Because when I say "next week," I mean "next year." Ahem. :/
I've discovered the source of my slowness, however-I write out of order. I was actually writing bits of a conversation from the final chapter while still hammering out this one. Speaking of this one, I've chosen to split it in two, as it was getting a bit bulkier than I typically enjoy, being a fan of shorter chapters. I cropped it at the cleanest place I could find, which rendered it a tad briefer than my most recent posts. The rest will be along as soon as I can clean it up.
Anyway, *hugs* to all of you. Hope your year has been fabulous so far. :)
"It's my fault," says Micah, propping his chin on the crook of his cane. "I as good as sent him after you."
"Take me home," Molly suggests. Her voice is an airy wheeze. "I'll be safe there."
"If I had never given Claire his information . . ." her husband continues to air his regrets. "I thought . . . I mean, it was Claire. I knew she wanted to contact him, but I just naturally assumed that's where it stopped. I had no way of knowing they'd become . . . friendly. Did you know?"
"Like I know any more than you, shut up in this place."
Micah looks at his wife. His brown eyes are wide and pleading.
"Molly, I don't like you being here. I hate it every bit as much as you do. You know that."
"I know you say it, but here I am."
"Honey, you're not—"
"Don't you—don't you say I'm not q-quite right!"
"I wasn't going to say that," Micah insists softly, a little shocked, as he hastens to her side. He brings the straw of her water bottle to her lips, and it hurts him to note that she draws on it without protest. Typically she would pull the bottle from his hands and chide him for babying her, but the day's events have taken their toll on the fragile balance of her mind and body. "I was going to say you're not well. I wouldn't say the other. That would be like calling you crazy, and you know I'd never do that, you mad old bat."
He'd swear her smile is worth at least twice the extravagant amount of money he withdrew from ATM machines during the greater recklessness of his youth.
"Scoot yourself over," he says, and after a brief moment of helping her rearrange her position, Micah props his cane against the night table and sprawls out beside her on the hospital bed. It's a good thing they've both kept pretty trim over the years, he reflects, before he ventures a half-hearted, "This is . . . kind of like being home."
Molly, aware even in her bitterness that her husband is trying to make the best of a sad situation, smothers her instinct to ask, How? and nestles her head on his arm.
"Do you think they do this?" she wonders.
"Who?"
"You know—Claire and . . . him."
"Oh, Molly . . ." Micah heaves an irritated sigh. "Please, let's not think about it. You've had enough of that man to last a lifetime."
"I bet they do," she persists weakly but resolutely. She's lost a lot of respect for Claire over the last few hours. "Micah . . . We have to warn him. That man he's going after."
Micah shakes his head.
"It won't make any difference," he tells her, his tone matter-of-fact and atypically unconcerned.
"How can you say that?" demands Molly, frowning. "We have to at least try. We've always tried. We can let . . . this stop us." She allows her eyes to wonder around the room, taking in the cheap clock, the yellow wallpaper, the controls on the side of the electric bed. As if to herself, she adds, "This can't possibly be what stops us."
"It's not a matter of trying," insists her husband. "Even if we did warn him, it wouldn't do any good. Laughlin is . . . he's a bad man."
"Worse than Sylar?"
Micah chuckles softly.
"You find that hard to believe, don't you?" he asks.
"You bet your ass," she answers.
"Look, I know how you feel about him, Molly. And it's perfectly natural; he got you so young, you could hardly help it. But worse than Sylar isn't the only way to be a demented son of a bitch, and I'm telling you this Laughlin guy is one."
"So he's got it coming. That's what you're saying."
"No. I'm saying that I've spoken with Laughlin before—many times, in fact. I'm saying that I know this man, and I could call him right now, tell him he's an hour away from death. I'm saying I could tell him exactly who's coming for him, and exactly what he's going to do, and it wouldn't make any difference."
Vexed—with Micah's stubbornness, with Claire's defection from the ranks of the spotless, perhaps most of all with her own helplessness—Molly says, "I can't believe that."
