Fic: The Chronicle of Perdition
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Life Raft
Characters: Sylar/Claire
Summary: One touch was all it took. One blessed touch and he was real. He clung to it like a life raft.
Rating: PG13 for some language and a little sexy material
Spoilers: Season 4 stuff
A/N: WHEEEE! I am living the life of a wife, mother, full-time IT professional with a lot of training on the side, a fan-fic writer, AND a professional musician with 2 different gigs WHEEEE! And on top of that, I try to sneak in a few hours at the gym *pant pant pant*... So.. this chapter is WAY overdue. However, now that one music gig is actually in the performance part of its course instead of in the near constant practice part I'm starting to finally see a little more me-time clearing up YAY! So, I was able to crank out the rest of this chapter in a little over a week =D That's much more like it! Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy. It's got a couple Sylaire moments near the end and what I think, personally, might be my new favorite journal entry (the one with the talking watch was my favorite before that), but Sylaire action is gonna start crankin' up a bit starting with next chapter. His true colors are gonna have a chance to shine =D I hope the wait hasn't dulled you!
Disclaimer: I don't own Heroes or anything remotely related and I bow humbly before the television gods, please have mercy on me.
Read Chapter Thirteen | Read Chapter Fifteen
Noah Bennett nearly leaped out of his skin. This was more annoying than when his unsolicited additional partner answered the same screeching cell phone in the middle of a gun fight.
“Oh thank God it’s finally her.”
“Mo, this is surveillance, there’s a real need here for -”
“Hello? Molly? Yes, I know, it’s good to hear your voice too, pumpkin. You’re okay?”
“Buddy, you’re gonna have to put that thing down, you’re drawing -”
“What do you mean you had to leave? Where are you now???” Edgar could only shrug helplessly. “Molly, how can you not know? Find yourself! Are you still with the Petrellis? Yes, but… I know, yes, but… Honey, who’s there now?”
“He gives himself super-human strength and suddenly he’s gotta do everything by brute force,” Noah muttered under his breath as he scanned the bi-colored veridian and terracotta expanse of the Culbertson estate from his vantage point on a wooded crest overlooking the property. No matter how flat he crushed himself down amongst the rotting leaves and subtropical ferns sheltered between aging hardwood trunks, there was no way someone keeping watch was going to miss that squawking electronic version of ‘Party in the USA’.
“What do you mean ‘they’re gone’? Where did they go???”
This managed to briefly snare his interest, but wasn’t successful in dragging his watchful eyes from a growing commotion brewing near the front of the house. The ornately paned and brilliantly lacquered door opened to admit the passage of -
“Oh shit…”
A trio of lean, muscular Dobermans emerged to defend their territory, sampling the breeze with searching noses, listening with attentive cropped ears, dutifully performing the tasks to which they’d eagerly been set. Noah ripped the phone out of Mohinder’s hands and smashed shut it into the soil.
“Wha-”
“Quiet.”
It was too late, the gig was up. Humans were easy to fool, so head-dumb to make use for, ironically, larger brains. Canines, on the other hand, were notoriously tricky. But so was Noah Bennett. The sleek Anubis heads turned toward the muffled exchange before their clawed paws tore through the lawn, charging up the crest to confront any intruders who dared set foot on their land.
“Noah… Noah!” Mohinder stumbled from his belly to his knees to his butt, flailing against gravity in alarm. Edgar, who could’ve escaped easily, stood his ground, too loyal to abandon his colleagues. Noah, however, rose calmly and held his stance in a manner that would have seemed suicidally nuts to the average bystander. He took a challenging step forward as the dogs made their raucous snarling approach, and pulled a discreet canister from an inside jacket pocket, jutting it forward and releasing a cloud of aerosol mist directly into the snapping jaws of the vicious black predators. One by one they whined and yelped, smearing their foaming muzzles against the insides of their forelegs as they all eventually succumbed to the chemical, toppling over to land in a bed of loamy forest debris sound asleep.
“You don’t get where I am without learning how to deal with dogs,” Noah smirked to his petulant Indian friend.
“That’s great,” he argued, “now if only I could’ve asked Molly if Janice was here for sure! Then we wouldn’t have to take our chances, snooping around for nothing!”
