Dining on ashes// chapter two
Title: Dining On Ashes
Chapter name: 2// In the Rough
Fandom: Heroes
Characters: Sylar, OCs
Pairing(s): None for now
Rating: NC-17 for the ensemble
Summary: After the events of Villains, Sylar finds himself working, yet again, for a company. Just when he thinks that things might be different, he is sent on an assignment. Killings, he can handle, robberies, no problem, but, when he's asked to protect a woman and bring her safely back to the Corporation, he might have met his match.
banner by faerie_vixen
Chapter two// In the rough
The park was a small one.
Everyone would have kept to themselves such a thing could have been possible However they soon found themselves too bored with their own lives to keep from spying on their almost conjoint neighbors. Nonetheless, when they began to meddle, most saw that the others’ lives were just as mind-numbingly boring as theirs and took their sticky fingers out of the business that was not theirs.
Daytime television became the newest trend; people discussed who was whose son instead of their neighbor’s new lawn gnome.
Miss Tiney Barker was one of the few people in the park that still believed, even after years of dull news, that there was bound to be something interesting going on somewhere; she just had to find its location. She believed it was her duty to find this secret and expose it to the world, or at least to the residents trailer park. Maybe then, she could be the journalist she had always dreamed of being.
But no one seemed to care that young Miss Adams was pregnant, yet again, or that Sue Allen’s son had been caught with drugs in his pocket. Still, Miss Baker was determined to find something worth gossiping about.
No one seemed to notice, or care that the Jax’s trailer had not been entered or exited in the last few days. They cared even less when the old woman mentioned it, blaming the news on her thirst for gossip; she had often been known to exaggerate the truth to obtain a few gasps. Even when she claimed to have heard screams coming from the trailer, the neighbors dismissed it as the stray dogs that often roamed the area at night.
But no one questioned her when she showed the Polaroid pictures she had taken of a man entering the trailer in the middle of the night.
“D’ya think it migh’ be a Fed?” Miss Kreem asked once she laid eyes on the dark picture.
“Mus’ be.” Baker said with a nod of her white, almost blue, head, egging the women on. She might not be too smart, but she knew how to work a crowd. “Dinna tell you some’ing was going on with the Jaxes? Din’ I?”
“He’s rather handsome,” Jamie Adam’s said, swelling belly and all, once she had seen the picture.
“You think any man is handsome,” Baker said with a scowl. Her grandson had been the teenager’s last conquest and the most recent father of her ever expanding brood, “‘Sides, you canna see his face much. Only his suit.”
They discussed his appearance for a long time; from his suit to his tie, even discussing the darkness of his hair, still apparent in the dim light.
The one thing they did not discuss, but all thought, was how dangerous he looked.
¤ ¤ ¤
How long had she been here? She could hardly tell.
She had drawn all the old tweed curtains when she had gotten home and, even though a little light still made it through the curtains, her frequent blackouts made it hard to guess if she was one morning or the next.
She had not had a full night of sleep in over two weeks. Her frequent losses of consciousness were all that was keeping her sane, but only just, like a rope of twine when she really needed a solid anchor. Most of the time she would prefer to simply lose her mind rather than be forced to relive her last month -had it really been only a month? It felt like an eternity longer- in her dreams.
Needles. Injections. Warmth. Cold. Training. Exhaustion. A friendly face. Screams. Pain. Lots of Pain.
Even the fragments were too hard to bear.
Her lack of nutrition was wearing her thin. The only thing that still kept alive were the deaths she had caused, the vital energy she had stolen. But, even that was fading, like a candle at the end of its wick. The guards had been sustenance but only for the journey. The man in the car had been but a snack to push away the edge of hunger. She hated the truth; it was her family that had saved her life. Without their lives she would be a shell, just like everyone she touched.
She hated that she was the monster, the one who couldn’t sacrifice herself. Why had she done this to her family? The ones who loved her, cared for her, told her to dream big when all she got was small. How could she have been so selfish?
She hardly felt human anymore, and that was not because of her physical well being, but these things she could do.
For a year now, she had been able to dry up plants and small animals. Although the effects were minimal, she had refrained from touching others unless of serious need.
At first she had been petrified, locking herself up in her dorm room, not allowing anyone entrance. Her roommate bitched and complained when she was denied entrance, but no one seemed to want to take action. Finally she was left alone.
