'Why?', was the most prominent question here. This completely random guy. He'd been in that girl's sorting, Violet. The one who could turn invisible. And something else, something she hadn't gotten to reveal before this guy had interrupted, all nine feet of Needing to Help and Self-Righteousness. Who did that, anyway?
And then the same guy, owling him out of the blue. From warning him not to hurt anybody - God, if he had a nickel for every time people told him that - to more of that self-help, novel mentality. Wanting to help Sylar. To fix him. Nobody did that. There was writing him off as a sociopath. There was... Mohinder, asking if he was really going to repent for everything, while the damn sap was dialing out 9-1-1 on his own part. There wasn't this, there wasn't tea and everything.
He was only here because of the newest things this Winchester guy had told him about. Certain abilities. It was only for SCIENCEout of mere curiosity. ...Nothing else.
There was a strangely Gabriel-esque tone to the way he was tugging at his
( ... )
Sam arrived just a little bit after Sylar, but spent a good five minutes scoping out the area. Looking for traps. For exits. Making sure that he had a nice, easy escape route. Dean would kill him for going in without a weapon, but somehow Sam thought that walking in like Rambo would backfire.
Finally he eased down across from the man, flashing him a slightly wary grin, tipping up his eyebrows in a wince at the music. "Um," he said, lacing his fingers together and resting his arms on the table. "Hey."
Sam Winchester, saving the world one sociopath at a time.
Even with the headphones, he could hear Sam coming. With the rap music, it wasn't as if everything was canceled out entirely, it was just... the beats. Something static. Something to concentrate on, that was regular. Not hundreds of heartbeats, inhales, murmurs deep within the castle that people were positive nobody could else was held privy to. Little did they know...
Footsteps were easiest to pick out, next to heartbeats. Especially Sam's, against the stone floors of the castle. Some form of boots, clearly audible over the Dr. Dre. Slow, almost careful steps, as if to not tread to heavily around the crazy man. Sylar was plucking out the ear buds as the other man sat, and the look in his eyes could only be described as cautious. Rap was still blaring out the headphones, just before he clicked off the iPod and flinched a bit. Even after months of having... this, switching from one extreme to the other so far as decibel levels went... Damn, he was never going to get used to this
( ... )
Yeah, this was going great! Not awkward or weird or both of them checking for the door. Mentally face palming, Sam gave Sylar a kind of bland, hopeful smile and reached for a tea pot. If having Lily Evans as his tutor for the better part of four months had taught him anything, it was that tea was the ultimate conversational bridge.
"Do you like rap?"
Oh, brilliant, Sam. Great. Handing Sylar his cup of tea, Sam grimaced apologetically. "Sorry. I just thought the only person who listened to music that loud was my brother."
Wrapping long fingers around his mug, Sam considered it for a minute. "When did you know?" Brown eyes, far too eager, glanced up.
Tea being introduced as a conversational bridge was a subject of much more irony than Sam probably could have meant to go for, considering Sylar's previous experiences involving strangers and tea. Not that Sam sounded like he was going to be drugging a cup any time soon. ...Not that Mohinder had either. Betrayal had a knack for sneaking up behind somebody like that, taking them down for the count
( ... )
"You hate it and yet you're listening to it full volume?" Sam's eyebrows quirked up in amusement, grinning, "Now you sound like me, trapped in my brother's car listening to Metallica for hours on end."
Sam took a drink of his tea, noticing Sylar not drinking his own. Maybe he didn't like tea, either? Or maybe he was every bit as paranoid as Dean was, as Sam was becoming. The former just made Sam feel like a bad host. The latter...actually made him feel more comfortable. It was a sick, sick world he lived in.
Intrigued, Sam leaned forward. "Known how things work?" he repeated, biting his lip in his eagerness to understand. Because if he could understand Sylar, if he could help him, then maybe he wasn't doomed. Maybe the demon had been wrong; he wouldn't go bad and kill everyone around him. Maybe there was hope
( ... )
There was that strained sort of smile again. Less a smile, even, and more of a pained grimace. Rap music was painful, at the best of times. Lines about 'smacking that' and 'shaking tambourines' and what have you. All Sylar could think of was monkeys. Dozens of monkeys, and typewriters. Individuals who hadn't quite grasped the concepts of grammar, who just typed away lines and lines of so-called 'music' that didn't make sense. There was a reason he just listened to the actual music of the songs. "Like I said. Long story." And then, after a few beats, "Who's Metallica?"
This conversation, at least, was... interesting, for lack of a better word. As Sam spoke on, millions of questions, not really leaving much room for an answer... It didn't matter. He got it. He got what Sylar was doing, how this all worked, and... how often did that happen? He was written off as a sociopath and shoved to the side at the best of times, and this strange boy... The teacup was sliding subconsciously to the side, without anyone having touched it, and Sylar
( ... )
"Rock band." Unimportant. What mattered was Sylar opening up. Letting Sam talk to him, and that was the first step to being able to help.
And he more people he helped, the more footholds he had to try and scramble around, to change whatever destiny the demon had set out for him.
