Author's Note: The part about Claude is from the graphic novels. More on that in the author's note below.
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Chapter 11:
When Elle woke up in the morning, Sylar's side of the bed was empty. At first, she thought he had left while she was sleeping, but then she heard rustling of papers. She turned around to see him sitting at the table, poring over the list.
Sylar must have noticed her moving because he looked up from what he was doing, a little surprised. "This is amazing. In case I haven't said it yet, thank you."
Elle sat up and stretched. "It was no problem." She had prepared herself for the fact that he would leave without saying goodbye, but she was really glad he had waited for her. Of course, it was his hotel room. Just for a second, she allowed herself to imagine that they were a normal couple, taking a vacation in New York. She pretended the papers were just some work he had to do before they could go sightseeing. She pulled on his shirt and her underwear and went over to the table. "What are you looking at?"
He showed her the page. It was Claude Rains. Elle's breath caught in her throat. Claude was one of the few people who she still considered a friend, or an ally at least. After she lost control of her abilities, he had tried to help her in London. In making the list, she had given information on a lot of agents who she had once liked, and she had not even thought about it when she made a page on Claude. Now, she knew that if Sylar killed him, it would be completely her fault. She could not even ask Sylar not to kill Claude, not after the way she insisted the night before that she would be able to handle his lifestyle. She tried to keep her tone light. "Invisibility? Can't you just use your illusory power for the same effect?"
If he noticed any hesitation on her part, he did not show it. "Yeah, but... Sort of. It's one thing to change something into something else, but to turn something into nothing takes a lot of concentration. I don't think I can do it for very long. Invisibility would be much better."
Elle had never thought of him as having limitations, but that made sense. She looked over his shoulder. She wanted to see what she had written. She knew exactly how to find Claude, but she saw that she had put none of that on the sheet. "He might be hard to find though. Being invisible and having no known address."
He turned to face her. "You had reason to believe he was in London."
It did not really sound like an accusation, but Elle got a little defensive. "I'm just saying that London's a big city. I'm... just being realistic. Invisible people are hard to find."
He turned completely around in the chair. "There's one more thing I want you to do, and then I'll stop doubting you, I promise. I want you to see me kill someone. The blood, the brains, all of it. And if you can handle that, I won't doubt you anymore."
Elle struggled to find her voice. She had no problem watching him kill someone, if that was what it would take, but she could not watch him kill Claude. "I can't—I can't go to London with you. I have to work. They're watching me."
"I didn't necessarily mean this guy. Anyone." He picked up the America list. "Let's just find someone in New York."
Elle laughed, relieved. She thought about the people she knew in New York. She wished there was another invisible person she could give to Sylar, but Claude was the only one she knew of. "Well, let's see, there is..." Something occurred to her. "You can't. They'll know you were in New York. That will cast suspicion on me. I mean, if you care."
He nodded thoughtfully and then shook his head. "No, you're right. We'll have to do it some other time."
Elle thought about what Noah had said, how the company had not known about Sylar's new power. "What have you been doing? I haven't heard about any killing sprees. How did you cover up what happened in Calgary?"
"I was starting to think it would be better if the company didn't know all that I could do. This ability in particular seemed like a good one to keep secret. So I monitored him for a while, and then took over his life long enough to ease him out of town. But the really great thing about this guy is that no one is going to miss him. His wife had just left him because he was using his ability to sleep with more attractive women. His friends did not really like him, because I could tell when they were lying. So really all I had to do was dispose of the body and quit his job. I treated the whole thing as a mid-life crisis, which is where he was headed anyway."
Having met the shapeshifter in Calgary, Elle understood exactly what he meant. When she thought about it, the part about sleeping with more attractive women seemed really familiar because she had seen Candice use her power to a similar end. She wondered if that was common among shapeshifters. "Are you going to have a midlife crisis? Use your ability to sleep with more attractive women?"
He laughed. "More attractive than you?"
Elle liked the way he said that, as though he found it hard to believe there were any such women. "I guess you've done all right looking like yourself. I mean Maya was beautiful."
He rolled his eyes, and then mock gasped. "I could use this ability to sleep with Maya. I didn't even think of that."
She knew he was teasing her. She was not even sure why she brought up Maya. She pursed her lips and nodded. "Just for my own information, was she the only other woman you were involved with after you met me?"
"I wasn't involved... I didn't have sex with Maya. Was there anyone else for you after you met me?"
Elle remembered how much she had liked Peter Petrelli and the one kiss they shared. She knew she could not tell Sylar a lie, so she left it at, "I didn't have sex with anyone if that's what you're asking."
