When he absorbed her power, the returning health and vitality surging into him brought him near to ecstasy. With a shudder, his knife-punctured lung began to expand again. It was like reaching the surface of the water after being held underneath for too long, and for a moment he was completely consumed by the sheer, ultimate gratitude for oxygen.
With the muted panic of possible death disintegrating, he awkwardly wrenched the blade from his chest. Watching his wound heal was the final confirmation that every moment in the journey so far had been leading up to this point. Christ, had he chosen the right career path or what? Enraptured with his own ingenuity and singular focus in getting to this turning point, he picked up the red level 5 case history folders and headed for the door. Ready to take care of more business.
It wasn't until he almost stepped on her removed scalp that Sylar's thoughts returned to his present location and company. He turned abruptly and surveyed Claire's situation. He could leave her there, face up on the living room coffee table. Skull open, power unwillingly shared, and face blank. Her entire body nearly frozen in a silence that suggested neither life nor death. Why was she so still?
Sylar felt the internal tugging of the hunger urging him toward the front door. There was so much work left to be done, and the now, via the carelessly stored files of top tier criminals, several invaluable powers were within an hour's reach.
And yet, something changes when you pull a kitchen knife out of your own chest knowing that there will be no harm done in the end. No, there would be no END at all. That ravenous beast of hunger took a long, slow inhale and relaxed slightly.
Now, he told himself, there was all the time in the world for this power, and then that one, and then the next one. There was even time to pick a bloody, blond-haired skull piece up off the floor and walk it back to its owner. Time to fix the small offense of exposing a living girl's brain to the world.
He leaned over her open head, and there was his second obsession, the human brain, the ticking clock that contained more cogs and functions than he had ever been fully able to comprehend. Sylar acknowledged his sudden urge to explore the twists and turns of her gray matter, every ridge of her cerebral cortex. Memories, sensory awareness, thought, language, consciousness.
If he tried hard enough, could he piece together the details of her reality through the symphony of neural firings? Discover what words or scenes came to mind when she was upset or pleased or enraged? The way she saw herself in a mirror? The convictions that she repeated when she fell asleep at night or woke up in the morning? The anxieties that ran through her when she was failing at a task or missing a family member or being kissed?
With a gentle hand and a reluctant grin, Sylar replaced her skull top and withdrew from her, heading again for the door. One obsession, the need for power, was enough to deal with on this day.
When he heard her sharp inhale, and then her questioning him, Aren't you going to kill me?, he was comforted by the fact that her brain was still firing on all cylinders, in a matter of speaking. As a parting gift to her, he explained the fact of her immortality to her.
And I couldn't kill you even if I wanted to. You can never die. He spoke in a calm, quiet, and meaningful tone, so as not to add to her trauma but to make sure his words were well understood. The truth was precious, and he shared it less often with his victims than he dealt out flippant retorts and insolent departing words - the last words they usually heard before the lights went out.
But then, Claire Bennett was special, was an anomaly to his well-practiced routine. What does a predator do when his prey cannot die? Sylar was sure this situation did not come up often in the history of sinister human interaction.
He left quietly, almost politely, looking at her long enough to register the battle between guilty relief and a new, profound dread growing in her eyes. He was not so simple-minded as to think that her fear was caused by his new inability to die. No, she was staring, overwhelmed, into the chasm of her own eternity, trying to fathom, trying to comprehend.
Being the pragmatic type, the idea of eternity only gave Sylar a deep satisfaction at the amount of time he now had to gather accomplishments. Being perceptive, he knew that, in this very constructive interchange with Claire, there were no more words to say - she wouldn't hear them anyway.
Everything would be worked out eventually. There in between the two of them was all the time that either one could need to work through the ramifications of sharing knowledge and power.