But Sam, while idealistic, was far from stupid. Sylar's sudden attention, sudden focus, had Sam's fingers itching for the gun he wasn't carrying. His eyes narrowed slightly in warning. "Yeah," he agreed shortly. "It's different." Not mimicry. Sam, himself, wasn't even sure what all was rolling around in his head. Some days he wasn't sure if he wanted to know.
"You don't have to," he said after a moment. Earnest. Quietly confident. "Kill people. You don't, Sylar. That's not a place you have to keep going. There's another way, another choice. Just because you have these abilities, doesn't mean you're stuck on this path
( ... )
As if Sylar would take what Sam had, right now, in front of several other people. Witnesses. Even in a magical school, not much law to speak of, where the worst thing he would receive would involve more points taken from his house and another detention, it was an incredibly dumb idea, and he was nowhere near that stupid. People in this place, of course, had ways of finding out things, even if you didn't do them right in front of their faces. They just... knew. Could make anybody paranoid
( ... )
"You're right," Sam returned, just as softly, with just as much confidence. "You're not." And this wasn't an innocent protestation of the inherent goodness of Sylar. This was someone who had seen worse and sent it running, whose wariness was simply reflex rather than response to Sylar himself. Then Sam smiled, briefly, lips twitching up and then falling back down in a quick flash. "I never do." Sleep well? What was that?
Hah. House. Two point five...God, who even had stuff like that? Certainly not Winchesters. Certainly not Sam. Everything he touched turned to ash, soured and fell apart. Starting with mom.
Shaking his head to dispel those thoughts - focus, Sammy - he shrugged. "Not a hero. It's not all villains and heroes in the world, you know. But you can be better than a murderer." Eyebrows raised, expression one of pure earnestness, Sam leaned forward. "Whatever you're trying to accomplish, there's got to be another way." There had to be a choice.
And there was that confidence again. Everybody so set on the fact that Sylar wasn't getting their brain. Even that friend of Hiro's. Ando, wasn't it? No powers, and he was still so adamant about Sylar not taking what he had. Strange. Sylar was resisting an urge to roll his eyes, sitting back onto his seat and studying Sam for a few long seconds. Besides. He wasn't even entirely sure he could take this... Sam's powers. It was strange, it... He couldn't see it, not in Sam's mind. That one cog of the brain that was set off by someone's abilities. Different. It wasn't as if it was encoded into his DNA, some kind of alteration, it was... He didn't know what it was.
Sleeping well, at any rate. A concept far beyond the grasps of Sylar's abilities. When one could hear every last sound in each corner of the school? A mouse running across a third floor hallway, right now, as if it was a group of runners stampeding through instead. It didn't cause him pain anymore, it was just... there. Distracting, at times. Sam's breath, right now, for
( ... )
"My dad, too," Sam said, picking up where Sylar had left off. A brief smile that didn't hit his eyes and then Sam was looking down at his intertwined fingers.
If you had just shot the damn thing when you had the chance none of this would have happened.
In other words, it was his fault. Dean lying broken, dying? His fault. John having to give his life to a demon, being stuck in hell? His fault. Hell, let's go back further - Mary's death? Sure as hell wouldn't have happened over an empty crib
( ... )
What? Somehow, Sylar didn't think the same sort of thought process was going through their minds right about now. Him too? With his dad? He'd... killed his father. He'd taken the one opportunity to branch out to the one person that he'd been... pretty much the most nervous about revealing anything to. Been told he was damned, told to get out of the house, ended up stabbing them with the pair of sewing scissors being brandished in his face?
...Okay, maybe everything didn't have to match to the last exact detail.
But what was this? Had he actually...? Because there was a difference between murder and 'I wasn't in the car when the accident happened, ergo, my fault'. Whatever sob story this guy had to share. Not that Sylar was going around, shaking stories about how he'd killed his mother in everybody's face. It wasn't exactly something to be proud of. More the opposite, really, branching into the vicinity of horror, but... right
( ... )
Some kind of annoyance flashed in Sam's eyes, just for a second, and he leaned back in his chair. Fingers curled around his mug with a nearly shattering force and Sam forced himself to breathe. Sylar had no idea. No clue what Sam had been through, the things he'd done or see, the path these 'gifts' had forced him down.
"No," he responded shortly, eyes narrowed. "I've tried. But it's not exactly something you can learn out of a book."
He hesitated, then, for a second. Almost bringing up Robin, the potential to find out them all, the meeting he had the next day to let some puck thing rifle through his brain and help him order out everything he could do. But the words died in his mouth as Sam forced himself to remember that Sylar was not a potential ally. He was someone Sam wanted to help - needed to help - but he was not a confidant
( ... )
And then the same guy, owling him out of the blue. From warning him not to hurt anybody - God, if he had a nickel for every time people told him that - to more of that self-help, novel mentality. Wanting to help Sylar. To fix him. Nobody did that. There was writing him off as a sociopath. There was... Mohinder, asking if he was really going to repent for everything, while the damn sap was dialing out 9-1-1 on his own part. There wasn't this, there wasn't tea and everything.