"Some people embrace their fate, honey. In fact, they actively seek it." With a shrug and a scoff, Micah wraps it up with what Sylar would construe as a highly judgmental, "Look at Claire."
They lie in silence for a while. Molly turns her head on his arm to gaze out at the grounds, while Micah, despite his attempts to avoid it, finds his eyes drawn again and again to the clock.
"You're my best friend, Moll," he says at last. "I ever tell you that?"
"Yes. Lots of times."
"Well . . . It bears repeating."
[] [] []
In the first-class cabin of AeroDynamic flight 423 from Midland, the man in black tips a liberal serving of champagne into his glass. He shifts his long legs, turns his gaze to the window, and savors the bubbly, celebratory beverage.
Sylar feels happier now, more optimistic. It's silly to think Claire might not be there when he gets back. Claire loves babies. Hell, he can knock her up again every time one heads off to college. It'll be fun, like getting a new puppy.
Lightbulb:
He'll get the kid a puppy! Kids love puppies! God, he's a genius!
See now? An unreserved smile softens what has become, of late, the too-austere set of his mouth and chin. He'll be a great father. Spectacular. This kid won't have any choice but to love him. He'll feed it and . . . hug it. Whatever else you do . . .
Train it?
For a long, struggling moment in which the smile crinkles into a perplexed purse, he tries to remember his own childhood, rifling through the ready snatches of nightmare images for something normative, some standard parental phrase or gesture that he might be able to use. He's sure there must be something if he can only dredge up a bloodless recollection of his mother. A few more seconds, however, and he gives it up as a hopeless effort. He can't even remember the woman's face.
No matter. Claire can give him pointers; it will bring them closer. The important thing is, he's going to be there. Instead of fear and stuffed rabbits, there will be love and puppies. Live ones, of course.
Life will be good.
Night is falling by the time the pilot thanks the passengers for flying Aerodynamic, and San Francisco is lighting up as they disembark.
The city strikes him as garish, somehow—glittery and synthetic, as if its inhabitants are more plastic than people. Of course, he might attribute that to his tendency to view ordinary individuals as useful objects. Given his reason for coming here, it wouldn't be terribly surprising. He's acclimated to his task; that's all. He came here to make an acquisition, and he will not go back to New York empty-handed.
Red-handed, maybe, but that all depends on Laughlin.
[] [] []
If there's one phenomenon Sylar has never quite been in tune with, it's clubbing.
Perhaps it's because everyone in a club tends to be lying his or her ass off as a matter of course, so that his body becomes a veritable beehive just from extracts of random flirtations. Perhaps it's because one needs to have consumed an excessive quantity of the watered-down drinks in order to forget that and fall under the belief that the company is good and the music is irresistible. Perhaps it's because he hates people.
This club is called Nokturna, and the folks in the queue outside seem unusually costumed in their attire. On the whole, they remind him of Halloween gypsies or pirates, though a few stroll through the doors in leather, their exposed skin a pale, papery white.
God, how he hates people.
Of course, he reminds himself as he skirts the queue, this is hardly the first time he's killed someone in a club. On the whole, this may not be such a boring ex—
No. Damn it. "I might not have to kill anyone." That's what he told Claire, and he intends to adhere to that conditional promise, insomuch as it's possible. He recalls the way she clutched the sheet to her body, distancing herself from him, and muses that he's had his last night's sleep in any case, before he enters through the maintenance door on Nokturna's roof.
It's already setting in by the time he reaches the bar on the main floor, that pincushion, beehive bodysuit sensation, and it's doing nothing good for his mentality. He can't help but hear echoes of voices past in the tones of the woman who claims to be a lightweight when it comes to liquor—
She's going to drink you under the table and leave with your wallet, he surmises cynically.
—or in the life story of the man who conveniently forgets to mention the wedding ring he left in his posh hotel room.
He's married, sweetheart, and his lady collects knives.
