In the weeks following the split, Sylar actually wants to hear Gabriel again. After all, the watchmaker has been rather chirpy of late, and Claire's prolonged presence in his home has thrown her current absence into high contrast. Such silence reigns. He could be living in a vacuum but for the ticking of the varied timepieces and the muffled street noises from without.
Silence on Gabriel's part, too. It's as if Claire brought him out to begin with, maybe as a result of their night of drunken role play. Or, perhaps she merely called up some older, not necessarily better, but very different part of him with the mere fact of her company—as if Gabriel only came out to see, not his own counterpart, but Claire.
Of course, knowing Gabriel, he could be sitting with his knees drawn up, down a long, twisted corridor in the murky attic of Sylar's mind, head leaned against the wall, sulking in the dust and the darkness. In fact, Sylar would almost bet on it. He does sense a certain lingering air of punishment hanging above the table of watches.
So, months of antsy stillness wearing on his nerves, he decides to do what many do to recover from messy break-ups. He slips on a long, black coat and slithers vengefully out on the rebound. Not that he does it in the same manner as most. His standards differ—gender and age don't even factor—and he tends to end the date with a goodnight kill, as if he misread the memo.
He's on his third murder, post-Claire, when the absolute horror of what he has done strikes him, possibly for the first time in his career. Again, the manner in which it strikes him differs from the probable norm. For most, blood and gore denote horror. For Sylar, horror is futility.
He's just decimated a campsite in the Tennessee mountains. His target lies prone, partially decapitated, bobbed haircut shorn off with his signature incision so that, beneath her flannel, she could be either sex. Only her highly unflattering granny glasses, flecked with blood, give it away. Her companions likewise lie broken, never to rise of their own accord. The fire has gone out; the ashes are smoldering.
He waits. Waits for the sense of elation, of triumph. Waits for the ungodly satisfaction that could compare with making love to Claire Bennet after a lifetime of pursuit (never before had routine pigtail-pulling included so much bloodshed). Waits for all of it.
Waits.
The camper is dead. Check. Companions decimated. Check. He knows this is when he feels victorious. The camper is dead, and he can . . !
Bend things.
He looks down at his hands, camouflaged with their work. In the nighttime, the blood is as black as his attire, black like the gloves he never wears.
Bend things?
"Shit, what a . . . what a . . . stupid ability!" This followed by a noise of surpreme disgust.
Okay, now he's talking to himself. That's all right.
"How would you even use that? How do you even discover something like—?" And now he's whirled about and is talking—in a very accusing manner, no less—to the corpse. Best leave off from that.
But, really, now, bending things? He supposes if one were mired in quicksand out in some godforsaken jungle, with a tree limb inches out of one's desperate, flailing grasp, it might be useful. But that's a hell of a trip to take for the sake of justifying an abnormal ability.
"Spoons, maybe," he mutters, lip still curled with angry disenchantment. He seems to recall that bending spoons was once big in the field of psychokinesis. God only knew why, when he could flip a tractor trailer on its back by drawing a U in the air with his little finger. But perhaps they never thought of that, and only thought of spoons.
Looking up, he catches sight of a couple of stainless steel pots swinging from an overhead branch. Their handles have been curved to allow for hanging. He almost loses it.
"Are you absolutely kidding me?"
He turns in a swift circle, warping the trees in his immediate vicinity until they touch the ground, their newly crooked spines unbroken. The destruction—or rather lack thereof—does not cool his ire. What a goddamn pointless power. He could have uprooted them with his telekinesis. He does so now, with a grunt testifying to frustration rather than effort. He almost wishes it were harder. The killing has not expelled his pent-up aggression as it once did.
The pots ding onto the ground. Glancing at them, he espies a bag of marshmallows stuffed into one. Morosely, he summons them toward him, plops one onto a stick, and sits down with a huff. Sticking the marshmallow out over the hot ashes, fanning them a bit, he glowers upward at the pieces of moon, better viewed now that he has done some rudimentary landscaping.
