Wheee, the semester is over, and I have a new computer! My old one had literally begun to fall apart, and I'm not talking about keys. It was very sad, like having coffee with an old friend, and he suddenly loses a nose or something. :( Anyway, updates should be more frequent now. I know I always say that, but I see no reason to stop.
Now to quickly address a reviewer who expressed a wish that I NOT continue the Sylar/Gabe convos, as they make him appear truly crazy: Honestly, I think dear Sybrows IS a little crazy (at least). It's why I love him. That said, I don't see Gabriel's manifestations as evidence of dissociative identity disorder or something similar. To me, it's just an interesting way for him to dialogue with himself from his varying perspectives (guy can be conflicted ;)). It happens again in this chapter, but I assure you it won't be a daily occurrence in his life. Stress is a factor. Hope that allays your concerns. :)
The crown of Leslie Laughlin's head rests on a corner of the table like a curly blond salad bowl. Poised over the rest of him, Sylar peruses the contents of the exposed brain. He should have found it by now, really, only . . .
Oh, god, that's good. He had forgotten how good it could be. That's—that's . . . That's better than sex.
"Don't be ridiculous," scoffs the increasingly all-too-frequent voice of Gabriel Gray."Of course it's not better than sex."
Although, sort of.
No! Sylar hastens to chide himself before Gabriel can get in another unwanted word. It's not . . . better, it's just . . .
"Different. Right." Disdain is apparent in the watchmaker's tone. Of course Gabriel, long-term celibate that he was, would have trouble identifying a greater pleasure.
"I hadn't done it in a while, all right?" Sylar snaps. "I hadn't done it in a long time, and . . . it felt nice. That's all."
"Better than last Tuesday night with the hot fudge sauce?" challenges Gabriel.
Sylar shakes his head, flushing slightly at the memory.
"You know, she only did that because I came down for a drink and caught her halfway through the jar."
"I didn't hear you complaining."
"Well, that's because I literally could not speak, Gabe; she was dipping celery in it. Ugh."
"Says the man wrist-deep in brain."
Gabriel's right, though. When Claire Bennet shoves your shoulder blades up against the refrigerator door while sucking hot fudge off something—even if it is celery—you don't argue with her. He just wishes Gabriel wouldn't be so frank about the matter, and he can't help wondering whether it ought to bother him that his incorporeal alternate ego has apparently been keeping the minutes of his and Claire's private encounters. He wonders if it's even possible for Gabriel to be getting off on it somehow, given that the man only exists insomuch as he's him. Or if it makes any difference. After all, he certainly—
"Would you focus?" Gabriel angrily calls his attention back. "You're the only guy I know who could zone out with a scene like that in front of him."
"Because it's horrifying or because it's fascinating?" Sylar asks, sending back a barb of his own.
"Don't even try to psychoanalyze me," Gabriel responds, and Sylar can just see the sneer on his face. "I wear the eye loupes around here. You're just the brawn."
"You're calling me stupid." Sylar bristles.
"I'm calling you slow! Could we hurry it up with Laughlin? I would like to get back to Claire some time before she miscarries—or have you forgotten why we came here?"
"Maybe you should stop distracting me!" he suggests. "Coming out here while I'm working, talking about hot fudge sauce and—and insulting me!"
Gabriel takes a beat.
"Fair enough." And he's gone. Well, that was easy.
Sylar turns to his task with renewed concentration and determination. Annoying apparition though he may be, Gabriel is right. He can ponder the many joys of exploring the human brain during the plane ride back to New York. The gory instant replay will undoubtedly beat the cloying in-flight film.
Besides, Laughlin's brain is standard fare. Not like his. Not like Claire's. He finds what he needs within the next three minutes, and the corpse before him becomes just one more scrap heap. Stepping back, he puffs a vaguely anticlimactic sigh. He's going to miss sleeping.
Ah, well. New timepieces can be acquired, along with new books. These new hours will have to be filled, and they will pass unrelentingly, after all, whether he writhes in boredom or not. He hears you never sleep again once a baby comes, anyway. Eight more months and it will all pay off. His kid will start crying in the A.M., and he'll be there like he teleported, the most reliable father in existence.
Sylar is searching Laughlin's frilly coat, picking through the lace ruffles looking for a spot to wipe his hands, when the unmistakable sound of an electronic keycard slipping into the door to the private room reaches his ears. He lifts his bloody hand at the warning beep of admittance, ready to immobilize or slay the intruder.
He forgot the woman from Nokturna's bar as soon as he found himself alone with his target. Now she reminds him as she enters the room, flicking her eyes over the scene without so much as a surprised fluttering of the lashes. In her hands she carries a wide, shallow bowl of the ornate sort Laughlin would have found useful in decorating.
"I brought you some water," she says, letting the door slide off her wide, round hip. It shuts with a clunk, a decidedly loud, secure clunk, and she does not look afraid to find herself locked in a room with a serial killer and his latest victim. If anything, she looks as if she came on business.
He doesn't respond, so she lifts the bowl.
