"Heartbeats"
For the second time in a row, I find myself writing Sylar. This is really unexpected for me; I really don't see myself as the kind of person who has a lot to say about Sylar. (I'm much too fluffy for that.) Also, this is the first non-pairing fic I've put up here yet. It was originally going to be Mylar until I realized it wasn't about Mohinder at all. :) So I hope you enjoy. Normally I would want to read this over a few more times, but I really wanted to put this up tonight, and I'm only going to be up for another fifteen minutes. So it kind of forced my hand. I hope you enjoy it.
Title: "Heartbeats"
Author: Saena
Rating: PG at most.
Fandom: "Heroes"
Also posted at: heroes_fic, heroes_sylar
Summary: A sort of off-the-cuff meditation about time and killing, from Sylar's POV.
Sometimes Sylar wondered why it was that he enjoyed killing people as much as he did.
Sylar- or, to be more accurate, the Gabriel Gray that he had once been- was a man who worked with clocks. He could detect the slightest inaccuracy in the way a watch told time, could fix any flaw in a clock’s functioning. Time, and the precise keeping of it, had controlled his life. And sure, he had left all that behind when he discovered his abilities and adopted the persona of Sylar. But it was still a part of him; it had to be. After all, his ability to fix watches hadn’t changed.
Heartbeats were, in a sense, like clocks. Their rhythms were more erratic, certainly, but they still kept a sort of time for a living person. With that in mind, Sylar couldn’t imagine why he took such pleasure in stopping heartbeats, when Gabriel had been so intent on the opposite- focused on making sure a timepiece kept working impeccably. He supposed there were epic parallels to be drawn about a person’s good and evil sides, the will to create versus the compulsion to destroy. And that was all very interesting, but he wasn’t sure he bought into it; not really.
He thought it had something to do with the fact that, while heartbeats were like clocks, people themselves were not. They were far too unpredictable for that. At least with a watch, if it performed in some way other than ordinary, it was simply running slow, or it was too old, or someone had gotten water on it when they shouldn’t have. Little problems that could throw the whole thing out of whack, but then be quickly diagnosed and fixed. And if they couldn’t be fixed, then the whole thing could just be deemed beyond repair and replaced.
People weren’t like that. They behaved in ways that seemed flawed, but in reality were not defects at all- simply quirks. All people ticked at least a second or two off, and it couldn’t be repaired. Gabriel had thought that nothing could be done about the matter; people couldn’t just be thrown away like a clock that no longer worked.
But Sylar had come to a different conclusion. In fact, the majority of people were replaceable; the death of one or two meant little, for dozens more were created every day to take their place. And all were more or less the same- just as every clock, while they varied in their color and size and the ornateness of their decoration, conformed to a set pattern. The system inside was much like every other. Except for a few people, those select few with “abilities”. They were the superior models, which had a greater capability to last longer, adapt more quickly, perform better.
And there was irony, Sylar thought, in the fact that it was these whose lives he chose to end. After all, why would you destroy an exceptionally well-functioning clock instead of one which inconvenienced you with its inability to keep steady time? It made little sense. But then one day he realized: if, by destroying a perfectly accurate clock, someone could absorb within them the ability to keep perfect time, no doubt they would do it. When it came down to it, that was what he was doing.
And that, he realized, was the rush he felt when the steady thump-thump of a heartbeat stopped: because at the moment it stilled in the other person’s body, he felt his own beat just a moment more regularly.
Title: "Heartbeats"
Author: Saena
Rating: PG at most.
Fandom: "Heroes"
Also posted at: heroes_fic, heroes_sylar
Summary: A sort of off-the-cuff meditation about time and killing, from Sylar's POV.
Sometimes Sylar wondered why it was that he enjoyed killing people as much as he did.
Sylar- or, to be more accurate, the Gabriel Gray that he had once been- was a man who worked with clocks. He could detect the slightest inaccuracy in the way a watch told time, could fix any flaw in a clock’s functioning. Time, and the precise keeping of it, had controlled his life. And sure, he had left all that behind when he discovered his abilities and adopted the persona of Sylar. But it was still a part of him; it had to be. After all, his ability to fix watches hadn’t changed.
Heartbeats were, in a sense, like clocks. Their rhythms were more erratic, certainly, but they still kept a sort of time for a living person. With that in mind, Sylar couldn’t imagine why he took such pleasure in stopping heartbeats, when Gabriel had been so intent on the opposite- focused on making sure a timepiece kept working impeccably. He supposed there were epic parallels to be drawn about a person’s good and evil sides, the will to create versus the compulsion to destroy. And that was all very interesting, but he wasn’t sure he bought into it; not really.
He thought it had something to do with the fact that, while heartbeats were like clocks, people themselves were not. They were far too unpredictable for that. At least with a watch, if it performed in some way other than ordinary, it was simply running slow, or it was too old, or someone had gotten water on it when they shouldn’t have. Little problems that could throw the whole thing out of whack, but then be quickly diagnosed and fixed. And if they couldn’t be fixed, then the whole thing could just be deemed beyond repair and replaced.
People weren’t like that. They behaved in ways that seemed flawed, but in reality were not defects at all- simply quirks. All people ticked at least a second or two off, and it couldn’t be repaired. Gabriel had thought that nothing could be done about the matter; people couldn’t just be thrown away like a clock that no longer worked.
But Sylar had come to a different conclusion. In fact, the majority of people were replaceable; the death of one or two meant little, for dozens more were created every day to take their place. And all were more or less the same- just as every clock, while they varied in their color and size and the ornateness of their decoration, conformed to a set pattern. The system inside was much like every other. Except for a few people, those select few with “abilities”. They were the superior models, which had a greater capability to last longer, adapt more quickly, perform better.
And there was irony, Sylar thought, in the fact that it was these whose lives he chose to end. After all, why would you destroy an exceptionally well-functioning clock instead of one which inconvenienced you with its inability to keep steady time? It made little sense. But then one day he realized: if, by destroying a perfectly accurate clock, someone could absorb within them the ability to keep perfect time, no doubt they would do it. When it came down to it, that was what he was doing.
And that, he realized, was the rush he felt when the steady thump-thump of a heartbeat stopped: because at the moment it stilled in the other person’s body, he felt his own beat just a moment more regularly.