Where is the excitement? It was there when he murdered Leslie, if such a willing participant could be murdered. Now . . . nothing but emptiness. He has wasted his time, and the camper and her friends have died for nothing. With that thought, he feels . . . well, not guilt, but a certain comprehension of it. He can see why he might feel guilt, if he were so inclined.
Let's be honest, once you've got the ability to come back from a shot to the face, other abilities just don't hold the same spark. There's just no urgency anymore.
When did he tell her that? The day after he had left her on the floor in her cheerleading costume, soaked in tequila instead of blood. That was it. Now he knows why Leslie was such a rush. Urgency. Going out on the hunt to take home sustenance to his family—it was primal enough to stimulate even the most jaded part of his dark vanity. And it was new in the sense that he had never before provided for a family of his own. There was something in that, being a man who had a woman and a child—or, in any case, something that would be a child.
Not the bogeyman. Not a son to a cowing mother. Just a man.
He vehemently wishes he had never taken Leslie's ability. Insomnia sits on him like a second skin these days. Once, he tried turning off the ability with the Haitian's, but the moment he slipped from dozing to deep sleep, his eyes sprang open. As he told Claire when she held her hand before him, chagrined that it had healed, he cannot activate the Haitian's ability while asleep. It's one hell of a catch-22.
The marshmallow begins to crack and smoke on its underbelly, the top half still white as the overhead moon. He turns it, while an owl hoots in the trees, finding more fulfillment in its grisly kill than he has managed to find during all that rooting around in his own. Something crackles off to his left, some large animal that might scent the remains. It could be a deer. It could be a bear. Even the fear of wild beasts is lost to him. Immortal and endowed with power as he is, he has very little to feel, very little to think about in lonely hours. Now there are 24 of them every day. And, Circadian rhythm having lost its meaning, every day gives way to night only through variations in luminescence. He marks weeks from his calendar as he used to mark off days. They have about as much meaning.
Very little to think about. Just Claire Bennet, is all. Claire and the months they spent cohabitating—practically married, he said to Molly—and the promise he made to her, from which she finally released him. That little promise, building cell by cell, which by now has joined the other three little promises her body reneged on. Never mind that he didn't want to be released. Never mind that he can't even sleep for keeping that damn promise.
"I hope you live forever," he whispers, repeating the last, damning words he spoke to her. It seems only fair—eternity is going to feel twice as long for him, without sleep. And now he's fighting with his ex-girlfriend in absentia, which just about makes the rounds of the looney bin, verbally speaking. "Forever and ever."
Disappointed with his recreation and brooding bitterly, he is only half-aware he says it. He could be sleep-talking, and in a sense, he is.
His body is wide awake, nerves humming, senses attuned to the night noises and the smell of the marshmallow over the fresh kills, like incense in a morgue. But for all that . . .
He's never been so tired.
[] [] []
"Look, not to be offensive or anything, but this wasn't my idea," Claire told Dr. Rhineman as she plopped herself down in the faux-leather chair across from his. "I think it's kinda silly, to be honest with you."
Dr. Rhineman smiles, a scrawny little man whose haircut is more approaching a mullet than he probably realizes. He wears suspenders over a white shirt. He also wears horn-rimmed glasses like her dad. She's so glad he looks nothing like him.
"I know you're here at Micah's urging," he informs her kindly. "Actually, no one gets an appointment with me unless they come through Mr. Sanders. It's a sort of psychotherapeutic underground railroad, if you'll excuse the term."
"For your safety?" Claire fights down a smirk. She isn't sure why she feels so defensive.
"For everybody's safety. Well, just imagine if my client list were to fall into dangerous hands."
In that instant, she knows they're both picturing the same person. Dr. Rhineman seems to realize he may have just put his foot in his mouth, and he quickly continues:
"Micah told me you were reluctant, and I agreed to set up an appointment on the contingent that you would not be pushed. Now, I sense Micah may have done a little more pushing to get you here than I feel is appropriate, but I won't do that. We can talk about anything you want. We can talk about nothing. If you want to talk about the weather, we can talk about that."
"It's hot," Claire remarks with a lift of her brow, looking out the window. It is open today. The nature of Dr. Rhineman's practice does not always allow for such exposure.