“I dunno,” Edgar answered, “the fact that he has dogs suggests that ‘e’s got a vested interest in protectin’ something.”
“But that could be anything! Jewels, art, cars… hell, commemorative plates for all we know!”
“They’re not protecting a collection,” Noah interrupted, kneeling next to one of the lightly snoring animals. “Collections take time to build. If it’s impressive enough to necessitate guard dogs, then one could expect it to be guarded by generations of them. Look at their collars.”
“It’s true,” Edgar agreed, stooping to have a closer look, “all of their I.D. tags are stamped for the same date, just a few weeks ago.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Mohinder countered. “That could just be the date they were last immunized, or when the tags were renewed… although I do have to concede that is mildly coincidental.”
“The tags weren’t what I was looking at,” Noah stated. “Look at the collars. They’re brand new. No, this guy recently got something worth looking after, and then he got his dogs. She’s here, guys, and the -”
The sentence was snuffed out when the door glinted in the midday sunshine again, this time facilitating the exit of two flannel-clad rednecks, joined by a tall, slender man in a preacher’s habit, and behind him a rotund, middle-aged gentleman in garishly expensive crocodile boots. They conversed for a short time, although the breeze carried their words away toward the gulf to be heard only by distant waves, and they surveyed the perimeter with weak salutes shielding their eyes from the sun’s cheery glare. The one that was obviously Culbertson cupped his hands to his mouth and began calling names, presumably those belonging to the dogs. Beside him, he felt Edgar chuckle.
“Yeah, these are definitely new… he didn’t even get that one’s name right.”
The two hired hands broke away from the group in separate directions, following what was sure to be a planned search pattern, while the man Noah guessed to be Brother Jacob retired to the house. Culbertson, however, forged his own path to a distant building on the edge of the grounds.
“Izzat legit? Or a red herring?” Edgar asked.
“Hmm… I dunno.”
“What are you talking about???” Mohinder hissed.
“His movement,” Noah answered. “His dogs took off after something and they’re not returning. He knows something’s up. What’s left to be determined is if he’s stupid enough to check on what he’s hiding while he’s pretending he’s not being watched, or if he knows he’s being watched and he’s trying to throw us off the tr- ”
“Neil! Do you want mustard on your sandwich??? Rosa wants to know!”
Two blonde heads leaned out of the house unexpectedly - Culbertson whipped around and scowled at the blunderous sight of his wife, peeking out of the entryway with the worst possible thing squirming against her firm but gentle grasp, reaching over her shoulder to touch what was likely a fascinating, prismatic array of light reflecting in the shine of the glass on the door.
A little baby boy.
“Matty…” Mohinder nearly choked.
“Hold tight, Mo…”
“They’re here… they’re both here…”
“Janice isn’t in that house - just be still a minute…”
“But how do you…” Culbertson scooted as quickly as his heavy paunch and stiff knees would carry him back toward the house to shoo the woman out of plain sight. “How do you know?”
“Because,” Noah ascertained, as if anyone could doubt that he knew everything, “if it were me, and I wanted to keep all of my cards under the table, I wouldn’t have them all in my hand. The best way to assure their security is to keep them separate.”
“So she’s in the shed then,” Edgar surmised.
“And he really is that stupid, yes.”
“So what do we do?”
“We split up… and try to make the best use of the abilities we have. Edgar - are you fast enough to make it to that shed without being seen?”
The look Noah received was surreptitious at best.
~*~*~
Seagulls. Stirred from the sensationless fog of murky slumber by the lull of their rhythmic chatter, Janice lazily sifted through her muddled memory, trying to recall what beach she'd been visiting when the cozy Pacific sun had delivered her into complacent surfside naptime. The crook of her left arm began to tingle and briefly she worried about the duration of her sunscreen's effectiveness - as someone of fair-skinned, European descent, serious sunburn was a real concern.
“Ma-”
What should have been a simple inquiry was, in actuality, a raw, dry croak as if she hadn't used her voice in a year or more. The twinge in her arm started to intensify and the distant avian vocalizations changed pitch... grew closer... took on a different quality…
She became alarmed. Something was wrong. And she still couldn't remember going to the beach. Truthfully, she couldn't remember anything at all.
“Ma-Matt...?”