Sylar narrowed his eyes. "It sounds like we're about even. So let's not talk about Maya anymore."
Elle thought that was a good idea. "I think you should kill someone and leave the body out in the open so that the company knows you're still being you. Just not in New York."
"All right." He handed her the America list. "Pick someone."
Elle was relieved that he seemed to have forgotten about Claude. Either that or she had convinced him that an invisible man was too difficult to find. She figured having her pick the next victim was another test, and it seemed like they had come a long way from him trying to shield her from the killing. She flipped through the pages. "You lost everything when you got the Shanti virus, right?"
"Yeah, I lost everything except the telekinesis."
"So were there any of those that you particularly wanted back?" She imagined he wanted all of them back, but it would have to be one at a time.
Sylar sat back in his chair, thinking. "I really liked the super-hearing."
Elle scrunched up her nose. "I don't know anyone who can do that. What about enhanced vision? I have one of those in Michigan. I don't know this Michelle, but I knew someone else with the ability who had telescopic vision and could see perfectly at night. And you needed glasses. So... If you want me to pick your next victim, I am picking Michelle Valcek in Saginaw, Michigan." She turned to that page and handed the list back to him.
He looked at the information on the page. "Okay, I'm going to kill her, and it's all your fault."
Elle wondered why he was saying that. Was he giving her a chance to change her mind? Would he not kill Michelle if she asked him to hold off? It seemed kind of sweet the way he was trying to protect her soul. She had not been able to see that the night before. "I'm okay with that," she said.
Elle knew there was no point in drawing out the inevitable. The sooner he got to Michigan, the better it would be for her. She told him so and got dressed. As she got ready to leave and go back to her life working for the company, she felt the need to say one last thing. She stopped at the door and pressed up against him. "Don't have sex with Maya."
Sylar leaned down to kiss her, pushing her up against the door. "I won't."
Elle was glad they had established that. In all her fishing about Maya, he had never actually said that he did not want Maya, and she had never actually said that she did not want him to be with anyone else. When he finished kissing her, she let herself out of the room.
It was not until later that she realized that neither of them had said goodbye. She figured that was okay though, since they had left it on fairly good terms. It did bother her, however, that she had no idea when she would see him again.
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Noah came into her small office on Monday and sat on the edge of her desk. Elle was surprised to see he was in New York. "How was your date?" he asked.
She pushed her chair away from the desk. "Honestly?"
He nodded. "I'd really appreciate some honesty."
"I didn't get what I wanted out of it at all. I still feel guilty over Sylar. I don't think I was ready to move on. I mean James was... nice enough, but... I wasn't ready. I am pretty sure that it wasn't Sylar, though. Because if it had been him, it wouldn't have been as disappointing."
Noah's cold eyes bore into hers. "Where was he from?"
She tried to match his stare with confidence. "Seattle. He was in town on business; I didn't ask what kind. I really didn't ask a lot questions at all."
"What possessed you to go to a bar in Brooklyn in the first place?"
"I don't like Manhattan. Guys in Brooklyn are much more down to earth. And, okay, yeah, that's where I met Gabriel in the first place. So maybe I already knew that I wasn't ready to move on, but I gave it a try. I don't want to have feelings for him anymore. If I can stamp them out, maybe Angela will trust me enough to give me real assignments again."
Noah stood. "No one's ever going to trust you again, Elle. You should get used to that."
Elle watched him leave. She did not think that Noah would be next in line to take over the company when Angela was killed, but a lot of the senior agents had been killed in the last year. If he was next, he was just as likely to dissolve the company as to let it stand. On the other hand, it was really likely he would use all the company resources at his disposal to have Sylar killed. On those nights, when Elle had gone to Sylar's motel with Annie, they could have easily decapitated him or done any of the other things that could permanently kill a person who can spontaneously regenerate. Those were not the orders Annie was given, and she followed orders. Because everyone knew what happened when agents started disobeying; they got killed by someone like Noah. With Noah in charge, the orders would be different.
Elle had never considered those possibilities, because she had never considered that Noah might be the most senior agent left. She knew that Sylar needed to be warned of the possibility, however slim, of a Bennet-run company, but it was hard enough for her to get in touch with him before, and now they were probably watching her more closely than ever.
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Author's Note: I have been reading a lot on Wikipedia about the graphic novels. There is so much going on there, but I don't have time to read them or piece together from Wiki what happened. I will occasionally use things that only happened in the graphic novels, but I can't promise to stay graphic novel compliant.