watchmakers_son | Isaac's loft, November 7th

It's some time later when Kim slips out the infirmary door, pulling it shut behind her.

Now out of sight of her patient and his worried friends, she allows herself to relax a little and scrubs one hand across her forehead, brushing her hair back from her eyes.

With a small, weary sigh, Kim turns away, starting back across the room.

Sylar leans against a vacant table, biting down hard on the inside of his cheek. (He already bit open his tongue when Hiro's attack struck true, and the urge to spit out another mouthful of blood is growing.) Both hands stay at his stomach as the doctor walks closer.

The decision takes less than half a second to formulate: he cannot deal with Hiro now; he cannot seek help in this infirmary without dealing with Hiro first; he will never find Sprague by midnight in the state he's in.

Both hands are at his stomach, and then, without warning, one isn't.

It's fastened around Kim's wrist, hard, as he yanks her toward the door.

"Hey!"

She's startled more than anything as he jerks her off balance, and Kim stumbles after the stranger.

It's hard to do anything else, in fact-- he's both tall and very strong, and his grip is bruisingly firm.

Surprise gives way to alarm when she realizes that he's pulling her toward the front door.

"Wait-- stop-- let go of me!"

Wordlessly, Sylar rams open the door with his shoulder, gasping in a sharp breath as the injury wrenches sideways under his hand.

He doesn't let go of Kim's wrist until they both stumble through into Isaac's loft. The door bangs shut; immediately, he slumps against the wall and presses his other hand to the long gash, head bowed.

When he raises it, it's just long enough to spit out the blood in his mouth. Red spatters onto the very edge of the smoke billowing over New York City.

The instant she's free, Kim scrambles for the doorknob, yanking the door open--

--only to find that whatever portal there had been between Milliways and here is now gone. She lets go of it, and there's something distressingly final about the 'thud' it makes as it falls closed again.

Slowly, Kim turns back around to face her kidnapper. Clear gray eyes widen at the sight of the mural on the floor, and then narrow again as she looks at him.

"You're hurt."

In between the sort, harsh rasps as Sylar struggles to breathe, his mouth starts to curve upward into a humorless smile.

"And you're a doctor," he croaks, not without a sarcastic bite to the words.

"Yes, I am," Kim retorts.

"You know, you could have just asked for help instead of kidnapping me, did you even think of that?"

"You seemed -- "

This trails into a grimace; the hold on his stomach tightens, though less in conscious effort than as an involuntary spasm.

"Otherwise occupied," finishes Sylar, and places one bloodied hand behind him to ease himself away from the wall. "With the other one."

"The other--"

She stops, staring at him.

"You're him. You're Sylar."

He got away, Hiro had warned, and she'd snapped back, worry about it later.

Evidently this is later.

Sylar finishes pushing himself upright -- though when he tries, he cannot take his hand away from the wall -- and finally looks up when he hears his name.

For a moment, he only studies Kim (and there is a clear, dizzying sense of duality there that he never expected to see outside of Milliways, like two rhythms ticking independently of one another), before his labored breathing resolves into a noise very close to a laugh.

"I see he was conscious enough to mention me." His throat works as he swallows back more blood. "And what did he tell you? Was I given all the blame?"

"He made it pretty clear that you two don't get along."

Kim's tone is dry.

"Which I can see for myself."

A pause.

"Are you going to let me help you? I mean-- I'm guessing that's why you brought me here, isn't it?"

Another beat of silence passes. He doesn't blink.

Then Sylar moves his hand away from the wound, gingerly shifting his weight off of the wall as he does, and begins to shrug off his trench coat. His entire body stiffens midway through the motion as the pain bites into his stomach; Sylar grits his teeth, unceremoniously drops the coat to the floor, and begins maneuvering toward the stairs leading up to the loft's front door.

Sitting down is far preferable to standing right now.

She lets out a breath she wasn't aware of holding as he takes a seat on the steps, and takes a step toward him.

Deep within her, that part of her twinned soul which she still thinks of as Ysanne reacts with alarm.

You can't mean to actually help--

Kim nods her head almost unconsciously, and keeps moving forward.

"I'm going to need to examine you," she says aloud, very steadily.

Inwardly: Yes, I do.

One of the patterns suddenly spikes high in counterpoint to the other, nearly deafening him. Sylar stifles a wince and turns his face away.

A second later, though, his gaze slides back toward her, the rest of him remaining perfectly motionless. Dryly, he answers, "I didn't think to expect otherwise."