"It's Texas," he agrees.
She smiles. There is a certain pleasure in being here, the place where she grew up, where she spent thirty years in doomed wedlock. She allows her eyes to drift around the small room, with it's bland art and soothing blue paint. She wonders if the potted cacti with their red blossoms are wise, given that some of his patients can probably hurl heavy objects with as little strain as hurling an insult.
"It's good to be back in Texas. It's where all my exes live," she jokes. When Dr. Rhineman says nothing, she shakes her head at her thoughtlessness and adds, "Old song. Before your time."
"I keep forgetting how old you are."
"Yeah, but I've kept my figure," she says, with a slight, sarcastic lilt and a roll of her eyes. "Honestly, doc, if you're trying to treat that whole immortality complex thing, you're a little late. I've just about got that one worked out."
"I'm glad to hear that, Claire." He sits back in his chair a bit. "Although, I must say, that's quite an accomplishment, considering you tried to take your own life less than a year ago."
"A little over a year, actually," she counters. "And I failed, so unless you want to treat me for a fear of success instead, I'd just as soon we moved on."
His smile is a little too lenient this time, a little too patronizing to tolerate.
"Look." Claire sits forward—as much as she can, anyway. "You think I don't know what this is? This isn't about me being un-freaking-killable, and it's not about me blowing my brains out. Micah wanted me to see you because I came back from New York a little bit different. Frankly, if he wasn't one of my oldest friends, and if he wasn't still grieving for Molly, I'd be pretty pissed. But he is, so here I am."
"What do you mean when you say different?"
Now she smirks openly.
"Okay, fine," she acquiesces, a tad bitterly. "Let's break it all down. The old Claire would've come back all contrite and flagellated herself for a while. Shit, the old Claire would've come back the second she saw a chance to run. And the old Claire would've blamed every bit of it on him, but you know what? It ain't so."
Working herself up into an agitation, she leaves her chair.
"I learned some things about myself in New York," she tells him. "And one of those things is that I'm not this—this . . . nice person. Okay? He's killing people again—yep! Not my fault, and not my problem. I am done leading the crusade, I mean I am just about goddamn finished. If anyone wants to take up the flag and carry on without me, help yourself, it's laying right there, but as for me, I'll be over here getting a drink." She shakes her head, hands on her hips, pacing the small space of his office. "And I am not gonna apologize for anything that happened in New York. And I'm not gonna cry about it, either!"
She shoots an accusing look at Dr. Rhineman as she says this, as if he demanded an apology or a tear. Mentally, he writes it off as transferrance—from Micah, perhaps, or a host of others.
"Yes, I just went through a horrible break-up. And yes, it was the second horrible breakup in a single year, and yes!" She laughs a little at the ridiculousness of it all. "The first one was the end of my thirty-year marriage! And yes, I put a gun to my head and pulled the trigger, but when you're gonna live forever, that's called being dramatic."
Her voice softens a bit, and her gait stills.
"Everyone wants me to say it was awful," she says, voicing her suspicion. No one has actually expressed this desire, but certain questions have implied the expectation. "I'm supposed to say I was scared the whole time, and that I tried to escape, and that when he touched me it was the most revolting thing in the world. It wasn't anything like that. I mean, yeah, it was dysfunctional—big time." Here, perhaps, she remembers Joshua and her brief foray into the job market. "But it was also the best relationship of my life. We just . . . We fit. I mean, it was the worst, too, don't get me wrong. The guy does have issues. On one hand, the fucking—sorry, doc—the fucking was great. But, then, there was the fighting, which was . . ."
She trails off and wanders back to her chair, sinking into it. She can't stand too long; her ankles get tired.
"Actually, the fighting was pretty great, too." She says this more to herself than to Dr. Rhineman.
He lets her settle down for a minute.
"Sounds like this man meant a lot to you," he finally observes.
Claire looks up at him, mistrust in her eyes. He interprets it accurately—did he mean man, or did he mean monster? And what was the repercussion on her own verdict?
"I'm not here to judge," he says with a shrug. "I wouldn't have him in this room for a second, but he's not here. You are."