The beginning was chaotic at best, she had a hard time controlling herself and just when she thought that she had tamed the power, it would resurface. Her poor plants suffered the most, very few survived the week. But she found that, after those days of isolation, she could control the worst of it. Besides, the worst she could do was cause dry hands to those whose hands she shook. Kisses were uncomfortable, chapped lip affairs. She decided to refrain from relations; the questions raised were not some she wanted to answer.
In any case, there was no need for human interaction when one was trying to complete a degree. She had work to do, money to earn to try and pay off debts. Besides, she wasn’t human anymore. She figured that she didn’t deserve to pretend she was.
And then the men came. She half-guessed they would. After all, weren’t all aliens, genetically modified humans, mutant and freaks caught and tagged by the government at one point? She figured she was bound to be captured and she was.
The men did not waste time on introductions. She was simply taken, after a quick needle full of tranquilizer; even if she knew it was coming she was going to let herself be taken away willingly.
She awoke in a sterile facility, no surprise there. She was placed in a man’s charge, a Doctor of some sort. She was taken to a psychologist. They tested her ability, her control over it; its control over her. They took notes on shiny little clipboards, always nodding, always observing. Even when they weren’t there, the cameras weren’t hidden and followed her every move, little buzzing sounds accompanying their movements.
The fact that she was an experiment was as obvious as the fact that she was kept under constant surveillance.
What she had not been expecting, however, were the injections that turned her into a monster.
They did not try to make her better, try to analyze and prod her, sample bits of her flesh. She didn’t even get dissected.
Instead, they made her worse.
She let out a frustrated cry, punching the floor in anger. It did not give away, nothing plastic ever did. Her ring did make a dent in the cheap vinyl but it was not enough for her. She wanted to rip off the walls of the trailer, she wanted to bury her family, she wanted to run. She wanted peace.
“I’m sorry mom,” she told the shriveled shape lying on the floor, “I wish I could have controlled myself.”
She would have cried if she could have. She had tried several times. Several times.
She collapsed onto the old couch, head in her hands as the world pressed rewind.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Knocking politely would no longer do. She needed in.
Shadows in the night, lights flickering. Nowhere was safe from them. She needed in, she needed to explain herself. She needed to say goodbye before she left, even if they could follow her here. She needed to see her family one last time. She could protect her family form them.
What she had not planned was how to protect her family from herself.
The door was opened, squeaking into the night. Her dad stood, back lit, looking into the night at his daughter.
“Ad?”
“Let me in,” she croaked, looking about once more. No one was around, no one could see.
He was still in shock as he moved to let her pass. She could see that he had not changed much since the last time she had seen him, sometime around Christmas. His bear gut still hung low enough to show under his tee shirt of the day, an old ratty thing that advertised some Pink Floyd concert he had seen back in his golden age. He had a few days worth of stubble on his check so he didn’t question her when she simply slid past, not giving him a kiss.
“Elsa?” he called towards the back of the trailer, “You might want to come an’ see.”
Elsa, her mother, ducked her head out of the washroom, curlers half fixed to her graying hair. She seemed to be in greater shock than her father. Her mouth hung low and her arms were half raised, as though still determined to fix her hair even if her attention was elsewhere.
A voice could be heard on the phone hanging from her father’s hand. Her dad, still in a daze, raised the phone to his ear.
“Jason,” he said into the phone, “get your ass over here. Your sister’s home.”
It fast forwarded the boring bits where she sat down on the couch where she sat now, parents hovering but too scared of her dilapidated state to lay a hand on her. No matter how much she needed human touch, a hug, a kiss, she knew it was not what was recommended in her current state.
“Ad?”
The door burst open, admitting a ragged looking Jason. He looked oddly disconcerted, which was bizarre considering the fact that he was usually so relaxed. She had never seen him look this profoundly unsettled.
“Here,” she called, well rather croaked.
Her mother ran to grab her a glass of tap water. Adrianna grabbed it, careful to not touch her mother’s skin. Knowing her mother would scold her if she did not drink it -years apart had not lessened her mother’s concern for her daughter’s well-being- she brought it to her lips. The water evaporated as soon as it made contact. She hoped no one would notice how quickly it disappeared.
No one seemed to care; they were too busy staring at her, shocked that she was alive. Shocked that she was sitting in their trailer and not in a ditch, discarded and alone.