Moving no faster than absolutely necessary, he begins to tug up the hem of his black hooded sweatshirt. At the same time, as he closes his eyes --

This wince, he can't stifle.

The gash, and the amount of accompanying blood, abruptly look much worse than before as the telekinesis relaxes.

"Oh, my god."

She's seen enough injuries on the battlefield in Fionavar to immediately recognize the slice of a knife or sword, and Kim hurries to his side, all else forgotten in the need of the moment.

"Okay, that's more serious than I was expecting from how you moved before --"

Clear gray eyes meet his.

"You know, this would be a lot easier to treat back at Milliways. I don't have much in the way of supplies with me. But I'm guessing that's not really an option, now is it?"

Crisp and briskly professional, but there's more than a touch of something wry to her words.

"I'll need you to lie down, I'm afraid. Can you make it to your bed, if you lean on me?"

Isaac's bed is up the stairs and around the corner, tucked against the far wall: a short walk either way. Sylar takes a breath and nods before he reaches up to grip the railing.

But losing the telekinetic pressure makes it all the easier for the wound to shift again. It's less a wince than a hoarse gasp of pain this time, and it takes far longer -- and far more of Kim's help than he'd prefer -- to ease himself back to his feet.

"Take it easy," she murmurs, trying to steady him. It's hard; he's heavy, and his height makes it even more difficult. "Come on, there's not far to go."

Eventually they make their way down the landing to the bed, where Kim braces herself and helps lower him to a sitting position.

"I need to get something to use for bandages. Do you have anything here?"

"No." His hands twitch, as if about to move toward the wound again. Glancing to Isaac's dresser, "Anything in there, if it'd be useable."

"I'll see what I can find. Be right back."

The entire experience is surreal, made more so by the presence of the large, vividly-colored paintings everywhere she looks.

There's something disturbing about them, something that whispers to her in a way she recognizes but can't explain. Dreamer of the dream, Ysanne had named herself, and Kim had known what she meant then in the same way that a part of her, the part that makes her a Seer, knows there's something more to these images now.

Kim's very careful not to look too closely at any of them. She can't afford to be distracted, not now. Sylar doesn't have the time for her to waste.

She doesn't let herself think about what happens after she treats him, after he doesn't need her any more.

The bed gives a reasonably good vantage point of the loft's studio, but not the smaller back rooms, nor the kitchen.

Kim's footsteps are loud enough in the silence; so is her heartbeat and breathing. Sylar tracks her even as he keeps his gaze fixed on his feet, almost wholly absorbed in the task of keeping the pain at bay.

After a moment, it occurs to him. His eyes flick upward.

Very quietly, the lock on the loft's front door twists and settles into place.

"You know, in a way you're lucky," she says conversationally as she returns. Kim's carrying a couple of clean and folded sheets, some gauze, rubbing alcohol, and a few other odds and ends.

"At least you kidnapped someone with experience treating wounds like yours." She sets everything on a nearby table and draws up a chair, then leans forward to slip an arm under his knees, trying to help reposition him.

"Feet flat on the bed, knees bent. Lie as still as you can."

She shoves a lock of white hair behind one ear and meets his gaze without evasion.

"I don't have anything to help with the pain. I'm sorry."

Sylar accepts the help, though not without tensing fractionally at Kim's touch.

"I can deal with that -- " another sharp breath as he leans back onto the bed, very carefully -- "later."

He won't have much choice.

"I'm sure. Okay, here we go. Yell if you need to, or clutch the mattress or whatever."

While she talks, she's already working, her movements both deft and as gentle as possible under the circumstances. She eases his shirt up and begins to clean the wound, examining it as she does.

"Not so bad; at least it's a clean cut, not too deep, I don't think..."

Kim lets out a very small sigh of relief.

"No, not too deep." She looks up at him. "You're going to be fine."

"Ah -- "

Sylar flinches as Kim begins to apply the antiseptic, fingers digging into the mattress. Almost instantly, his grip tightens further as the movement compounds the pain even more.

He isn't looking at her: instead, his eyes are staring blindly at the ceiling.

And the temperature around his hands has dipped as the sheets crackle suspiciously.

She startles, and jerks her hands back.

"What--"

A mage, she thinks, he's some sort of mage, like Loren was, only not, of course--

It doesn't matter. It can't matter, and whatever power he has, whatever he is, it doesn't change what she has to do.

Steadying herself and trying to ignore the strange blue glow from his hands, Kim snatches up one of the suture packets that she'd absently shoved in the pockets of her white coat earlier, then tears it open and threads the needle as quickly as she can.

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