For Sylar
Diana's been having a bad day.
"Oh look," she grumbles. "Another man. I bet he's a rapist. The last ten men I checked out of this shithole were fucking rapists."
She places a hand on the oval window and closes her eyes.
"Oh look," she grumbles. "Another man. I bet he's a rapist. The last ten men I checked out of this shithole were fucking rapists."
She places a hand on the oval window and closes her eyes.
Sylar hadn’t stopped. Each time he was drawn from the silence of the last broken body by the sawing discord of the next.
For some time, they were a blur. Names on a list, faces stretched in screams - they didn’t matter, all that mattered was the clicking, whirring clockwork that he saw and took and improved. He ticked them off one by one: a body stretched out on a sticky, sunbaked Chicago sidewalk; a man frozen solid before he could turn away from his dinner… later, the images became sharper, not a detail faded or forgotten: a pretty waitress with matted red hair; a young man surrounded by puddles, some bright, some silvery, one deep thick crimson; splitting pain at the thump of a body hitting a concrete floor; a man screaming and crucified and about to reveal the future to him; a burning, prickling brightness that illuminated the gory wreckage of a police van; hoarse, mad laughter as a terrified man burned…
Sylar smiles.
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Beep. A button on the wall is pressed. "989254371, twelve for J." There's the impression of stunned silence on the other end of the line. "And he's going down unconscious, I'm not having this shitstain pollute La Verdance with his psychopathic crap. Send a guide who can take a beating, too. He's probably a fighter." She walks away, slapping a second button (Beep) as she goes. The door opens. Sylar hangs in the air, sleeping, arms crossed on his chest like a mummy. A brawny, harried-looking woman in crisp business attire stalks along the corridor, picks him up unceremoniously, and carries him to the surface.
When he wakes up, he's on the floor of what appears to be a dingy motel room. The same woman - short close-cropped red hair, blue eyes, plain black pants, white button-down shirt, and a pair of unremarkable black shoes - is standing over him holding a folder and a small business card.
"Gabriel Gray, nine eight nine two five four three seven one caret one. Here are your sentence papers." She tosses them down towards him. "Here's directions to the place you're going to want to go if you like what's left of your sanity." The business card is tossed down, equally unceremoniously. "I'm legally obliged to answer the next ten questions you ask me, so make 'em good, I'm in a fucking hurry."
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“My name is Sylar,” he says, semi-automatically, eyes narrowed. Too quiet here. An oddness-a barely discernable strangeness that he can’t locate the source of. (He died. -but he’s alive?) And his shocked attention flies down to his stomach-there should be a wound, there should be ragged flesh and pain and cold numbness, but there’s nothing-
He’s watching the woman again, sharper and harder than any human stare has a right to be, his fingers tight on the papers. (‘Sentence papers’?)
“How long have I been here?” he demands.
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That wasn’t supposed to happen.
He saw Isaac’s drawing, there in black and white, uncompromising - but that was the one thing, the only premonition he had refused to believe to be true. It was such a… a small death, such an anticlimax - he was meant for more, he’d known it, he’d confirmed it, he’d-
…died.
His teeth clench, and for a split second there’s the animal urge to tear into this woman who’s so casually telling him that destiny abandoned him at the last moment. It’s clear in his face, just for a moment - but then he visibly reins it in, very deliberately opens the file and scans it. Nine questions, she said. She’s still useful.
“Sentence papers,” he says flatly, frowning up at her for one precise second before returning his attention to the papers.
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"I'll take that as question number two. Long story short?"
(The first page says simply this:
GABRIEL GRAY
989254371^1
DIANA 12:24
12:00 XJ)
"That piece of paper says you're due for twelve hours of serious unpleasantness at Torturer Jasmine's earliest convenience, by order of Judge Diana, and the second sheet"
(It's filled with apparently meaningless sequences of numbers. 989254371^1 repeats several times.)
"tells anybody who can read it that the reason you've been given such a charming appointment is on account of a simply ridiculous number of murders. Eight questions left."
The number eight makes her laugh. It's not clear why.
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He doesn’t move, but his eyes fly around the room, a little wild, as if each dingy wall conceals a multitude of demons cackling and calling. But - no. What scared him as a child has no place in his present. He’s stronger now. Better. They want to punish him? Just let them try.
He cants his head, lowering the file to his side, and looking sideways and down at the woman. The ghost of a smirk is hovering on his lips.
“How much do you know about me?”
His tone is almost pleasant. Almost.
“You can count that as one of your little questions, if you like.”
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She laughs again. Harsh seems to be the only flavour her laughs come in.
"This is Downside. Everyone's a menace to fucking society. Next question."
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He’s definitely smirking now.
“I’m afraid someone’s done you a disservice,” he says conversationally. “Perhaps they don’t like you. Or perhaps they’ve made a terrible underestimation.”
His left hand is raised a little, the fingers loosely splayed.
If the woman finds her entire body locked in place, her tongue and jaws seemingly set in stone… well, surely that’s just a coincidence?
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This is new.
One eyebrow (with difficulty) twitches upwards. If she could speak, she would be snarking right now. Alas, it is not to be.
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“Now,” he says, feigning puzzlement, “I can't think why you would expect me to submit to ‘twelve hours of serious unpleasantness’.”
He takes a single step forward, his expression deliberately mild. “I’m not,” he clarifies. “In fact, you’re going to show me the way out like a good girl, and then you’re going to take these, revoke them and destroy them.”
With a gesture, he closes her hand around the sentencing papers. Oh, the things he could have done with Eden McCain’s power.
Victoria will find her mouth and tongue to be in good working order again, should she care to reply. Hopefully she’ll be sensible and not try calling for help.
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Victoria coughs, smirking.
"This is your new home, by the way. I guess no one liked you much. Size of the place is dictated by how much you were mourned when you kicked the bucket. Door's over there." She jerks her head slightly in the appropriate direction. "You can let me go now. And you better take your papers with you when you go to the contractors, or at least memorize your res code. If they can't find your sentence they can't relieve you of it."
Pause.
"You can let me go now. I've gotta get back so I can show the next asshole where he's landed himself."
She turns over in her mind, briefly, the thought of warning him not to pull this bullshit on a contractor. Briefly.
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“Afterwards,” he snaps. “After the sentences are finished. Where do people go then?”
This can’t be all there is. After everything he did, everything he became -- this can’t be all there is.
(No mourners? He’d have expected that, if he’d expected to die at all, but it still hits him hard. He made his mark on the world, didn’t he? They’ll remember him, in years and centuries to come, won’t they?)
His fingers are taut, and as he speaks, the guide is winched into the air until her feet dangle several inches above the threadbare carpet. Though her speech is still unrestricted, it’s an unpleasantly similar sensation to being hanged.
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"Same place you are now, for fuck's sake. Nothing changes between before and after except after you're a whole fuck of a lot less happy." The guide has enough fight left in her to give Sylar a witheringly sarcastic look. "Not that you can get much less happy from here."
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-and makes a violent sweeping motion, releasing the pressure and dropping her. (It’s unlikely she’ll land on her feet. In fact, the wall is a far more probable point of contact.)
She’s lying. Or mistaken. There’s always something more - and if this time he won’t be given a purpose, he’ll make one instead.
And for now… “What do contractors ask for payment?” he asks, and from his face and voice you’d think they were acquaintances discussing the weather.
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"They don't. They do it for free, if and only if they think you honestly don't deserve to get fucked up."
Victoria shakes her head and goes for the door. "Was that ten questions? You know what, I don't fucking care. Goodbye."
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