“The news, they said you’d been gone for a month and a half,” Jason said
“It’s been that long?”
Her cell had contained no windows and meals were not evenly spaced, proving time keeping rather difficult. In fact, only since her escape had she seen the sun. Checking the date had not occurred to her, it had seemed trivial at the time.
“Sweetie, this is the 8th of April. The cops told us that the chances of getting you back a week after your disappearance were slim to none.”
“We thought you was dead,” her dad simply told her.
“Not me, I knew you were alive. Oh sweetie, I knew you couldn’t be dead, I knew you’d fight; you’re so strong, and so smart. You would make it, I knew it.”
Her mother’s eyes shone with tears, all balanced on her lids, poised to fall.
Could Adrianna even cry? She had not tried to yet, she had had no need for tears but, now, back with her family, she felt happy. She could move back home, no need to continue school when you were a monster. A job would be easy to find, maybe in a factory of some sort. She could touch things, as long as they weren’t alive. People would be easy to avoid.
She had been too carried away with thoughts of the future to see her mother’s hand advancing to caress her cheek. She did not notice it until the soft flesh touched hers. Then, her mother’s hand, no matter how moisturized, was no longer soft. She fell to the floor, looking like an Egyptian mummy, minus the cloth plus the rollers.
Adrianna looked at her mother, frozen.
“You killed my wife, you bitch!”
Her father brought along his own death, slapping her hard across the face. He crumpled like Elsa, his tee shirt looking surprisingly empty.
She felt strangely numb, as though nothing really mattered. As though the man and woman lying on the floor were not people she had known, as though they had been dead for thousands of years, barely significant in her life. She sat, hands clasped on her thighs, unmoving and unmoved.
It took Adrianna a moment to shake off the confusion and lack of feeling to notice the changes in her body. Her limbs were no longer stiff and painful to move, she felt nimble like a star athlete. She didn’t feel empty and hollow, but full of vital energy.
Perfect.
She sighed contently as she stretched and stood, flexing her fingers. They responded eagerly. She felt as though she could crush concrete with a simply touch. She could leave this place, maybe steal a few more lives and take over the world. With her strength she could do anything she-
“What did you do to them?”
Her head snapped to see her brother wielding a knife. She would probably had forgotten him, walked out of the trailer and his life had he not spoken, but this family was comprised to a bunch of blubbering idiots, except her mother, she had been the only one with brains.
“Stay away, freak. I’ll call the cops, I swear I will”
She smiled, walking forwards. He backed away, clearly hesitating. Jason might dress like a tough guy, but he was a real softy, never taking action even if it meant saving his own life.
Even now, when death smiled and said hello and wore the face of a loved one, he would find himself frozen. Even when she walked up to him, her body an inch from his. Even as she said “I’m not a freak, I’m a monster”.
No, wait. For the first time in his life, he took action, slicing her shoulder. She gasped in pain, a hand reaching up to touch the split skin. It wasn’t deep, just a small cut. It might not have been much, but it held greater meaning.
She suddenly felt a rush of love; her brother had finally tried to save his life. It only made sense that this would be the last thing he would do. In a rush of affection, instead of simply touching his cheek as planned, she gave him a kiss.
The knife fell to the floor with a metal clang. She knelt and picked it up, placing it back in its stand. Another touch to her shoulder revealed more blood than she had initially thought. Still, she walked calmly over the bodies to the washroom, pulling a white towel from the rack and placing it on her cut. The floor suddenly started to tip.
No… wait… she was tipping.
With a clamor she felt to the floor, still conscious but only just. A primal instinct kept the pressure on her shoulder as her body told her, “Let go and you’ll die.”
She didn’t die, but she did pass out.
¤ ¤ ¤
These knocks were not as frantic as hers but they still managed to wake her up. She laid dizzy on the floor as she heard someone… a woman… her sister speaking at the door.
“Mom, where are you? I had to take up your shift at the diner. Open up.”
She dizzily got to her feet, loss of blood still making her feel as though the floorboards were made of marshmallows.
“Come on mom, open up!”
The banging was a little more frantic now and Adrianna quickened her step, hand braced on the wall for balance. A trail of blood decorated the paper walls.
“I’m coming,” she called to her sister.
“Mom, is that you?”
