watchmakers_son | February 2007

February 2007

When he wakes up -- is lucid again, as the dark-haired man who's removing his IV calls it -- the restraints are gone.

A mild concussion from self-inflicted head trauma, is what else he calls it. They removed the restraints once Sylar had calmed down; this is a hospital, after all, not a prison. You haven't been back with us for some time, he adds as Sylar carefully settles a hand over his abdomen, pressing lightly, and grimaces.

It hurts a bit less than it used to, though. It's healing.

How long? he asks, and receives no response.

Later, he falls asleep, to no dreams, and wakes up again to the silent, flickering fluorescent light. The cycle repeats itself three more times.

A second doctor mentions during one of his visits, in tones of pleasant surprise, that it's good to see the lucidity persist for this long. So many months have passed lately with no change.

On the fourth day, with effort, Sylar is able to work through the pain enough to sit up, his hands braced behind him to keep himself upright.

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Silence is the only response for several seconds, but then --

There's a fine trembling in her fingers as they brush against his arm, not unlike the light touch of a butterfly.

(Such a small thing; such an enormous thing. It's said that the flutter of a butterfly's wings can change the world.)

Virginia's hand is ice-cold.

Sylar flinches, eyes snapping open too wide, staring.

He doesn't move his arm away.

"I killed you." Slowly, as if trying to puzzle his way through it. "By accident. It was an accident. How can you...?"

This isn't Milliways. Even if it was -- how could he tell?

"My Gabriel would never hurt me." Instantly said, and filled with certainty.

(It's the kind of certainty he's heard before.)

The look in her eyes, though; it's the look of a trapped and fragile creature, watching the predator's final approach.

A snowflake falls from the empty air, shining with cold brilliance against her brown hair.

Then another.

Sylar pulls in another too-sharp breath as he glances up, following their descent.

They're not his doing. He would know. (Wouldn't he?)

You're sick.

I don't know what's real.

"You said," he tells her, without inflection and without looking away from the snowflakes, "that I wasn't your Gabriel. When I saw you."

"That-- that's different, it's not-- you're not-- I made a mistake."

Her shaking voice firms as she latches onto the idea with the same desperate strength that's becoming evident in the slowly tightening grip on his arm.

Her smile is as brittle and fragile as the curve of a glass globe.

"Everything's going to be all right now, Gabriel. You'll see. I'll take care of you, and you'll get better, and then--"

It's snowing harder now. Virginia doesn't seem to notice.

If she doesn't notice that, then he doesn't notice that her grip is less than gentle by now.

What Sylar does notice: it's colder than it should be. He can feel his skin prickle as it tightens into goosebumps, and he shivers, pulling back as he continues to stare at the snow.

"I did what you asked of me." The shock ebbs, by a degree, and lets the smallest edges of his anger surface. "You wanted me to be important. Didn't you. And then, once I was..."

He drops his gaze, locks eyes with her. "You called me monster. You were afraid."

It's dimmer in here than it was before. Maybe it's the snow that's diffusing the gleam from the fluorescents; maybe it's the growing dampness in the air that's causing them to crackle and spit sullenly.

Maybe that's why Virginia's eyes don't reflect the light as they should. They're too flat, doll's eyes, glassy and fixed on him without wavering.

"Of course I did. You were so special... you could have been anything."

When he looks up at the lights, three snowflakes land on his forehead, the cold bite stinging sharp. He tries to shake them loose.

When he looks at his mother, and sees

(Nothing.)

the ashy pallor to her face, the spot just beneath his heart knots up and pulls tight.

"Mom -- "

"My Gabriel." One hand is still on his arm; she smiles and leans forward, finally pulling her other hand away from her chest and reaching out to brush cold fingers over his cheek.

(The light flickers again, and as it does the walls of the hospital room seem to glisten, reflecting the intermittent illumination.

They almost look ... curved.)

Her fingertips are damp, and leave red trails on his face-- marks as red as the crimson flower that, with the pressure of her hand now gone, begins to blossom bloodily on her sweater, over her heart.

"No -- "

He scrambles away, clumsy and too slow and beginning to shiver harder.

"I didn't mean to," he pleads. "Mom. Please. It was an accident."

It feels like the bed's pitching underneath him, like something caught in a tide.

"My poor boy," Virginia croons.

Her hold on his arm remains firm, anchoring him.

(She's too small, too frail, to be this strong. Isn't she?)