"For your hands," she clarifies. And she sets the bowl right down on the table, actually sliding Laughlin's ankles apart to make room. She steps back and waits, regarding him as he stares, almost wary at her eerie state of calm.
"You don't rattle, do you?" he observes after a fashion, moving to examine the water as if it might be acid or some other silly, pointless trap.
"Rarely," she answers. "Not part of my nature, if you get me."
He thinks he gets her, and he also thinks she must be rather arrogant to stroll into the room for a chat about abilities. If she thinks Laughlin's extremely recent death somehow protects her from the same fate, she doesn't know much about sprees—or him in general. After all, he strolled into Kirby Plaza on the giddy expectation of annihilating 0.07 percent of the world's population.
The water tests all right, so he plunges his hands in, swishing them around beneath the surface.
"Thank you for the water," he says, meaning to dismiss her. He can be arrogant, too, and he'd like to get away with only one new murder on his head.
"I have an ability, also," she informs him, again far too nonchalantly.
"Is that right." He feigns disinterest, flicking the water off his fingertips. Diluted blood hits the surface and whirls away in ribbons of pink.
"Don't you want to know what it is?"
"Telling me would be . . . unwise."
"But don't you?"
"Yes." God damn it. Of course he does.
"I'm a precog," she states with obvious pride.
"Oh." Sylar tries not to roll his eyes in contempt, but it's an unavoidable reflex. "I've killed you before, then."
Yet another anti-climax. He imagines Mendez, and the white-eyed painting sessions, and the indecipherable results, and it's all so worthless. Hell, if he'd never killed Mendez, he never would have killed Virginia, but he did, and for what? So a Japanese man with a hero complex could put a sword through his chest? No, no. Screw precognition. A caffeinated shot of misery and paranoia, that's all it is.
"Not me," the woman nevertheless insists. "Name's Shawnda, by the way."
"Someone like you, Shawnda," he tosses over his shoulder. Same difference.
"Not—like—meee," she sings at him.
His resolve shatters after a few seconds of determined disdain. Craning his head around, he finds her grinning mischievously and can't help but return it in some measure.
"All right," he relinquishes. "Tell me."
She strides around him, skirt swinging, and seats herself on the edge of the table, somewhere in the curve of Laughlin's waist, pushing his motionless arm aside.
"I read palms," she states.
He quirks a brow.
"I touch a person's hand with my hand—like so."
She raises her right hand and presses it flush against the left one, finger to finger and palm to palm. It reminds Sylar of the line from Romeo and Juliet, the one about letting lips do what hands do, and he wishes he were already home with Claire. But Shawnda continues.
"And I experience his entire life, from cradle to grave, within a matter of minutes. I know when he's going to die, how he's going to die, who and-or what kills him, what he's thinking about, looking at, feeling . . . And I know everything that's going to happen to him in the years—or weeks, or days—before that final moment."
She drops her hands onto her skirt, the demonstration complete.
"I've been told it looks like I'm having a fit," she says. "Then it's over, and I come to, and I remember myself. I forget me while it's on."
Sylar can't deny he finds it intriguing, and it would be impressive, except—
"Nothing happens when you touch your own hand."
She shakes her head.
"Kind of useless," he remarks.
"Think so?" She raises her eyebrows. "I'm twenty-two, and I've lived centuries, through all kinds of lives and loves. I even read Leslie's palm once." She glances down at her murdered acquaintance. "It's where I met you for the first time."
"Then you knew I was going to kill him."
"His life hardly inspired sympathy. You heard what he did to that addict." She laughs briefly. "And I'm afraid if you seek compassionate souls—bleeding hearts, what have you—you've come to the wrong club. I've known Leslie for years, and I certainly don't mourn him. Wouldn't have stopped you if I could have done."
"Exactly what is it you want from me?" Sylar demands.
Her big, brown eyes alight with mirth, and perhaps a touch of mishief.
"Oh, I love a man who believes in cutting through the bullshit."
"And I love a woman who's forthright about her motives," he returns with a smirk. "Rare animal though it may be . . ." He'd love to count Claire as one, but doesn't. Maybe someday. . . In any case, the moral coolness pervading Nokturna is actually making him long for Claire's warm, if somewhat hypocritical, opposition. She'll hate it when she finds out what he's done. At the moment, that's a refreshing thought.
"Well, then," Shawnda says, "you and I really are made for each other, aren't we? It's just as well—I want you to make me immortal."
"Shawnda," he responds, stifling a snort, "that's—and it's not often that I say this—but that's not in my power."
"But it is. Please?" She extends an open palm toward him. He stares at it, alarmed as the implication dawns on him.
"I'm . . . I—I don't die," he stammers. "You wouldn't come out of it. Ever."
"Oh, I know. Just imagine—to see it all. To know it all. The centuries, the eras . . . the ages." Blinking the wonder from her face, she shoves her hand further toward him and repeats, "Please."
"That's why you brought me the water," he realizes. "It wasn't for me, it was for you."
"I thought it rude to enter eternity with dirty fingers," Shawnda confirms with a smile.