“Shhh,” she was told as a mild pressure smoothed over her shoulders in a placid attempt to restrain her. “Just a couple more lines 'ere...”
The thickly accented hush of his voice stunned her electrically and her eyes shot open - events like a frenzied explosion of popcorn began bursting across her recollection. There… there had been men with heavy accents… southern, Texan maybe… they… they’d taken…
Matty!
Animal instinct and maternal fury flooding her dormant muscles, she writhed and clawed for escape only to find her body was frustratingly clamped into place, and there was suddenly a tugging sting across multiple points on her forehead and temples. A hand, faster than light, stifled the reflexive scream that was sure to follow her futile struggles.
“Shh shh shh - be still, it’s okay. I’ll have y’out in a jiff, jus’ got a couple more wires, but then we gotta be quick, alright? Y’think you can run?”
Of course she could run. And she could punch and bite and kick too, maybe even kill - whatever it would take to get her son back in her arms. But… this accent… it was different. It wasn’t American at all. She tilted her head, angering beleaguered vertebrae, to catch sight of her strange companion. He was a rough, sandy-colored man with a long face and shady eyes, and there was an intimidating strength that was cabled in his sinewy arms as he worked to free her from her bonds. Her gut insisted that she not trust this man, but her brain strove for more information. He did, after all, appear to be her rescuer.
“Who… who are you…?” she managed through a gravelly larynx.
“M’name’s Edgar,” he confessed as he paused to appraise her with a look that was supposed to be reassuring… and, oddly, was. His eyes were kinder than she’d anticipated. “I’m with Noah Bennet - we’re gonna get you an’ yer boy out of here, but we ‘ave to be very careful.”
Her grinding shoulder blades flattened against the surface to which she’d been strapped at the mention of Bennet’s name - regardless of the fact that the last conversation that had taken place between the man and her husband had left Matt somewhat upset, she clung to his familiarity like a life raft, relaxing enough to stave off her rising panic but not enough to become lethargic by her previous exertions. It was then that she took in her surroundings: dim, antiseptically sterile despite a slight odor of must or grease, not quite a hospital room yet not quite a serial killer’s basement either. And she knew - as a district attorney, she’d managed to catalog a few characteristics about homicidal whack jobs in her time. She had no doubt she’d been abducted by someone meticulous, goal driven, and in the possession of staggering resources - perhaps someone wealthy or influential. Someone who wanted a very big something. Over the sound of her slowing breath, however, was still a shrill pinging that moments ago she’d been convinced was nothing more than benign coastal birdsong.
“What is that?” she asked as she twisted her chin, eyes roving the room and its hateful contents in search of a source.
“Life signs,” Edgar replied. “They’re monitoring you for any change in status.”
“So what’s gonna happen when -”
Something adhesive plucked away a few strands of her hair as it separated from its spot, anchored aside her left eye where her black tresses framed her face, and the musical cadence erupted into blaring, menacing screeching.
“We run, that’s what!” Edgar shouted as he yanked at the bands of leather encircling her. “Here, take my hand, let’s go!”
The climb out of her secret prison was surreal. Instead of emerging into the nightmarish, labyrinthine hallways of a medical facility, or a dingy back alley of some cross-town city street, or any number of other atrocious yet expected images her racing imagination fed her, she ended up taking her first breath of fresh air underneath the mammoth ass end of a… a tractor…?
“What on -”
“Stay put.”
In a blur of motion, Edgar instantaneously crossed the expanse of the shadowy metal garage that currently separated them from her captors to bend his ear close to the only point of entrance or escape - a large sliding barn door.
“Culbertson’s come back outside,” the name, even falling from the lips of an ally, blanched her and made her feel sick, “he’s signalin’ his men with a radio. I can buy us some time, but you’re gonna need a good hidin’ place… which means you’ll need to trust me.”
“Wha…?”
“Quick, in here.”
“Uhhhh…”
She reminded herself Edgar probably meant well, but he was, nonetheless, a stranger. Naturally, therefore, she felt she was justified in feeling more than just a bit reticent about following this new development in what she could only assume wasn’t much of a cohesive plan. After all, he’d just indicated, having asked her to trust him, to curl her newly liberated body into the trunk of a dusty, stinky, dark green 1971 Dodge Challenger hidden under a spider-infested tarp where she’d just… wait. Right.