It took a considerable amount of force to open the door, even if it as only a small crack. She could see her sister clearly, the light from the trailer shining clearly on her face. She still wore her hair bleach blonde, offsetting her fake tanned skin. Her lips were colored a light shade of pink and her eyes lined too many times. Her ridiculous green dress, the uniform of the waitresses at Bob’s Homemade Yum, was a few sizes too small and rather unflattering.
“Adrianna?”
“Just come in. Is anyone following you?”
“I don’t know.”
Adrianna looked about as she much as she could but her eyes had become accustomed to the harsh light of the trailer, the darkness of the outdoors prohibited her from seeing further than her sister. Judging it safe enough, and knowing she could not refuse her sister entrance (cops were the last people she wanted alerted if her sister got suspicious), she allowed her in.
Luckily, her sister did not see any of the bodies until the door behind her was shut; a half sized partition wall enclosed both sides of the door limited the view of the inside of the trailer. Besides, Keera was too busy looking at her sister to start pocking around.
With a click, Adrianna locked the door.
“What’s going on?” Keera asked, “Where’s mom? Why didn’t she come to her shift? And why are you here?”
“You have to help me.”
“Ad, you’re pale as a sheet. And…”
Only then did her sister seem to remark the growing red stain on her sister’s shoulder. She reached forward, a caring touch but Adrianna slipped away.
“What happened to you? Did your kidnapers do this?”
“No… Jason did.”
“Why could Jason hurt you? He’s as sweet as a kitten.”
Her sister had been pushing up the steps and Adrianna had been backing up, fearing what her touch could do to her sister. No matter how accidental the event would be, she knew the guilt would be too great for her to handle without slipping over the edge. She might not have been attached to the other members of her family, but she loved her sister very much. She was the only one that made her feel as though she belonged. The only one that had made her feel special. The only one that had pushed her to get more schooling.
When Keera saw the bodies pile on the floor, she surprised Adrianna once more. She looked calmly at her younger sister, only a tinge of fear in her eyes expressed her true feelings.
“Ad, what have you done?”
A/N: Sorry if this is a bit boring and not quite as good as the first chapter but I needed to address Adrianna's situation before moving on with the story and this was, I felt, the best way to do it. Do not fear, Sylar and Adrianna will met in the next chapter.
Chapter name: 2// In the Rough
Fandom: Heroes
Characters: Sylar, OCs
Pairing(s): None for now
Rating: NC-17 for the ensemble
Summary: After the events of Villains, Sylar finds himself working, yet again, for a company. Just when he thinks that things might be different, he is sent on an assignment. Killings, he can handle, robberies, no problem, but, when he's asked to protect a woman and bring her safely back to the Corporation, he might have met his match.
banner by faerie_vixen
Chapter two// In the rough
The park was a small one.
Everyone would have kept to themselves such a thing could have been possible However they soon found themselves too bored with their own lives to keep from spying on their almost conjoint neighbors. Nonetheless, when they began to meddle, most saw that the others’ lives were just as mind-numbingly boring as theirs and took their sticky fingers out of the business that was not theirs.
Daytime television became the newest trend; people discussed who was whose son instead of their neighbor’s new lawn gnome.
Miss Tiney Barker was one of the few people in the park that still believed, even after years of dull news, that there was bound to be something interesting going on somewhere; she just had to find its location. She believed it was her duty to find this secret and expose it to the world, or at least to the residents trailer park. Maybe then, she could be the journalist she had always dreamed of being.
But no one seemed to care that young Miss Adams was pregnant, yet again, or that Sue Allen’s son had been caught with drugs in his pocket. Still, Miss Baker was determined to find something worth gossiping about.
No one seemed to notice, or care that the Jax’s trailer had not been entered or exited in the last few days. They cared even less when the old woman mentioned it, blaming the news on her thirst for gossip; she had often been known to exaggerate the truth to obtain a few gasps. Even when she claimed to have heard screams coming from the trailer, the neighbors dismissed it as the stray dogs that often roamed the area at night.
But no one questioned her when she showed the Polaroid pictures she had taken of a man entering the trailer in the middle of the night.
“D’ya think it migh’ be a Fed?” Miss Kreem asked once she laid eyes on the dark picture.
“Mus’ be.” Baker said with a nod of her white, almost blue, head, egging the women on. She might not be too smart, but she knew how to work a crowd. “Dinna tell you some’ing was going on with the Jaxes? Din’ I?”