Her other hand slips from his cheek and comes to rest over the stab wound left by Hiro's sword.

"I know how it hurts."

A beat (but how long? there are no clocks in this room), and she reassures him, softly, sadly,

"Don't worry. Soon it'll be over, and you won't feel a thing."

There's too much blood on his shirt for it to be from her fingers alone. Sylar can feel it on his face, too, thick and far too cold as it streaks down from his temple.

This isn't real. This isn't real.

(He doesn't know that.)

Seized up and dizzy with panic, he can't move as the lights flicker again, as more of the snow lands in tiny cold drops and sends the blood on his chest running out into thin pink streaks.

"Shh. Don't try to talk."

Or perhaps even to breathe, as the air thickens around him. It could be terror that's robbing him of his breath, of course.

(Or it could be something else.)

Virginia is smiling fondly as she watches him, waiting; fondly, protectively, and almost possessively, as she'd once looked at a picture of a much younger Gabriel, trapped like an insect in a bubble of amber.

"Stop," he wheezes. Every word's laborious, choked. "Stop it."

The pain's swimming back up; so is a sudden, acute nausea that grabs hold and makes him buckle against the bed. Black spots seep across his eyes.

"Please."

And then there's no breath left to say anything else.

It's an interesting thing; a clock generally doesn't stop working all at once. Pieces wear out, or gears wind down, but the mechanism as a whole struggles to keep (living) time, beat (tick) after beat (tick) after beat (tiiiiick).

As he jerks, gasping under the cold weight of (guilt) Virginia's hand, the room itself stutters with the unevenness of Sylar's heartbeat.

(TICK)

And when it jolts --

Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The fluorescent light steadies, bright and bleak. The constriction in Sylar's lungs drops away.

There's no snow; no blood.

But the cold doesn't fade, and Sylar keeps shivering as he gapes at the perfectly ordinary ceiling above him.

It happened again, he thinks, and it's followed by a sudden, bewildering, Maybe they were --

No.

(Then how else can he explain how it works?)

"Gab - - el"

The broken sound of his name is faint and distant, barely above a whisper.

It's coming from the direction of the door.

"Gabriel - - hear me?"

Sylar tries to lift his head. When the room tilts uncontrollably and his stomach lurches, he shuts his eyes with a groan.

A few seconds pass before he can open them again, to barely more than slits. The light wavers above him.

There's a voice. He knows that; he can hear it.

Can't he?

Virginia's voice is much louder this time, and sharp with worry.

"Gabriel--"

(As if in response to her cry, the sound of hurrying footsteps can suddenly be heard.)

"Is there something wrong?"

The white-haired young woman who enters the room takes in the situation with clear gray eyes, and gives one brisk nod.

"Okay." Kim Ford's tone is kind, but firm. "Come with me now, Mrs. Gray. He needs to rest. We'll look after him."

Too late, Sylar realizes why he recognizes the first voice. His eyes widen.

"Wait," he tries to cough out, but the voice is already gone, replaced by nearly inaudible footsteps ticking down the hall.

The vertigo spins faster. Hissing, Sylar shuts his eyes and fumbles at the sheets, trying to drag them closer for warmth.

Outside the window, there's a faint chorus of cawing.

It resolves, slowly, into the squeaking of wheels; when the door opens, this time, it brings with it a wave of warm air, admitting in its wake a tall man in the neat white uniform of the orderlies (not so very different from the simple white pyjamas of the patients). He backs through, manoeuvering around the light steel frame of his cart. Rattling off the side: a broom and pan; on the top: juice, a deep cranberry, and a small plastic tub.

"Gabriel Gray," comes a voice through the spinning vertigo. "What are we going to do with you."

And that voice --

Sylar forces his eyes open. They refuse to focus, for several disconcertingly long seconds.

He's already pale, but if possible, he's even more so now.

"Steady on, now," it says. "Easy. Always getting yourself so worked up."

There are hands, a solid, welcome warmth in the unnatural chill of the room, easing him into a sitting position with the sureness of long practice.

Someone is checking his pupils; when Gabriel's eyes focus, it's opposite a gaze as blue as honesty, vivid under the fluorescent light.

He blinks, twice, trying to clear the last of the haze.

"I," he begins at a mumble, twisting in an effort to turn his face away. It's only for a moment before his gaze snaps back, almost unbidden.

And then, incongruously: a laugh, quick and harsh and a little manic.

"And you're meant to be a doctor, too," Sylar tells him, as if he can't quite believe it.

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