“Look, we’re out of time,” he said, unsheathing from beneath his jacket a pair of bushman knives large enough to give a charging wild boar a moment’s pause. If he was trying to make friends, he wasn’t doing a very good job, however he did have a talent for accentuating his point.
“Oh… oh my god…” Janice stammered, cowering defenselessly back toward the covered vehicle. “I won’t… don’t…”
“What… these? Oh! Oh no! No, I’m not gonna - it’s okay, I’m just -”
“I’m getting in, I’m getting in, just… please, don’t…”
“It’s not what you think…”
Any further explanation was drowned beneath the steel hulk of the trunk lid and the tears of fright that bubbled in the confined space. They didn't have far to fall though - less than two minutes later the rigid ceiling over her head was ripped open and Edgar's stubbled face popped back into view. He was just... letting her out?
“Come quick!”
Just as she was stabilizing herself on the bumper having gotten her feet back on solid ground, she noticed a trail of blood trickling a tiny rivulet past her toes. She didn't need to look to know it was coming from Edgar's blades.
“They're not dead.”
“Who?” she feigned ignorance as she refused the hand he offered her.
“The help Culbertson was calling. They, uh... they won't be coming though. That don’t mean he won't.”
She could almost hear the crunch of the man's shiny, reptilian boots on the lawn.
“So... if he's out there, how are we gonna get out?”
An unsettling grin of wicked delight split the man's face as his eyes swiveled to land upon the obvious answer to her question.
“Mebbe let's jus' see if that tractor works...”
~*~*~
Brother Jacob muttered his plea for forgiveness discreetly under his breath - his own personal misgivings were between him and his Lord, and were not for public scrutiny. He prayed his divine master would be able to overlook his current circumstances to see, underneath, the depth of the work he was doing in His holy name. But, in all honesty, he held the bond between husband and wife, not to mention parent and child, very close and did not in any way condone the actions being taken in this household.
That didn’t mean he would do anything to prevent it, however. There were bigger things at stake.
Sally was a gracious enough woman to be sure her family and her guests had an ample lunch - would never turn away a hungry mouth - and had quickly set her maid, Rosa, to the task. There were few things the woman enjoyed more than a busy household, excluding the cherubic child she bounced happily on her shoulder.
A child that wasn’t hers.
She was blissfully unaware of the dangerous truth that was happening beneath her nose in her own home. Jacob didn’t like it, but he would fight to keep it that way, which was why his fingers clenched beneath the cuff of his shirt and the blood drained from his face when Neil’s beeper suddenly went off just as his lips - already coated with nervous sweat at the mysterious disappearance of his dogs - closed around the moist edge of his turkey on rye. Something was happening - something bad - and everyone was just trying to keep… casual.
Jacob disguised his grimace as he bowed his head to say grace when Neil lied and told his wife he was stepping out to take an urgent ‘phone call’. Cautious not to arouse any suspicion, Jacob stayed where he was, gratefully tucking into his sandwich as he prepared himself to conduct some heavy damage control in the case that Sally were to learn that the real mother of her new foster child was actually her husband’s kidnapped victim being held unconscious and against her will in a secret room under the tractor shed outside.
Compared to what happened next, his preparations were found sorely lacking.
The clamorous crash of exploding metal was punctuated by the clatter of a shattering lemonade glass against the kitchen linoleum - Rosa had dropped it to clap her hand over her heart in fright. There was no sense in pretending he wasn’t shocked - anyone who’d heard what they’d just heard would be on their feet, so that’s what he did.
“Brother,” Sally, whispered, both arms clutching the baby to her chest, perhaps not quite as oblivious to the palpable tension that had managed to pervade the general atmosphere after all, “what… what was that?”
“Sounded like it came from the shed… you ladies stay put,” Rosa was already bent to collect shards of glass, “I’ll go check on -”
All three visibly jumped when the entire glass patio door leading to the deck outside was unceremoniously torn from its hinges to go sailing across the back yard. A man wearing iconic horn-rimmed glasses stomped through the opening and jammed a terrifying weapon into Jacob’s face before he could finish his sentence.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“Rosa.. run…”
Oh, Sally… There was no way the man didn’t hear her. He whipped around, and as if the barrel of his gun was a freeze ray, the two women were instantly paralyzed.
