watchmakers_son | January 2007

January 2007

The next time he opens his eyes, Sylar's face to face with the silent thunderclap of a star going nova.

He freezes. Blinks once. Lifts his hand, cautious and slow, without stepping back. The sleeve of his thin cotton shirt slides back an inch as he presses light fingertips to the Observation Window; it's like touching a sheet of ice, and narrow white circles of fog instantly appear around his fingers.

It's disorientingly quiet.

He's standing up, though, he realizes. And nothing hurts.

Thoughtful, Sylar brushes his fingers through the condensation. It squeaks faintly as the patterns warp and streak away. As he turns around, the lights flicker above him, and for half an instant

the floor's just as cold, there are bars across the window, there is --

When they steady again, it's far too bright, and the walls...he doesn't think they were that pale.

He can't be sure.

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Axel starts pacing, slowly, his feet making no more sound than they ever have.

"You're asking me? That's a new one, Sylar."

Sylar's back goes rigid, and he stares at Axel.

Softly, almost wonderingly: "You don't know my name."

It's the first time he's been called Sylar in...he doesn't know how long. However long he's been here. Longer.

A thin, thin smile.

"What makes you think that?"

Slowly, the pacing continues.

His own smile, faint as it is, disappears. When he backs up a step, there's another loud crunch.

(The resistance under his feet was stronger that time, like cracking bone.)

"Why call me that, then?"

"Would you rather I call you Gabriel, Gabriel?"

Axel's steps move smoothly to keep a perfect circle around Sylar.

"I could do that, y'know. If you'd rather."

His grin has teeth in it again, and there are shadows over his eyes, stark and sharp, and he stops pacing, directly behind Sylar.

"No."

The pressure at his ankles is back; Sylar can't turn around, can't step away.

"That isn't -- " He swallows. The wind has died down, but not the cold, and there is still enough of a breeze to send his hair into his eyes. "It's Sylar. My name is Sylar."

"S-Y-L-A-R, right?"

Axel laughs.

"Or is it G-A-B-R-I-E-L?"

"That isn't my name," he grates out, each word sticking in his mouth.

The lights extinguish.

In the dark, the faint pinprick light of the stars suddenly flares a bright yellow.

Axel just laughs, softly.

In the surrounding quiet, perhaps it makes sense that it should sound so much louder, seem to come from so many directions.

And yet.

Sylar can't hear his breathing or his heartbeat; he can only feel them as he strains to see through the dark. Some of the shadows coalesce into vague shapes -- tables, IV (coat) stands, fallen debris.

Others are beginning to peel off into things wholly unidentifiable.

Vague shapes move in the shadows.

With the shadows.

Are the shadows?

Axel is still laughing, his teeth white like the Cheshire Cat's.

It's almost impossible to see in the dark; even more so to tell what any of the shapes really are.

Until the lightning tears across the blackness, that is, leaving the stench of scorched ozone hanging in the air.

(There's no rain; not with this storm, not yet.)

The man standing there watching him doesn't seem to have any difficulty seeing through the shadows, though, to judge from the intensity of his focus. Each bolt, each flash through the sky is oddly reflected from the new hardness in Frank Black's eyes, which are fixed on Sylar.

"Your name doesn't matter." There's a rough, dangerous certainty in the low gravel of his voice.

"I know who you are."

It's so bright, and such a marked contrast to the dark, that all Sylar can see at first are reddish-orange spots. He shakes his head, blinking furiously as one hand lifts in an aborted, warding gesture.

It falls to his side once he recognizes Frank.

"That is who I am," he spits, enraged -- and while his posture stays taut, his expression and voice drop into a sudden calm when he speaks next. "And it didn't help you very much, in what you wanted. Did it, agent."

"Is it?"

He doesn't smile.

"I've learned from my mistakes. But you haven't, have you?"

There's a beat of silence, and in it Frank's gaze flickers up, over the other man's shoulder. He nods in response to whatever's caught his attention, then looks back at Sylar.

"You will."

The brightness reflects off of Axel's hair like too much bloom in a videogame.

"He forgot to mention that a mistake can't learn from its own mistakes," he observes. "Tch."

Sylar turns around: first to meet Axel's eyes, then to search, futilely, for whatever had caught Frank's attention.

"None of it -- " he begins to snarl as he turns back around.

Frank's gone.

Another beat passes before he can continue, and when he does, Sylar's voice is hoarse. "None of it was a mistake."

Axel just grins at him in an incredibly, obnoxiously knowing way.

Knowing-- something-- of a truth. Knowing more then Sylar knows. "Mistakes are a part of learning. Do you know what the first thing a Firebender is taught when he begins to earnestly train for combat, rather then beauty or art?"

There is no Axel now; there is only Zuko; Zuko who has tiger's eyes, fierce and full of fury.

But he's not angry now. He is surprisingly cold, stating cool fact.

"We burn animals. We get used to the smell of fat, the collection of the grease on our lips. We learn what it is to put the scent of the worst agony a human can imagine-- out of our minds."

He tilts his head. "What will a city burning smell like, Gabriel?"

Boom. Eyes wide, Sylar's nostrils flare, as if trying to scent it when another star bursts and rattles the broken window.

But this -- he doesn't need to. It's like skidding down a slope of ice, only to have your foot catch on an unexpected hold.

"I already know," he breathes, in faint surprise. "I saw it." He rests one hand against the side of his thigh, tightening his fingers into the cloth, trying to match physical to mental.

"And it wasn't real."

Not false. Not really. But visions aren't the same as reality; there's a certain, relieving lack of ambiguity to that.

It is, quite suddenly, the only clear thing he has, and Sylar will not let himself lose it.

"It's not the same," he says, and there is crackling, blackened flesh curling up around his eye, burning in reverse; slick wet meat, alighting again. "Youi don't know what it's like; it's in your nose and on your skin, and it's thick and sticky and it stays with you like a stain, marking you!"

Like a brand, the glowing, bubbling flesh around his face moves like wax, hot hot hot -- smooth till he is unmarred, a teenabe boy with nothing to distinguish him from a legion of young men but golden eyes.

It could be sense memory.

(It could be that this is real.)

And he has seen worse, done worse, been marked by worse, but Sylar coughs all the same as the smell hits, stumbling back a step.

His foot hits something wet, skidding out from underneath him and wrenching to the side. When his knee hits the ground, it hits it hard.

WHere there was flame there is now shadow; deepening, darkening, till something cuts through them--

Something long, gleaming, deadly.

Hiro Nakamura advances; lacking in confidence.

"Don't you feel bad?" he asks in a tremulous voice. "All those things you did. Billian-- kill you own mother! After you beg fo'giving!"

"You don't know anything about that."

His voice is low and furious, hands braced against the ground as he glares up at Hiro.

"You never saw it. Not all of it."

Didn't he? There is a pitying look. Hiro Nakamura's face wears pity amazingly well.

"You were so close. You could stop. Be rike Rogue. Stop being bad. Be good. Be good, Sylar! Be good!"

"That was your job," he hisses.

The floor's starting to tilt under his hands and knees. Blood wells up where his fingers touch it, spiderwebbed cracks spreading across the wood.

FORGIVE ME, they spell.

"I." Sylar swallows, fighting it as the thick, cottony haze starts settling over his thoughts again. "He painted you, too. Drew you. I remember that. Even he knew you were supposed to stop me, but you couldn't do it."

And he rocks upright, off of his hands.

"Coward."

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