"He did mean a lot," she admits quietly, the mistrust fading. "We kinda had this life started. I could've been happy, if it hadn't been for. . ."
"If it hadn't been for what?"
"Old Claire," she says ruefully and rolls her eyes again, this time at herself. "See, the fact is, not being a nice person, it turned out shacking up with this raving lunatic wasn't such a good idea. It was kind of like a sinner playing house with the devil. Nothing good was ever gonna come out of it. A lot of personal gratification, but there's more to life. Me and him just can't be together. I mean, it's perfect, but it's just not right."
Dr. Rhineman cocks his head while she is speaking. Some point has keenly captured his interest. When she finishes, she finds him piercing her with those grey eyes behind the ghost-glasses of her dead father.
"What?" she demands.
"So what you're saying," he asks, using his hands to square the air as only a licensed psychologist can do, "is that nothing good came of it?"
"Oh, lord." Now she's put her foot in it.
"Claire?" he prompts. "Do you want to talk about the baby?"
She glares at him for a long moment, idly stroking the bump of her belly which, over time, has transformed her from a perpetually athletic woman of barely legal appearance into some kind of human cabbage.
"Do you plan to tell him?" he inquires further.
She continues to glare. Slowly, her face relaxes into a smile, although not a particularly cheerful one.
"Tell me something, doc," she says. His lack of a notepad or recording device has just become apparent to her. "Where do you keep this client list?"
A little sheepishly, Dr. Rhineman taps his temple.
"Eidetic memory," he explains.
"Would you tell him about that?"
In answer, he only crosses his legs and raises a skeptical eyebrow.
"That's what I thought. I loved the crazy son of a bitch, and I never told him that, either. You give him information, all he wants his more. He's got this thing where he needs to know everything." With effort, she pushes herself once more out of the chair. "If you'll excuse me, the baby is now telling me to find a bathroom, ASAP. If there's a worse combination in this world than me and Sylar, it's pregnancy and good ol' Texas sweet tea."
And doing all she can to maintain the dignified stance she feels she deserves after getting in the final word, she waddles out the door in her maternity dress and flip-flops.
[] [] []
The crime scene has been roped off with yellow tape, and for the time being, the area is off limits to campers and hikers. The federal agents who have just arrived on scene, sweating after their hike up from the barely suitable landing site, can only stare. The scene of carnage is even more brutal than the ones they have seen since Leslie Laughlin's fanged, smiling corpse began this macabre circus. Tall, robust oak trees have been uprooted, as if by a giant-child in the passion of a tantrum.
Trees.
"Jesus," says a male agent. Turning from the flora, he points at the devastated fauna on the ground. "Animals do that?"
"We think so," says a local officer, eyeing the bites that have torn at the victims' flesh, peeling denim away from gaping wounds. "Forest ranger said the teeth patterns look like black bear. Anyway, we sent a saliva sample off to TBI for analyzing."
"Jesus," he says again.
The female with him stoops to examine the precise wound on a head that still wears glasses.
"She was the target," she muses aloud to her partner. Looking around at the others, she bites her lip at the shame of it and adds, "The others were just . . . collateral damage."
"Did your guys find any DNA?" asks the male.
"Well . . ." The officer scratches his jaw in vague discomfiture. "We found a few black hairs, but tell the truth, we won't know till they get back from the lab if they're from the perp or the other . . . meaning a bear, o' course, if that is what tore the bodies up post mortem. But . . ."
"But?"
"We also found a marshmallow, kindly down in the ashes, on a stick. Had a bite took out of it. Being that there's three victims, and just the one roasting stick, we were pretty hopeful."
The female agent shuts her eyes for a moment and lifts her brows in amazement at the absolute audacity of the idea.
"You're telling me he sat down and toasted marshmallows?" She sweeps her hand at the scene. "After this?"
"Well, ma'am, I'm a little more bothered by the tore-up trees. That wudn't no act of nature."
The male agent snorts a bit and grimly locks eyes with the female. Turning back to the local, he states:
"Officer, I'm going to give you another picture."
