Written for comment_fic on livejournal
The prompt was shapeshifter!Sylar, the feel of taking on someone else's skinshapeshifter!Sylar, the feel of taking on someone else's skin
It feels horrible. The pain of shuffling around your insides. The nausea.
And then the skin. There are so many nerve endings the skin that it's excruciating. And of course, it's the last thing, the last part to change, the outermost layer of Sylar clinging painfully to his body, like claws in sand, until through sheer will he changed those cells, too.
But once he is in his new skin, he takes his new hands and moves them all over his new body. He discovers a new person, and for a moment he thinks he knows something about them, about what it is like in their life.
He tells himself that he feels sorry for them. For their smallness. Their ridiculous notions of what power is. For thinking they are safe.
But slowly he is losing himself to these new skins, these painful births. He likes looking at himself as Nathan. He especially loves the way Peter looks at him when he is Nathan. Claire and Angela too - like even though he has hurt them and betrayed them and nearly destroyed them, they still think he will save them in the end.
And he likes Sandra's skin too, smooth and soft. The way Bennet looks at "her," with deference even, wanting her approval and forgiveness so badly.
He visits Mohinder often. Sometimes as Peter, sometimes as Matt. Never anything special - just asking if he left something there, or if he wanted to catch a movie. Nothing that would make Mohinder suspect him.
These new skins, these new identities -- they were eroding Sylar. They were making him small and ridiculous, just like them. He had to stop doing it.
Otherwise he wouldn't be Sylar any more. He would just be one of them. And he didn't want that.
But for some reason, he just couldn't stop.