He doesn't have to grant her wish. He knows this. On the other hand, there's nothing stopping him, and it would accomplish the silencing of a witness without further bloodshed. Still, he finds himself hesitant, and not entirely for his own sake. Must be Claire rubbing off on him, he assumes.
"Are you sure you want this?" he asks.
"Positive. If my ability has a name, it's curiosity. To the nth power."
Sylar knows a little something about curiosity himself.
"I assume you know what they say about that."
"Well, you see I've handpicked my ninth life. And it would be nice to give a life for a change, wouldn't it, Sylar?" she wheedles. "After all, I've nothing to offer you. Well—aside from the water . . . which you accepted . . ."
The smirk returns to his face with interest, and after a moment of consideration, he has to acknowledge, "I almost feel as if we could have been friends in—well, extremely different circumstances."
"But we're going to be so much more." Her grin now unchecked, wide and white as the Cheshire cat's on her dark face, she wriggles her fingers. "I'm going to be you."
"That's, um . . . more than a little disturbing, actually. Has that ever occurred to you?" Yet he raises his own hand to line up with hers.
"After all I've witnessed, I don't bandy about the word disturbing."
"Well, get ready to change your habits," he warns her with a grin. "My life starts slow, but when it picks up, it really picks up."
"I can't wait."
The moment their palms collide, Shawnda begins to quake. Her eyes roll back in her head, leaving nothing but blank whites peeking from the sockets. Sylar immediately steps back, startled despite her description, and the woman buckles, sliding to the floor. The seizure lessens in intensity as she slips into his life, and she lies trembling with the occasional twitch of a limb and sudden turning of the head. To an uninformed discoverer, she could be asleep, caught in the grips of a nightmare.
For the rest of her life.
Alone once more, he gives the room a cursory once-over for any unlikely traces of evidence. He likes the world to think he's dead and wouldn't want to resurrect himself with an accidental set of fingerprints. Finished, he begins to depart, happy to be done with the place. It was a neat job, in the end.
"The child spells disaster."
He halts at the door, the muscles in his back tightening as the words play his spine like a xylophone. He turns sharply.
Shawnda has stopped seizing entirely. And she is quite lucid. Staring at him.
"H—how are you awake?" He knows she can't have worked her way through infinity. That just . . . boggles the mind.
"Oh, don't act like you're disappointed," she says with a pout, shifting uncomfortably on the floor. "You were supposed to live forever. I've never felt so gypped."
"What happened? Did you say something about a child?"
"You don't want to know. I know you don't. I was you at this very moment, a moment ago."
"Which child?" he demands, somewhat desperately. "Our child?"
"Our child, yes." Chuckling mirthlessly, she corrects, "Your child. Poor Claire. I did love her so."
"Poor—?" Sylar strides over to Shawnda and drops to one knee beside her. Taking hold of her chin none too gently, he makes her look at him. "I don't understand. Maybe we shouldn't have the baby after all, is that it?"
"But you are going to have it," she tells him. "You promised!"
She begins to laugh, but the tears come too quickly. Frustrated and undeniably rattled by her cryptic comments, Sylar releases her and darts to his feet.
"You're thinking about killing me," Shawnda says, quite accurately. "But you don't. You're still splintered from the last time. He'll always be waiting for you, you know—Gabriel. Your splinter. And he'll be with you on the beach."
"The beach?" he breathes.
"Oh, I don't envy you at all, my friend."
Her laughter intensifies, and a second later she begins to sob, rolling onto her side and curling into a fetal position.
Sylar flees, fumbling with the door as if it were a live opponent seeking to hinder him. As he fights his way through the club, he tries to keep it together, to remember that Claire would not look kindly upon a mass slaughter of every jostling, gyrating inmate in this lunatic asylum, that They were begging for it would probably not seem as convincing an argument in New York as it does here, now. He soothes himself with a simple mantra:
God damn San Francisco.
[] [] []
On the plane, Gabriel—his goddamned splinter, what the hell does that mean?—takes the empty aisle seat and defies Sylar's polite requests that he kindly shut the fuck up:
"Maybe she was lying. I mean, the beach? What beach? We live in New York City; beaches are a little hard to come by. She probably just assumed that we live in California. She's a palm reader, sure, just like any other hustler at a cheap carnival. It was a show. She was only trying to frighten you. Freak out the Bogeyman, wouldn't that be something to tell her friends about . . . I mean, look how obsessed with you they all are. It's not that surprising, really."
Sylar would like to think so. Unfortunately:
"I know when I'm being lied to. You would've found that one useful."
"Well . . . maybe she's crazy, then. You'd have to be a little nuts, hanging around a place like that."
"Yeah, maybe."
Sylar imagines the future—what, until now, he was sure would be the future. He imagines San Francisco as a lonely place, a ghost town. The Golden Gate Bridge would be a pretty thing. He thinks he might like the Golden Gate Bridge at the end of the world. Claire could dive from it.
"I'm not your splinter," Gabriel mutters petulantly. "If you really believe that, you're just vain. You're so, so vain . . ."
Having thus effectively stomped Sylar's fingers loose from their shaky grasp on serenity, the watchmaker begins to hum.