"One that ain't a hundred years old?" the officer suggests dryly. He is exaggerating somewhat. The composite drawing of the uncaptured serial killer known only as Sylar is roughly eighty years of age, give or take.
"Heh. Well, yes and no. Fact is, the first picture does represent the man we're looking for. An eyelash found at the scene in Montana came back a match. I can't explain it, and I'd rather not try. I just want to catch the bastard."
"We're doing all we can to cooperate."
"I know that." He crosses his arms. "All right. Gradually, it has become apparent that our perp has a fan. Stalker may be a more accurate term. While interviewing witnesses and spooling through security footage looking for our guy, we discovered that another man was repeatedly appearing in the vicinity of the crime scenes, and that his appearance and departure were practically simultaneous as the projected ones of the killer. This despite the fact that the murders happen at apparent random across the country. We know from the times of his appearance in hotel security footage that he isn't the killer. As far as that goes, he's got a rock-solid alibi in the form of digital video. At first, we thought he might be an accomplice. When we learned his identity, we changed our minds about that. Our idea is that, as he doesn't know he's being sought in connection with these murders, he may be more careless and therefore more easily spotted."
"So who is he?" the officer asks.
"His name is Joshua Gallo. He's from New York. No criminal record. Just recently, he got a little taste of the legal system after he went to visit a man in prison. Now it turns out there's a pretty sordid little backstory. Few years ago, this man, Jansen, comes home and finds his wife in bed with her stepbrother—namely, Gallo. Jansen, who was maybe not such a nice guy to begin with, doesn't take it very well. He kills his wife and starts to kill Gallo, but the gun misfires. They go over a railing together, Jansen smacks down on the hardwood, Gallo smacks down on Jansen, Jansen goes to prison for life. Done and done, you'd think. But, not so much.
"Turns out, Gallo was never happy with Jansen's sentence. In hindsight, he wished he'd landed on Jansen a little harder. Only he's a good citizen, right, so he thought the courts would take care of it. Buuuut, Jansen's attorneys started throwing around phrases like crime of passion, and jurors started sympathizing. Hell, nobody likes to come home and find their woman in bed with the Sunday company, right? When the verdict was read, Gallo had a breakdown and spent some time in the loopy ward at a hospital. Gets out, carries on with his life, everything's fine until just a few months ago."
"What happened a few months ago?"
"Well, see, that's the best part. Gallo arranges to have a little heart-to-heart with Jansen in the state prison. During the visit, Jansen fucking disappears." He pauses for effect. "Along with the security camera, and the security guard, in fact. That's two human beings and a complex machine, gone. From a high security state prison."
"Disappeared?" The officer almost shies away. Along with the uprooted trees, this is just too much. "You mean . . . poof?"
"I do mean poof. Poof is a good way to describe it, don't you think?" he asks his partner, who uses her hands to illustrate poof.
"How'd he do it?" Marvel and horror combine in the officer's voice.
"Did he do it?" The federal agent throws up his hands. "All the questioning in the world couldn't get to the bottom of it. There was nothing on the guy. If you count the wall of bullet-proof glass as a true partition, he wasn't even in the room when it happened."
"All right, now tell me what he's got to do with all this." The officer gestures at the bodies before them.
"Will do. One reason Gallo was widely suspected of being behind the state prison poofery—aside from his proximity, of course—was that, according to his close relatives, he had begun to express a lot of vigilante-type ideas and plans. They thought he was lapsing mentally and were trying to convince him to commit himself to another tour in the hospital, when he disappeared. But not like poof. Like vroom-vroom. And he starts showing up in coincidence with these murders. We then thought he was targeting the killer. After all, it would have made sense."
"You thought?"
"If he's targeting the killer, why hasn't he made a move? It would seem he's had plenty of opportunities."
"So . . ." The officer shakes his head, completely baffled. All this information is making his head spin. "Then, what?"
"Then the killer isn't the target," the agent winds down with a shrug.
"So who is?" He feels he must have some kind of resolution for all this.
The female agent is popping on a latex glove, preparing to rifle for more bear hair, and to check mouths for traces of marshmallow in the teeth.
"Someone else," she supplies, quite reasonably.