Sylar is so used to—so sensitive to being lied to that he begins mentally pasting other visages over the ones surrounding him: Angela Petrelli, Elle Bishop, Matt Parkman . . . He realizes it's a little like gearing up for the kill, running through his supply of loathed faces like this, but he—
Holy shit my face is on the wall.
His somewhat self-pitying train of thought crashes to a halt, and he whirls. Slaps his palms down on the bar and ducks his head.
Oh, god. He needs to change his face. Okay, find somebody to touch, find somebody to touch, find somebody—
Nokturna's walls are painted in what appears to be a chronological sequence of murals. Starting at the front entrance and running clockwise around the room, they masterfully depict two separate series of brutal murders. The first series begins and continues unaccompanied for two adjacent walls: this is where Sylar repeatedly finds his own image. He'd like to think it's merely an uncanny resemblance, but the background delineation of the passing decades, along with, you know, all the disembodied brains lying about, convinces him otherwise.
Sylar grabs a slender, female arm reaching out for a drink. Leather-sheathed, it is ripped from his grasp, sloshing him with vodka, before he can get any bare skin or DNA. Damn.
The entries in his own series become sparser as the second begins high on the back wall above the bar. Here, a child is born, in an illustration so unnecessarily graphic that Sylar wonders whether he really wants to be in the room when Claire delivers and not off in some corner with his hands over his eyes. Of course, it probably doesn't help that the squalling baby in the mural is bursting out of its mother with a mouthful of pointy teeth and a set of pinkish, bat-like wings.
Good place to put it, over the bar. Look at that thing and you need a drink. A dozen of them.
The child is shown aging, growing first into a pink-cheeked, yet vaguely demonic blond boy, and from there into a young man. The carnage depicted in his life story is of a different sort: primarily blood-letting. In segment after segment he sinks his teeth into the necks of sleeping victims, draining them, splattering their sheets with crimson. Here he stretches his wings, now grown to a more impressive length, in silhouette by the light of a full, white moon. Among all of this are strewn random installments of Sylar's story, and he realizes with a jolt that if he studies the victims on the mural hard enough, he can recognize most of them. Even Alison Crow, one of his aforementioned nightclub victims, is present, although she appears to be naked for some reason. He supposes the artist decided to dress history up a little. Undress it.
So, the mural—in part, at least—depicts his life as a series of factual, documented kills, interspersed with . . . What? Some sort of vampiric fantasy.
And he realizes all at once that the people in the line outside, the people on the floor at his back, are not dressed as Halloween gypsies or pirates or anything of the sort. They are dressed to fit their varying ideals of the mythic vampires of yore.
Nokturna is some sort of trendy nightclub for role-playing vampire enthusiasts.
Dear god. Even Gabriel would find this nerdy.
As if summoned by that simple reflection, the watchmaker seems to return to him, this time without the aid of illicit drugs, no more than a nagging voice inside his head and yet solid enough to anchor him in the midst of his tumultuous thoughts:
Stop grabbing people and reaching for dirty shot glasses, the voice advises. You don't need new DNA. Pick somebody you've already got and go with that.
Well, of course. He feels pretty idiotic now, but he supposes he must have lost his bearings for a moment. That mural threw him for a loop. Right, then. Change into . . .
Rutherford. Gabriel's voice makes the snap decision. You're getting used to that one.
But that's what Sylar doesn't like. It would be too easy to get stuck in the form of a man Claire used to adore, to wake up with Rutherford's eyes, Rutherford's arms encircling her. Besides, he's a fifty-something, wealthy Texan businessman. How the hell would a man like that find himself in a place like Nokturna?
Shit. What was he thinking, anyway, coming here in his own skin? Sylar admonishes himself as a fool of the most dangerous sort. He has a family now, or at least he's developing one. In any case, he's not untouchable anymore, can't simply chop down any witnesses who happen to be present when he'd rather be alone, no matter what kind of cake they show up with or what godawful club they happen to dance in. Yes, he's wary of the hazards that come with shapeshifting too regularly, just as yes, he told Claire he might not have to kill anybody. But a father—father-to-be, in his case—does what's necessary, even when it's unpleasant.
