Takes place sometime after Jump, Push, Fall.

"You're not real, you're not even Sylar, and I want you out of my head."

Aww. Matt Parkman is in denial. How cute.

Sylar leans against the wall- well, not really. It's complicated, you see. He doesn't exist in the physical world, at the moment, only the mental one. Luckily, Matt Parkman's mind is a haven for anything mental; his powers extend far beyond what the man himself knows. It makes Sylar's fingers itch. It makes him want to find a way, somehow, to acquire--

But first, there's something he has to do. Something he needs returned.

Matt Parkman's mind is a fascinating place. The majority of it reflects what the man is currently seeing and hearing, impressions overlying everything, warping reality. Fears and thoughts. Suspicions. There's an extra layer that would be other thoughts from other people, expressed as clearly as if they had been spoken aloud, but those are muffled and tucked away into corners. He's trying to not use his powers, and Sylar thinks that that's stupid. Why would anyone want to be ordinary, when they could be so much more?

Sylar's an intuitive thinker (duh), so he had figured out in little time how to step from subconscious thoughts into Parkman's conscious impressions, what passes through his mind between seeing and noticing. He waited, though, until he had learned more, learned how to warp other things in Matt Parkman's 'real world'. As for how best to hit him, well, that was obvious. There's two things that lie foremost in Matt Parkman's mind- his son and his wife. His wife, she talks too much. His son…

Well. Sometimes the obvious choice is the best one.

"Of course I'm real," he replies, chuckling slightly. His laugh has an edge to it, not surprising, he's been living in another guy's mind for the past so many weeks. "Do you think I'm the bogeyman, Matt? Just a nightmare, haunting you? Please. You aren't that special."

Matt Parkman winces, which makes Sylar smile. The man's got many self-confidence issues; he thinks he's fat, and ugly, and suspects that he isn't the quickest on the uptake. He's so easy to manipulate and scare. "C'mon. After what you did- I had nowhere else to go. Besides, your mind is really, really boring. Do you really think I'd be here if I had another option?"

"Maybe."

Interesting answer. Sylar raises his eyebrows, mocking the policeman.

Matt Parkman doesn't care, though. Matt Parkman is pacing back and forth (in real life) while Sylar watches him. Not much else he can do, at this time, but watch and mock. "I- I've been thinking," Parkman begins.

"Oh, wow. Must've been a huge step for you, doing something that different."

"Shut up!" he snaps, before attempting to calm himself down again, and Sylar snickers. "You see- you being here. It doesn't make sense. Not, not with everything else that's going on."

Sylar knows what's 'going on', vaguely, at least. He knows that someone calls Parkman every so often, talks to him about something that makes him incredibly uncomfortable, but Matt blocks off his thoughts every time, so Sylar doesn't know the details. He's going to find out, though.

"You won't," Matt replies, absentmindedly, and Sylar almost jumps- had he said that out loud? He doesn't normally slip up that way. "I mean, you're only human, you can't exist in more than one place at once. You know- I had the best imaginary friends, when I was a kid. Incredibly complex, and with time, it could feel like they were talking on their own, no prompting, no set-up. Sometimes, it felt to me like they were more real than people I knew at school."

"So you heard voices as a kid." Sylar rolls his eyes. "My God, you even make lame jokes."

"But this- this feels exactly the same." Matt turns and glares right at him. It's kind of a pathetic image, but Sylar still doesn't like where this is going. "And back then, I could always make them go away. I think you're just like them… I think I can make you go away, too. You aren't Sylar at all. You're just a, a thought, a character, very much like him."

"I know exactly who I am," Sylar says quietly, coldly. "And I'm not going anywhere. Not until I get my body back."

But Parkman ignores him, and Parkman- does something, Sylar can't tell what. All he knows is that it pushes him away, back into the darker recesses of the telepath's mind, where he can't influence anything at all.

The policeman is wrong, damn it. He's Sylar, and- he's special, and- he doesn't usually have this much trouble coming up with witty and sarcastic comebacks. But it's probably just because he's stuck in this deadbeat mind. It's restrictive. There isn't room for growth.

But he's still real.

Of course he is.