FIC: Tick
Title: Tick
Rating: PG
Characters: Sylar, some mention of Mohinder
Paitings: none
Spoilers: none. If you've seen the episodes you'll get the references, but nothing is given away if you haven't already seen them.
Summary: If the son of the watchmaker is a watchmaker, can he ever rest his hands? (prose-poem)
Gunshots and skin scraped on gravel, he goes home every night because somehow this has become normal to him.
He has reduced lives to bold letters on tombstones. Does not stop to consider what’s been done, because you can’t stop time. Broken watches must be set right, and anyway, it was all in the name of science.
If the son of the watchmaker takes comfort in the suffering of strangers, can his hands be wiped clean? He is the 21st century witch doctor, cutting people open to read their insides like tarot cards. Wrist deep in it now, and the future is painted on a canvas of skin from a palette of blood and bone fragments. He is Art Nouveau. He is the victim in villain form. He is the son of the watchmaker and he has begun to tick.
If the son of the watchmaker is a watchmaker, how can he create anything more than idealized despair?
It goes like this: The son of a watchmaker and a scientist walk into a bar-
The son of a watchmaker and a scientist are in a cheap motel in Montana and they are playing chess-
The son of the watchmaker and the scientist are solving a jigsaw puzzle. They are turning the pieces to see what fits. They have been twisting for days when all they wanted was something simple, something that made sense. They want the picture on the box because it reminds them of something real. It’s right there! It was promised to them! It is theirs for the taking if they could only get the pieces in right!
But all this time the scientist is holding pieces up his sleeve and can see the man across the table is no better. It has all been misdirection. There is glass. There is blood in saliva and dark stains on the ceiling. Like the tick of the second hand, the son of the watchmaker keeps time to slowing heartbeats. Telling secrets ruins everything, it’s such an awful story.
But if the son of the watchmaker is a watchmaker, can he ever rest his hands?