So do it.
All right, then. Pick a face.
Well, that's not so difficult, after all. He did grab that boy's face in the alley. Claire's friend. What was his name? Joshua? In case Sylar absolutely cannot avoid killing Laughlin, he feels he might as well implicate someone who irritates him.
On second thought, Claire would be furious. Doubly furious. Back to square one, then.
"Is it that time already? My, it does fly, doesn't it?"
On reflex, Sylar reacts to the question, glancing sideways to see the plump, curvaceous woman seat herself on the stool at his left, her long red skirt dangling about her ankles. Her skin is a deep, chocolate hue, eyes large and sparkling, hair close-cropped and spiked. Her smile is very white and, he thinks, a bit too wide. Too knowing. He doesn't like that look on anybody, and on a stranger, it unsettles him even further.
"I wouldn't worry," she tells him in softly British-accented tones. Tilting her head toward the floor, she adds, "About this lot, I mean. Nobody tattles here. He draws up the list on his own to make sure of that. It's rather exclusive. Oh, people show up night after night, but you can't really get in unless he approves you, and he won't unless you've made a certain lawless name for yourself."
Sylar shakes his head, lost.
"He?"
"He," she repeats, then tosses her head toward the mural. "Leslie."
Leslie. The man alongside himself in the mural . . . The vampire, preying on its victims by night as they dream . . .
Leslie Laughlin, the Sleepless . . .
Oh.
He narrows his eyes at the woman.
"How do you know me?" he asks her. "Do you know me? I mean, that—that—those paintings . . . I don't—"
"Not yet," his unexpected informant cedes. "But I hope to. We'll have a chance to speak afterward, you and I."
"After—?"
"Shush, now." She says it with the confidence of an adult addressing a garrulous but basically well-mannered child. She can't know him. "Turn round and try to be modest. They're going to make over you like you're the second coming."
Perhaps it's her honesty, in the midst of all that rampant lying. Perhaps it's because she seems to have a handle on the unforeseen nonsense that is the mural glorifying his lucrative career as a ruthless predator. Whatever it is, he complies. Shuts his mouth and turns in his own face, his own form, to greet whatever strangeness awaits him.
The ear-battering music dies without warning, leaving the throng to stammer to a halt, gazing to an fro in the strobe lights. Slowly, their murmurs—variously confused, angry, drunken, or some combination of the three—die off, save for one:
"Oh, my god!"
The voice is loud, boisterous. Heads turn toward it, and the crowd of drinkers and would-be dancers gradually parts, forming an aisle leading straight to Sylar. He stares down the center of it. The face at the other end is awash in excitement that's rapidly approaching euphoria.
"Oh, my god . . !" the man says again. He looks to be in his mid-twenties, has Bon Jovi hair, and is clad in a flamboyant, glittery-black outfit that, despite Nokturna's theme, strikes Sylar as some sort of glam rock get-up.
Good god, he thinks, looking him up and down. Did the nineteen- eighties make a come back when I wasn't looking?
He hoped he'd never live to see the day. And he plans on living forever.
Then he sees the silky fabric dangling from the sleeves, stitched onto the seams from wrist to hem. If the man spread his arms wide, the cloth would open to represent wings. Bat-like, same as the boy in the mural.
The man approaches, thin and boosted beyond his average height by the leather boots he's wearing. His face is pale to the point of colorlessness, though his eyes have deep, purplish shadows encircling them. Sylar can't tell if it's real or makeup.
The crowd is watching. The man stops a foot from Sylar and stares at him, rapt, fists beneath his chin, giddy as a child at a Christmas parade. He smiles, revealing canines which have been filed to points.
"Are you here to kill me?" asks Laughlin.