“He’s rather handsome,” Jamie Adam’s said, swelling belly and all, once she had seen the picture.
“You think any man is handsome,” Baker said with a scowl. Her grandson had been the teenager’s last conquest and the most recent father of her ever expanding brood, “‘Sides, you canna see his face much. Only his suit.”
They discussed his appearance for a long time; from his suit to his tie, even discussing the darkness of his hair, still apparent in the dim light.
The one thing they did not discuss, but all thought, was how dangerous he looked.
¤ ¤ ¤
How long had she been here? She could hardly tell.
She had drawn all the old tweed curtains when she had gotten home and, even though a little light still made it through the curtains, her frequent blackouts made it hard to guess if she was one morning or the next.
She had not had a full night of sleep in over two weeks. Her frequent losses of consciousness were all that was keeping her sane, but only just, like a rope of twine when she really needed a solid anchor. Most of the time she would prefer to simply lose her mind rather than be forced to relive her last month -had it really been only a month? It felt like an eternity longer- in her dreams.
Needles. Injections. Warmth. Cold. Training. Exhaustion. A friendly face. Screams. Pain. Lots of Pain.
Even the fragments were too hard to bear.
Her lack of nutrition was wearing her thin. The only thing that still kept alive were the deaths she had caused, the vital energy she had stolen. But, even that was fading, like a candle at the end of its wick. The guards had been sustenance but only for the journey. The man in the car had been but a snack to push away the edge of hunger. She hated the truth; it was her family that had saved her life. Without their lives she would be a shell, just like everyone she touched.
She hated that she was the monster, the one who couldn’t sacrifice herself. Why had she done this to her family? The ones who loved her, cared for her, told her to dream big when all she got was small. How could she have been so selfish?
She hardly felt human anymore, and that was not because of her physical well being, but these things she could do.
For a year now, she had been able to dry up plants and small animals. Although the effects were minimal, she had refrained from touching others unless of serious need.
At first she had been petrified, locking herself up in her dorm room, not allowing anyone entrance. Her roommate bitched and complained when she was denied entrance, but no one seemed to want to take action. Finally she was left alone.
The beginning was chaotic at best, she had a hard time controlling herself and just when she thought that she had tamed the power, it would resurface. Her poor plants suffered the most, very few survived the week. But she found that, after those days of isolation, she could control the worst of it. Besides, the worst she could do was cause dry hands to those whose hands she shook. Kisses were uncomfortable, chapped lip affairs. She decided to refrain from relations; the questions raised were not some she wanted to answer.
In any case, there was no need for human interaction when one was trying to complete a degree. She had work to do, money to earn to try and pay off debts. Besides, she wasn’t human anymore. She figured that she didn’t deserve to pretend she was.
And then the men came. She half-guessed they would. After all, weren’t all aliens, genetically modified humans, mutant and freaks caught and tagged by the government at one point? She figured she was bound to be captured and she was.
The men did not waste time on introductions. She was simply taken, after a quick needle full of tranquilizer; even if she knew it was coming she was going to let herself be taken away willingly.
She awoke in a sterile facility, no surprise there. She was placed in a man’s charge, a Doctor of some sort. She was taken to a psychologist. They tested her ability, her control over it; its control over her. They took notes on shiny little clipboards, always nodding, always observing. Even when they weren’t there, the cameras weren’t hidden and followed her every move, little buzzing sounds accompanying their movements.
The fact that she was an experiment was as obvious as the fact that she was kept under constant surveillance.
What she had not been expecting, however, were the injections that turned her into a monster.
They did not try to make her better, try to analyze and prod her, sample bits of her flesh. She didn’t even get dissected.
Instead, they made her worse.
She let out a frustrated cry, punching the floor in anger. It did not give away, nothing plastic ever did. Her ring did make a dent in the cheap vinyl but it was not enough for her. She wanted to rip off the walls of the trailer, she wanted to bury her family, she wanted to run. She wanted peace.
“I’m sorry mom,” she told the shriveled shape lying on the floor, “I wish I could have controlled myself.”
She would have cried if she could have. She had tried several times. Several times.
She collapsed onto the old couch, head in her hands as the world pressed rewind.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Knocking politely would no longer do. She needed in.
