November - December 2006; location unknown

[watchmakers_son]

There's nothing remarkable about this room, nor anything inside of it.

It's a perfect square lit in sickly yellow and off-white tones, the walls irregularly patterned from years of repainting. One of the fluorescent lights strobes every so often; when it doesn't, it buzzes, almost subaudibly, like a distant insect's whine. The single bed in the corner has a thin mattress and thinner sheets, and medical equipment -- all of it small and carefully cased and free of exposed wires -- arrays around it, holding sentinel.

The shoes by the bedside are the same dingy white shade as the walls. They have no shoelaces.

The window's crisscrossed with thick bars.

On the bed, Sylar makes a small noise -- something between pain and grogginess -- and cracks open his eyes.

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[morelikeasponge.livejournal.com]

Peter sits back with a soft sigh, and shakes his head.

"Your name is Gabriel Gray," he says; there's only kindness in his voice. Kindness -- and pity. "You're very sick, Gabriel. Now, I'm trying to help you get better, and you can get better, but I'm going to need your help, too."

[watchmakers_son]

Peter shouldn't know that name.

Eyes widening, Sylar lifts his head, clear shock passing over his face before it veers back into the barely suppressed rage. For the first time, then, his focus shifts: he notices the walls, the bed, the barred window.

He still can't move; he's too weak, too badly hurt by whatever they did to him. Each time he tries to concentrate, it slips away like grasping a handful of water.

And Peter Petrelli should not know that name.

"Where am I," he says, very low and deliberately enunciated, as he turns back to Peter.

[morelikeasponge.livejournal.com]

"You're in a hospital."

Peter's eyes stay fixed on his.

"What do you remember?"

[watchmakers_son]

Sylar scoffs; it turns into a wince midway through, and a few seconds pass before he can catch his breath.

"You've met Parkman." It's almost, but not quite, a statement. "You were both there. Why not read my mind and find out yourself, Peter?"

[morelikeasponge.livejournal.com]

Peter exhales heavily; there's a hint of disappointment in his expression.

"Gabriel," he says, "that's a part of your delusion. You have to understand this. There's no such thing as mindreading."

[watchmakers_son]

There isn't even pause before Sylar dismisses this as easily as someone saying the grass is blue or the sun rises in the west: he shakes his head in several small, careful movements, mouth twisted in disgust.

Being told that he's deluded, insane -- there's nothing new in that.

(And yet.

Not simply that he's insane, this time; that there's no such thing --

How can he say that?)

"Sylar."

[morelikeasponge.livejournal.com]

"Sylar." Peter's mouth twists in a rueful smile. "The supervillain persona."

He leans back, rubs his forehead. "The identity you created for yourself to let you pretend you were somebody powerful. Somebody special. Gabriel, we both know that's not true. That's not who you are."

[watchmakers_son]

"If you think," he begins in a vicious snarl, trying once more to prop himself up --

The broken light gutters again, and this time, Sylar stops as his gaze skips up to it.

For a long while, he doesn't do anything but stare, as if he's forgotten Peter's in the room entirely.

[morelikeasponge.livejournal.com]

"Gabriel?" Peter prompts, after a few patient moments.

[watchmakers_son]

"The light's broken," he whispers.

It's not spoken with any of his familiar surety, or of knowing beyond a doubt. It's more like a quiet, dawning realization -- and a quiet, dawning horror.

All this time, the light was broken.

"I can't see it."

[morelikeasponge.livejournal.com]

"What do you mean?" The concern's back. "There's something wrong with your vision?"

[watchmakers_son]

He stays frozen for several more seconds, not moving beyond the rise and fall of his chest.

Then his eyes lock onto Peter's, utterly furious.

"What did you do to me?"

It starts out low. By the time it's peaked into a shout, he's rounded up all of the strength he can -- some lying dormant, most of it due to the sudden surge of adrenaline -- and launched himself toward Peter.

[morelikeasponge.livejournal.com]

As he does, Peter reaches swiftly for a small plastic object by his wrist, and it's crushed between them as Sylar lurches forward.

Peter tries to pull it back, and for a moment they're falling

(8:12 and the clock whirs smoothly)

but the floor they land on is smooth tile, not concrete. Peter's finger finds the emergency button.

[shimmershift.livejournal.com]

Within seconds, five orderlies lead by a single nurse burst through the single door leading into the room (that was there before, wasn't it? With its discolored paint and squeaking hinges?).

The orderlies are on the fighting pair in a flash, and the nurse is pulling Peter out of the fray and out the door. Sylar is now being held down by four large men with another keeping his head still.

The nurse returns, still pretty and neat with a bright smile. She kneels down next to Sylar's head and takes out a small flashlight. "Gabriel? Do you understand me, Gabriel?" She forces Sylar's eyes open one at a time and flashes her light to check his pupils.

[watchmakers_son]

He scrabbles against their hold, trying to twist his head away from the light. It doesn't work.

(Nothing works; it clamors over and over, like a mantra, nothing works, nothing works, nothing is working -- )

"Let go of me." He bares his teeth. "Let go."

[shimmershift.livejournal.com]

The nurse leans forward even more, almost nose to nose with her patient.

And smiles.

"Not going to happen."

And then she is pulling back with a syringe in her fist and slamming the needle down, through the thick muscle and breast plate, and into Sylar's heart. She is still smiling as she pushes down on the plunger.

"I've always wanted to do that," she tells him. "How does it feel?"

[watchmakers_son]

Sylar chokes, frozen in surprise as much as from the freshly burning sear of pain. His entire body spasms as his eyes roll back.

How it feels is like raw, hot wire plunged into his chest and scraped up the inside of his veins, radiating out further and further with each pulse of his heart. It feels like weights settling onto his stomach, and arms, and mind.

He doesn't articulate that. He can't even begin to try.

His arms jerk again, on reflex; then he is still.

[shimmershift.livejournal.com]

"Now," Candice whispers as the world begins to fade into a creeping and crawling blackness. "...let's try this again..."