Chapter 6-
Poverty-
"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty."
Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Sylar stepped out of the shower soaking wet, and had perfected a method much easier than drying himself off with a towel. He froze each droplet of water and let gravity take hold, then before the ice cubes would hit the floor, he would quickly shift them back into a liquid state and deposit them on a towel.
Clean.
Efficient.
At least his own cleverness slightly satisfied him in a day of pain and grief. He came back to the Iyer bedroom, and noticed that in the sorrow he had overlooked a simple, mundane and now glaringly obvious fact.
Sylar had forgot to bring a change of clothes. He looked to the dresser of the Iyer's, and found the clothes drawers. He grabbed onto an etched handle of the fine wood that comprised it and pulled, using his own muscles for a change, feeling the tactile sensation made him feel more...human. Sylar, in a place where feeling- any feeling at all, was prized, took some respite from this. He ran his fingers over a carving in the dresser, of a tree. It was an old thing, probably passed down through the family, depicting a pastoral nature scene.
His family did not pass anything down except scars.
Without quite thinking- at least on the surface level, Sylar's hand smashed through the carving of the tree and his telekinesis punctured a hole in the dresser. He reached through and grabbed a white T-shirt that barely fit him, Mr.Iyer a mite smaller. It clung to his abdominal muscles in an attractive yet painful display of what he had overlooked. He grunted in pain as he put on underwear a size too small and pants that cut circulation in his legs.
Well, it was a sensation he knew before. His family did not pass anything down, especially clothes. When he was little, he was always too big for his. Sylar would beg Mother to go shopping for new shoes, the skin of his toes flaking against the ends of his loafers in a painful display of his poverty.
"We worked hard for all of this, Gabriel...some have less. Be thankful to God for our good health and relative prosperity in a world of ills." She was loving, but on their financial status, she was less than comforting.
They made due.
Sylar left the abode with a slam of the door, his mind circling around past events and back to his present, stumbling over the future. He had little planned. So he would improvise.
Sylar held up his arm in the crowded streets, as little Indian children began to hover around the wealthy foreigner. He knew enough Indian from the phrase book to know they were begging.
"...some have less."
He knew now how true his Mother's words were...such a wise woman.
His raised arm attracted the attention of a passing cab, which screeched to a halt. Foreigners would tip cabbies well, they knew. He absentmindedly opened the door with his power, only to quickly shut it with a thud when he noticed he had almost given himself away in public. A quick glance at the driver and walking passerby assured Sylar that he had gotten lucky- no one had seen.
Thinking back on all this, it was so...emotional. Driven by emotion, by hatred, by sorrow, by guilt. He had become sloppy. As the cab pulled away, Sylar remembered the beauty of the Walker killings. No evidence to be found.
He smiled.
Time for the old Sylar to come back...with a few new tricks.
"The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness."
Victor Hugo