He was only here because of the newest things this Winchester guy had told him about. Certain abilities. It was only for SCIENCEout of mere curiosity. ...Nothing else.
There was a strangely Gabriel-esque tone to the way he was tugging at his ( ... )
Reply
Finally he eased down across from the man, flashing him a slightly wary grin, tipping up his eyebrows in a wince at the music. "Um," he said, lacing his fingers together and resting his arms on the table. "Hey."
Sam Winchester, saving the world one sociopath at a time.
Reply
Footsteps were easiest to pick out, next to heartbeats. Especially Sam's, against the stone floors of the castle. Some form of boots, clearly audible over the Dr. Dre. Slow, almost careful steps, as if to not tread to heavily around the crazy man. Sylar was plucking out the ear buds as the other man sat, and the look in his eyes could only be described as cautious. Rap was still blaring out the headphones, just before he clicked off the iPod and flinched a bit. Even after months of having... this, switching from one extreme to the other so far as decibel levels went... Damn, he was never going to get used to this ( ... )
Reply
"Do you like rap?"
Oh, brilliant, Sam. Great. Handing Sylar his cup of tea, Sam grimaced apologetically. "Sorry. I just thought the only person who listened to music that loud was my brother."
Wrapping long fingers around his mug, Sam considered it for a minute. "When did you know?" Brown eyes, far too eager, glanced up.
Reply
Reply
Sam took a drink of his tea, noticing Sylar not drinking his own. Maybe he didn't like tea, either? Or maybe he was every bit as paranoid as Dean was, as Sam was becoming. The former just made Sam feel like a bad host. The latter...actually made him feel more comfortable. It was a sick, sick world he lived in.
Intrigued, Sam leaned forward. "Known how things work?" he repeated, biting his lip in his eagerness to understand. Because if he could understand Sylar, if he could help him, then maybe he wasn't doomed. Maybe the demon had been wrong; he wouldn't go bad and kill everyone around him. Maybe there was hope ( ... )
Reply
This conversation, at least, was... interesting, for lack of a better word. As Sam spoke on, millions of questions, not really leaving much room for an answer... It didn't matter. He got it. He got what Sylar was doing, how this all worked, and... how often did that happen? He was written off as a sociopath and shoved to the side at the best of times, and this strange boy... The teacup was sliding subconsciously to the side, without anyone having touched it, and Sylar ( ... )
Reply
And he more people he helped, the more footholds he had to try and scramble around, to change whatever destiny the demon had set out for him.
But Sam, while idealistic, was far from stupid. Sylar's sudden attention, sudden focus, had Sam's fingers itching for the gun he wasn't carrying. His eyes narrowed slightly in warning. "Yeah," he agreed shortly. "It's different." Not mimicry. Sam, himself, wasn't even sure what all was rolling around in his head. Some days he wasn't sure if he wanted to know.
"You don't have to," he said after a moment. Earnest. Quietly confident. "Kill people. You don't, Sylar. That's not a place you have to keep going. There's another way, another choice. Just because you have these abilities, doesn't mean you're stuck on this path ( ... )
Reply
Reply
Hah. House. Two point five...God, who even had stuff like that? Certainly not Winchesters. Certainly not Sam. Everything he touched turned to ash, soured and fell apart. Starting with mom.
Shaking his head to dispel those thoughts - focus, Sammy - he shrugged. "Not a hero. It's not all villains and heroes in the world, you know. But you can be better than a murderer." Eyebrows raised, expression one of pure earnestness, Sam leaned forward. "Whatever you're trying to accomplish, there's got to be another way." There had to be a choice.
Reply
Sleeping well, at any rate. A concept far beyond the grasps of Sylar's abilities. When one could hear every last sound in each corner of the school? A mouse running across a third floor hallway, right now, as if it was a group of runners stampeding through instead. It didn't cause him pain anymore, it was just... there. Distracting, at times. Sam's breath, right now, for ( ... )
Reply
If you had just shot the damn thing when you had the chance none of this would have happened.
In other words, it was his fault. Dean lying broken, dying? His fault. John having to give his life to a demon, being stuck in hell? His fault. Hell, let's go back further - Mary's death? Sure as hell wouldn't have happened over an empty crib ( ... )
Reply
...Okay, maybe everything didn't have to match to the last exact detail.
But what was this? Had he actually...? Because there was a difference between murder and 'I wasn't in the car when the accident happened, ergo, my fault'. Whatever sob story this guy had to share. Not that Sylar was going around, shaking stories about how he'd killed his mother in everybody's face. It wasn't exactly something to be proud of. More the opposite, really, branching into the vicinity of horror, but... right ( ... )
Reply
"No," he responded shortly, eyes narrowed. "I've tried. But it's not exactly something you can learn out of a book."
He hesitated, then, for a second. Almost bringing up Robin, the potential to find out them all, the meeting he had the next day to let some puck thing rifle through his brain and help him order out everything he could do. But the words died in his mouth as Sam forced himself to remember that Sylar was not a potential ally. He was someone Sam wanted to help - needed to help - but he was not a confidant ( ... )
Reply
Leave a comment