Shadows in the night, lights flickering. Nowhere was safe from them. She needed in, she needed to explain herself. She needed to say goodbye before she left, even if they could follow her here. She needed to see her family one last time. She could protect her family form them.
What she had not planned was how to protect her family from herself.
The door was opened, squeaking into the night. Her dad stood, back lit, looking into the night at his daughter.
“Ad?”
“Let me in,” she croaked, looking about once more. No one was around, no one could see.
He was still in shock as he moved to let her pass. She could see that he had not changed much since the last time she had seen him, sometime around Christmas. His bear gut still hung low enough to show under his tee shirt of the day, an old ratty thing that advertised some Pink Floyd concert he had seen back in his golden age. He had a few days worth of stubble on his check so he didn’t question her when she simply slid past, not giving him a kiss.
“Elsa?” he called towards the back of the trailer, “You might want to come an’ see.”
Elsa, her mother, ducked her head out of the washroom, curlers half fixed to her graying hair. She seemed to be in greater shock than her father. Her mouth hung low and her arms were half raised, as though still determined to fix her hair even if her attention was elsewhere.
A voice could be heard on the phone hanging from her father’s hand. Her dad, still in a daze, raised the phone to his ear.
“Jason,” he said into the phone, “get your ass over here. Your sister’s home.”
It fast forwarded the boring bits where she sat down on the couch where she sat now, parents hovering but too scared of her dilapidated state to lay a hand on her. No matter how much she needed human touch, a hug, a kiss, she knew it was not what was recommended in her current state.
“Ad?”
The door burst open, admitting a ragged looking Jason. He looked oddly disconcerted, which was bizarre considering the fact that he was usually so relaxed. She had never seen him look this profoundly unsettled.
“Here,” she called, well rather croaked.
Her mother ran to grab her a glass of tap water. Adrianna grabbed it, careful to not touch her mother’s skin. Knowing her mother would scold her if she did not drink it -years apart had not lessened her mother’s concern for her daughter’s well-being- she brought it to her lips. The water evaporated as soon as it made contact. She hoped no one would notice how quickly it disappeared.
No one seemed to care; they were too busy staring at her, shocked that she was alive. Shocked that she was sitting in their trailer and not in a ditch, discarded and alone.
“The news, they said you’d been gone for a month and a half,” Jason said
“It’s been that long?”
Her cell had contained no windows and meals were not evenly spaced, proving time keeping rather difficult. In fact, only since her escape had she seen the sun. Checking the date had not occurred to her, it had seemed trivial at the time.
“Sweetie, this is the 8th of April. The cops told us that the chances of getting you back a week after your disappearance were slim to none.”
“We thought you was dead,” her dad simply told her.
“Not me, I knew you were alive. Oh sweetie, I knew you couldn’t be dead, I knew you’d fight; you’re so strong, and so smart. You would make it, I knew it.”
Her mother’s eyes shone with tears, all balanced on her lids, poised to fall.
Could Adrianna even cry? She had not tried to yet, she had had no need for tears but, now, back with her family, she felt happy. She could move back home, no need to continue school when you were a monster. A job would be easy to find, maybe in a factory of some sort. She could touch things, as long as they weren’t alive. People would be easy to avoid.
She had been too carried away with thoughts of the future to see her mother’s hand advancing to caress her cheek. She did not notice it until the soft flesh touched hers. Then, her mother’s hand, no matter how moisturized, was no longer soft. She fell to the floor, looking like an Egyptian mummy, minus the cloth plus the rollers.
Adrianna looked at her mother, frozen.
“You killed my wife, you bitch!”
Her father brought along his own death, slapping her hard across the face. He crumpled like Elsa, his tee shirt looking surprisingly empty.
She felt strangely numb, as though nothing really mattered. As though the man and woman lying on the floor were not people she had known, as though they had been dead for thousands of years, barely significant in her life. She sat, hands clasped on her thighs, unmoving and unmoved.
It took Adrianna a moment to shake off the confusion and lack of feeling to notice the changes in her body. Her limbs were no longer stiff and painful to move, she felt nimble like a star athlete. She didn’t feel empty and hollow, but full of vital energy.
Perfect.
She sighed contently as she stretched and stood, flexing her fingers. They responded eagerly. She felt as though she could crush concrete with a simply touch. She could leave this place, maybe steal a few more lives and take over the world. With her strength she could do anything she-
“What did you do to them?”
