Of Condemnation and Mercy (remix!fic)
Title: Of Condemnation and Mercy
Fandom: Heroes
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2150
Characters/Pairings: Eden, Maya,Sylar
Disclaimer: Don’t own.
Spoilers/Time Line: AU, Kindness of Strangers
Summery: Sylar couldn't remember when his dreams had become so detailed. He used to dream exclusively in gray.
Author’s Notes: Remixredux08 challenge. For and Inspired by Perception Is Key by sabaceanbabe Beta'd gimmemypickle (who's awesome!)
In his dreams, she would come to him. Or was it in his nightmares? He wasn't quite so sure anymore.
The temperature was warm and she wore cut off jeans, folded down at the waist. Her eyes were huge brown orbs, her flip-flops a vibrant yellow with her toenails painted red. The shade matched the gaping hole in her head. She smiled at him. Lovely.
“So?”
“So?” He replied.
“So, whatcha gonna do with this one?”
He wanted to turn away from her. The hole in her head was gruesome and it perpetually leaked, the blood never stopping. Sylar didn't know why she stayed. He killed before her and he killed after her, but she was always the one.
"Have you fucked her yet?"
He bristled at her candor. She rolled her eyes, which seemed to be a feat, considering their bug-like proportions.
"Murderer of countless, and it turns out you’re the biggest prude." She paused. "Guess that makes sense; I mean, if you'd gotten laid more ..."
"I don't want to," he said, just to shut her up. It didn't work.
"Liar. Please, I'm in your head. You're not fooling me. It's been a while, right? I mean, you're not still a virgin, are you?" she stage-whispered and then laughed. "She's hot and I think she'd let you. That whole nun thing ... well, that's right up your alley, isn't it?"
He looked away from her as she slipped a straw in between her waxen lips and shifted in his seat. He felt that familiar mixture of lust and shame.
Only parts of his dreams were in color.
"Call it dead woman's intuition." Her voice sounded out, though her lips hadn't moved. She gave him a wink and turned her head to look back into the ocean. The hair not plastered with clotted blood caught in the sea breeze.
He turned away from the sight and looked out into the sea. It was dark with the gloom of a coming storm. His skin grew warmer all over.
Sylar couldn't remember when his dreams had become so detailed. He used to dream exclusively in gray.
*
He kissed her and she hadn't taste like her tears. He shook with anticipation, nervousness at the thought that he might not be doing it right. But he was also enjoying it. He needed to breathe but didn't want it to stop kissing her. Her naked legs brushed up against his knuckles; they were warm and he wanted to be warm, too.
~
Sylar woke with a start. He opened his eyes against the darkness and turned over until his belly lay against the mattress. He rubbed himself into it as he had in his youth. Those times in the night when he knew he'd burn in the hereafter, if he let his hands wander.
There was a sound in the darkness, and strange warmth beside him. A body, heat pressed into the bedding beside him. A weight shifted uncertainly.
"You're awake." The thought made his cheeks burn and he was grateful for the cover of night.
"I am. I cannot sleep." She didn't apologize for waking him like he thought she might have. Instead, she moved closer, laying her body down with his. The night was hot, but he didn't move away from her.
Maya's hand moved to touch his, lacing their fingers together and she began to speak.
"You sleep like the-- So quiet. My brother used to snore very loudly. It used to drive me mad when we were young. You see, we shared a bed." The thought made him uncomfortable as she squeezed his hand and drew a finger over the veins that crept along them.
"I would place my hands over his face, covering him, to hold the sound in. Then, I'd pull back and great big sound would come from him." Sylar turned his head to catch the silhouette of her lips. She gestured dramatically with the telling of the story.
"One of the tias caught me once with my hands over my brother's mouth ... 'demonia malvada'."
He hadn't been thinking when he did it. Hadn't even been listening to the words she was saying. But he knew by her tone in that moment, that if he touched her, she would let him. He sat up on his elbow, gingerly touched the skin of her thigh and felt his mouth go dry.
*
Eden appeared again, as herself but a different version of her. The blood on her crown curled around her ear, but his time she had a new wound. Scissors were sticking out of her chest.
In this dream, she opened her mouth and thousands of cockroaches scurried from it. The sound they made felt like curdled milk in his stomach.
You're going to creep inside of her, spreading your disease and madness.
You are Ruiner.
*
Thunder rumbled overhead and the rain came down in sheets, peppered with hail. The ferocity of the storm didn't wake Sylar; instead, he woke when he felt the stillness in the road. The car pulled to a stop, the engine cut off.
Her hands were on the wheel, hair spilling over her shoulders in thick, twisted threads.
"We're stopping?"
"Tormenta."
There was a tired question on his face and she jutted out her chin to indicate what was beyond the windshield. Maya unbuckled her seat belt and then leaned back in her seat with a sigh.
"We're going to stop for a while, I can't drive in this."
She cracked the window, letting in a welcomed gust of warm, moist air. Some of the drops of rain landed on her arm, but it didn't seem to bother her. It annoyed him because the seat would be wet when it was his turn to drive.
"Would you like to get in the back seat?" she asked with a yawn, and then scratched a finger over her rain-speckled arm. He looked down seeing that the flesh there had rippled, and shifted in his seat.
