Gabriel Gray (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
watchmakers_son) wrote2008-03-12 08:19 pm
watchmakers_son) wrote2008-03-12 08:19 pm
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.
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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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?"
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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.
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"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.
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(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.
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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!"
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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."
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"You were so close. You could stop. Be rike Rogue. Stop being bad. Be good. Be good, Sylar! Be good!"
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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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But then there's another voice behind him.
"Doesn't mean," says another Hiro, "That we can't make time, huh, Gabe?"
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He's looking at the older Hiro as if he's never seen him before, even as one hand goes to the long, clean line of raised flesh on his abdomen.
And then he grins in a sudden, mirthless challenge as he tells him, "I don't think you're any better than he was."
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Maybe literally. Or maybe it's tripping, tangling, with all the string.
"Maybe you're not untouchable. Maybe you should have learned a few things from those willing to teach. I'll teach you how to die."
After all, he's done it before.
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Does there need to be anything else said.
"You are not strong. You will perish. You should have listened more to the body and less to the fire."
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The strings twist up over Sylar's ankles like vines, and Sylar, eyes lit by a dark, crazed defiance even as he tries to scramble away, growls, "Prove it. Do it."
The words echo off of the walls, as if he's in an empty, tiled room.
I've been here before, he realizes, as more strings rake up to circle his wrists.
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A spotlight.
There is a young brunette sitting at a bar. She is slurping a multicolored milkshake through a neon pink swirly straw.
She stops. Twirls the straw between her fingers. Then, takes another noisy slurp.
"Well," she says. "Your mind is...fascinating."
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Sylar jerks his head up all the same, squinting, trying to lift a hand to ward off the light. The strings are gone, but his arm moves sluggishly anyway, as if weighted down or pushing through water.
And when he sees the woman, it falls again to touch the floor.
"Who are you?" he rasps, clumsily pushing himself to his knees.
It's not like the others. There, at least, there was the vague tickle at the back of his mind, a connection waiting to be forged. With her, there is nothing. A blank slate.
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She slides off the bar stool, taking her milkshake with her, and sways over to Sylar. Kneeling down, she takes another slurp before offering the straw to him.
"Cherry, chocolate, blueberry," she tells him.
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(If it was ever there at all.)
"I don't. Know," he tells her as he fixes her with a look. Each word is heavy and weighted in the back of his throat; he ignores the milkshake.
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"Create a metaphorical construct and have it in the shape of a skinny white girl? Come on. I doubt I could even lift twenty pounds. What does this say about the creator? So...innocent." She rolls her eyes in his direction.
"But I gotta say, loved the bondage fetish."
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Delusion.
Sylar makes an incoherent noise of frustration, almost like a growl, as he rocks forward and tries to lunge at her.
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"I would have thought you more of the dominate type. Always push, never flow. But, may be you finally understand," Candice tells him conversationally as she kneels on either side of his trapped hips, "that to be submissive is to be truly in power. Because then, and only then, do you have the strength to say..."
His mother whispers with a butterfly touch to his temple, "...stop."
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Sylar doesn't move -- can't move, wouldn't be able to move even if the restraints weren't tightening to the point that his fingertips burn with pins and needles.
(It's the back of his neck that hurts now, a sting widening to an ache widening to true pain that draws his breath up short.)
If the other woman was a figment then (everything) this must be too -- he shuts his eyes and yanks his head away from her touch, slamming it against the floor with a muted crack.
And he still can't speak.
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Because they are in the hospital once again, and Gabriel is restrained in his bed.
"They say--the doctors--" She gulps and looks away. "You hurt yourself. Again. So you have to..."
"My poor boy." But she doesn't reach out again. "My poor, poor boy."
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But in the blur, he thinks he sees her.
"Mom -- "
It's gone, into the surrounding smears of gray and white and yellow, and he leans his head back, stomach heaving, as he shuts his eyes.
Not real, he thinks. Not real.