Her head snapped to see her brother wielding a knife. She would probably had forgotten him, walked out of the trailer and his life had he not spoken, but this family was comprised to a bunch of blubbering idiots, except her mother, she had been the only one with brains.
“Stay away, freak. I’ll call the cops, I swear I will”
She smiled, walking forwards. He backed away, clearly hesitating. Jason might dress like a tough guy, but he was a real softy, never taking action even if it meant saving his own life.
Even now, when death smiled and said hello and wore the face of a loved one, he would find himself frozen. Even when she walked up to him, her body an inch from his. Even as she said “I’m not a freak, I’m a monster”.
No, wait. For the first time in his life, he took action, slicing her shoulder. She gasped in pain, a hand reaching up to touch the split skin. It wasn’t deep, just a small cut. It might not have been much, but it held greater meaning.
She suddenly felt a rush of love; her brother had finally tried to save his life. It only made sense that this would be the last thing he would do. In a rush of affection, instead of simply touching his cheek as planned, she gave him a kiss.
The knife fell to the floor with a metal clang. She knelt and picked it up, placing it back in its stand. Another touch to her shoulder revealed more blood than she had initially thought. Still, she walked calmly over the bodies to the washroom, pulling a white towel from the rack and placing it on her cut. The floor suddenly started to tip.
No… wait… she was tipping.
With a clamor she felt to the floor, still conscious but only just. A primal instinct kept the pressure on her shoulder as her body told her, “Let go and you’ll die.”
She didn’t die, but she did pass out.
¤ ¤ ¤
These knocks were not as frantic as hers but they still managed to wake her up. She laid dizzy on the floor as she heard someone… a woman… her sister speaking at the door.
“Mom, where are you? I had to take up your shift at the diner. Open up.”
She dizzily got to her feet, loss of blood still making her feel as though the floorboards were made of marshmallows.
“Come on mom, open up!”
The banging was a little more frantic now and Adrianna quickened her step, hand braced on the wall for balance. A trail of blood decorated the paper walls.
“I’m coming,” she called to her sister.
“Mom, is that you?”
It took a considerable amount of force to open the door, even if it as only a small crack. She could see her sister clearly, the light from the trailer shining clearly on her face. She still wore her hair bleach blonde, offsetting her fake tanned skin. Her lips were colored a light shade of pink and her eyes lined too many times. Her ridiculous green dress, the uniform of the waitresses at Bob’s Homemade Yum, was a few sizes too small and rather unflattering.
“Adrianna?”
“Just come in. Is anyone following you?”
“I don’t know.”
Adrianna looked about as she much as she could but her eyes had become accustomed to the harsh light of the trailer, the darkness of the outdoors prohibited her from seeing further than her sister. Judging it safe enough, and knowing she could not refuse her sister entrance (cops were the last people she wanted alerted if her sister got suspicious), she allowed her in.
Luckily, her sister did not see any of the bodies until the door behind her was shut; a half sized partition wall enclosed both sides of the door limited the view of the inside of the trailer. Besides, Keera was too busy looking at her sister to start pocking around.
With a click, Adrianna locked the door.
“What’s going on?” Keera asked, “Where’s mom? Why didn’t she come to her shift? And why are you here?”
“You have to help me.”
“Ad, you’re pale as a sheet. And…”
Only then did her sister seem to remark the growing red stain on her sister’s shoulder. She reached forward, a caring touch but Adrianna slipped away.
“What happened to you? Did your kidnapers do this?”
“No… Jason did.”
“Why could Jason hurt you? He’s as sweet as a kitten.”
Her sister had been pushing up the steps and Adrianna had been backing up, fearing what her touch could do to her sister. No matter how accidental the event would be, she knew the guilt would be too great for her to handle without slipping over the edge. She might not have been attached to the other members of her family, but she loved her sister very much. She was the only one that made her feel as though she belonged. The only one that had made her feel special. The only one that had pushed her to get more schooling.
When Keera saw the bodies pile on the floor, she surprised Adrianna once more. She looked calmly at her younger sister, only a tinge of fear in her eyes expressed her true feelings.
“Ad, what have you done?”
A/N: Sorry if this is a bit boring and not quite as good as the first chapter but I needed to address Adrianna's situation before moving on with the story and this was, I felt, the best way to do it. Do not fear, Sylar and Adrianna will met in the next chapter.