‘She doesn't know what she's asking,’ he thought, and shifted himself again.
"You should have told me you were tired." The words came out sounding harsher than he'd intended and his mouth twisted as a result. She ignored his tone and looked out the window instead. The fact that she hadn't reacted to him made his skin burn, his muscles ache.
‘Fuck it’, he thought as he reached out to touch her. His fingers sank in first, as his hands went to caress her scalp. Maya leaned into his touch and he watched as her goose flesh became more pronounced. He moved towards her, kissing her lightly.
"You talk in your sleep," she murmured, closing her eyes.
"I thought you said I was quiet,” he said, and idly played with the thought of keeping her.
"You were before." She smiled and took in a deep breath, expanding her lungs.
"Afterward ..." She kissed him once more, touching his arm and leaning away from him. "You talk, of, uh--how do you say?--the Garden and an accident with a mother?"
Sylar said nothing, leaning back himself, but continued to stroke her hair.
"My brother died ... I know it was because of what I am. What happened with your mother ...?"
"It was just a dream, Maya. That's all."
"But you were crying--"
He let his hand sag and then drop to the console that separated them. He rubbed his eyes with his other hand.
"Maya ... please, we're both exhausted. Why don't you get some rest and I'll drive for a while."
*
Her shine was wearing off. He wanted her to stop talking. He wanted to pull over at the next rest stop, or even in the middle of the desert, and leave her there. Anything to be away from her, but he couldn't move, out of a misplaced loyalty, morbid curiosity, or a strange nagging sensation that he shouldn’t leave his things lying around.
Sylar's bladder screamed.
He pulled over and stared at her for a long moment, wondering if he should wake her, but he didn't trust himself to be alone with her outside of the car. He still needed her, after all.
When he returned, she was still asleep, if not fitfully so. He settled back into the driver’s seat, and feeling the weight of his journey sink deep into his bones, decided to rest his tired eyes.
*
Eden kissed his lips, resting heavily upon him. His hand came up to smooth her now too short hair, and snagged on the jagged ages of her ruined skull. She rolled him over in the bed that had been his and Maya’s. He kissed Eden with a new urge.
“You survived, for this.” She made no sound and her lips never left his. He felt her tongue and tasted blood as her weight grew upon him. Her hands came around his neck, fingers squeezed as his mouth filled up with a dark liquid.
Sylar's eyes opened and they filled with the vision of Eden’s black orbs. Maya stood in a far off doorway.
She was laughing.
*
Sylar felt like he was drowning. He sucked in breath, but it was like breathing underwater, with all of the panic and none of the strength to fight it. Everything was heavy and weighed down upon as if he were miles underwater. He wanted to cry out, but his mouth was choked, full. He turned his head to spit it out, but everything was like slow motion. In the midst of the haze was a string of desperate Spanish.
"I thought because of all those times when he was asleep with my hand over his mouth, I'd weakened him somehow. It was my fault that his lungs weren't strong enough. And everyone knew it. They knew that I choked him in the night. I stood over him like a demon and stole away his breath."
He heard the words, but couldn't understand them. The thickness in his head rushed over his ears, obstructing his ability to hear. But that didn't matter since she had long since reverted back to her native tongue.
"He was a sick child. He had to be watched when we were younger. He would stop breathing in his sleep; they had to shake him when he stopped.
You have to understand that his breathing was very loud. I could not sleep with him making that horrible drowning noise. I was only trying to take the sound away!"
He swiveled his head to look at her. Her eyes were black as pitch. He saw himself in them and thought calmly, ‘This is it, nowhere to run.’
Her hand drifted over his lap, and on a level that was purely observational, he noticed he had become aroused. In any other instance, he would have been embarrassed, but in this one, he was dying. Sylar's hand groped dumbly for her and came to rest heavily against the side of her head. Her reached out over him, past him, but stopped when his fingers pulled clumsily against her hair. She had time to wince when his hand came to her cheek, drawing one finger over the wake of a dark tear. Her hand touched the door.
He knew what she was doing.
"No." he rasped and tried to pull her hand away. His throat clamped down before he couldn't get the rest out. Finish it. Do it now or I swear to God, I'll find you and do what you won't.
She untangled him from her with a silent apology and reached over him again to jerk the door open. He was heavy now, full of her poison. All he could do was look at her, begging with his black eyes.
"D-don’t …"
"Lo siento. Por favor, no puedo parar. Espero que les sobreviven." He couldn't help thinking that behind the rush, her words sounded like a curse.
She gave him a hard push and he hit the ground like a dead thing. He made no sound, only stared blankly as she tossed out a bottle of water. It made a sucking sound when it landed beside him. The door closed sounding like a gunshot. He closed his eyes and felt the blackness seep out from the corners of his eyes.
He didn't want to watch her go.
Sylar rolled over onto his back and took a sputtering breath as she drove away. The dust hit him as the tires spun. Sylar turned over and gave into a coughing fit that brought up an impressive clot of black muck that coated his lungs. A syrupy string clung to his lips, the end of it wagged in the dry air. He brought his fist up and brushed away the mucus, taking a deep and bitter, but needed, breath.
She spared him. He would never forgive her for it.