.
It's not both of us.
It's just me.
Blood's already dripping to the floor in a quiet, erratic patter, like falling rain.
Paints are next: a palette already prepared, unused, and a blank canvas leaning on an empty easel. Sylar examines the surface critically. For an instant, shadows and shapes flicker over it; then, an eyeblink later, it's unmarred.
He closes his eyes, delving deep to search for the new gear that ratchets two degrees differently from the others.
And he
(Sylar's eyes snap open so sharply that it convulses his entire body, the pupils and irises covered in a filmy white glow.)
watches as the walls of the loft sluice away in streaky ribbons of color, as if melting under an intense heat; underneath it
(He grips the brush tighter and begins to outline short, precise strokes over the canvas.)
is the Oval Office, a man, Peter Petrelli's politician of a brother, stepping from around the table that holds Isaac's paints as it dissolves into the President's desk; Nathan folds his arms and tucks his chin in contemplation,
and underneath that -- in silent observation, Sylar tilts his head as the layers of color continue to drip away --
(He's smiling.)
he can see another man.
It would itch at his skin like the sound of an ill-wound spring, if Sylar had the capacity to notice it: the way time and body have ceased to exist outside of this, the movement of the brush, the broad splashes of color.
He doesn't. He can't. In Isaac's loft, his eyes are still clouded as he casts the first canvas aside and props up a new one, the paintbrush rapidly turning into a hindrance as he continues to ferret out the images. Giving up, he drops it to the ground and daubs the paint onto his fingertips instead, Isaac's blood smearing through a finger's width of green to turn it an ugly brown.
He pauses, watching, then traces out a fresh set of lines as
the vision abruptly stutters to a stop and begins to rewind like old film. A noise thunders behind Sylar, a thousand car horns blaring in unison, and his hands flinch upward to his ears as he turns around.
The entire back wall of the Oval Office is gone, replaced by a high balcony looking out at the nighttime New York skyline. The open air and the harsh smell of smoke beckon him closer; he walks forward to its edge and peers down into the wash of pinprick lights. Around him, the wind whips by cold enough to be autumn, but when he rests his hands against the waist-high brick wall, it feels like it's been baking under the summer sun for hours.
Dark clouds scud across the sky time-lapse fast, and the sun quickly follows them in a blurry arc as a yellow gleam snakes out over the city. Except it's --
Sylar blinks, and that's all it takes for him to be at street level in midday, the scenery buckling around him and the sun morphing to a fierce reddish glow radiating from a man's hand. It flickers and stammers to light up the bones just beneath his skin like an X-ray. Soot lashes up the buildings on either side with each pulse. The man gasps.
The reek of smoke hasn't abated. He can still hear the car horns.
Then, suddenly, in time with the next pulse of energy, fresh blood twists away from the man's feet and streaks over the ground toward Sylar; it meets him, clambering up his shoes like a living thing and soaking through the ash that's sweeping higher and higher to cover the sky entirely. Sylar brushes his fingers through the black dust coating a pillar next to him -- his hands are lit bright and burning, too, more blood running into his coat sleeve in a thick warm wetness. Three white lines hold, just for a moment, then stitch themselves shut into uniform darkness again.
That's when the ground bucks, sending him to his knees, and the air seems to compress around him in a sudden unbearable heat before it rushes outward in a deafening
The palette clatters to the floor as Sylar shakes himself back to awareness, breathing hard.
Carefully, he touches a paint-spattered hand to his brow as he sees what he saw in the throes of the vision. He turns his head, first to another canvas Isaac painted of a red figure, arms outstretched, surrounded in light; then to the floor as he steps backward, staring at the violent bursts of an atomic cloud breaking over the Chrysler Building.
I have sinned, someone is chanting, faintly, the sound reverberating as if carried on the shockwaves of some nearby detonation; father, I have sinned, forgive me, quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa --
Sylar can taste copper in his mouth. He's bitten through the inside of his cheek.
Both of you, says the agent again as the chanting melds with his roughened voice. Somehow it's both of you.
"No," Sylar breathes, and something twigs dully at the base of his spine, churning upward through his stomach. It takes him a second to recognize it.
Fear.
It's not both of us.
It's just me.