“Rosa, don’t you move, you got it? Nobody move.”
A second man - an Indian man - carrying a smaller yet no less formidable firearm followed his partner inside.
“Mo,” Mr. Glasses called over his shoulder, “can you secure the room?”
“Sure. In the kitchen, please,” Mo ordered Jacob, the ‘please’ a needless formality - the threat of a bleeding gunshot wound was really all he needed. Jacob raised his hands obediently and joined the women in the corner where the marble countertop and walnut cabinets met the expensive stainless steel sink. In a showman-like feat of strength worthy of a sideshow act, Mo lifted, with one hand, the heavy, hand-carved solid oak dining room table and tipped it on its oblong rim, allowing one side to rest on the ground while the other leaned against the top of the archway separating the dining room from the rest of the house - it was the best cover they were going to get. Jacob got the impression this wasn’t going to take long.
“Ma’am,” Mr. Glasses continued, “I’m gonna need you to give me that baby.”
In a way, Jacob was almost relieved.
“I… I won’t. I won’t let you kidnap him,” Sally blathered stupidly.
“I don’t think you understand, ma’am. You’re gonna give me that baby, or I’m gonna shoot Rosa.” Now the woman was just scared beyond all comprehension, dissolving into blubbering inaction. Rosa, too, began to cry, stuttering final supplications in rapid Spanish as she drug a cross over her heart.
“Ma’am,” Mo interjected, “you’d be wise to just do what he says. I don’t know what your husband told you about that child, but he’s lying to you.”
“Neil would never - ”
“Do you really think that baby just showed up on your doorstep? You don’t think there’s someone out there looking for him?”
“Ma’am,” the dreaded Mr. Glasses spoke again. Jacob briefly wondered how many more words they were going to get from him. “That baby has a momma that really wants him back,” he pulled the slide, popping a live round into the chamber, causing Rosa to wail a watery sob for mercy, “I aim to do whatever it takes to make that happen.”
“Please, ma’am, just give him the baby,” Mo begged, his tone sinking a stone in the pit of Jacob’s stomach as it told him exactly what he didn’t want to hear - this man would pull the trigger.
“Give him the baby,” Jacob urged her, doing his best to avoid innocent bloodshed.
“SALLY!” Neil’s voice boomed from the other end of the house. “WHERE’S MY GUN!!! JACOB, CALL THE BOYS! CALL ‘EM QUICK!!!”
“Do it now, Sally…”
“But how do I know -”
“You don’t! Just do it!”
“Matty!!!”
The scene was interrupted when a pale, dark-haired woman scrambled past the mangled screen door and the broken dishes and sandwich fixings littering the carpet to tear a determined path toward the infant, and for a moment Jacob thought he could hear the tractor’s feeble engine put-putting outside on the lawn. Sally could do nothing as the child wriggled against her to fling his chubby, balled fists toward his real mother. Limply, she let him crawl out of her arms, allowing the newcomer to scoop him up and ravage him with soaking wet kisses.
JACOB!!!!”
“Time to go,” Mr. Glasses stirred, lining his foreboding sights between Jacob’s eyes instead, “and you’re coming with us.”
Of course he was.
“Noah…” Mo breathed - clearly this was an unforeseen turn of events, something that hadn’t been discussed.
“Not now, Mo, we gotta move.”
“But -”
“Move!”
Jacob eagerly obliged him, this devilish man ironically named ‘Noah’, for he knew there was no way he was going to win. They weren’t in neutral territory; they were hip-deep in Preservist country and Neil Culbertson had many strings to pull - and a telephone. Jacob knew it took no more than six minutes for the county Sheriff’s department to respond when Neil called, and on foot they’d never make it off the property in time.
Which was why he was so dismayed to discover that the rumbling tempo of firing pistons he’d heard just seconds before was actually that belonging to the dark green muscle car parked and poised with every intention of spiriting them away at an unfortunate, and grossly gratuitous, rate of speed.
Dukes of Hazzard style.
~*~*~
*** Day… uh… no freakin’ clue… trapped without eidetic memory. In Hell ***
He wanted hisbody back.
He was learning that the natural course of crisis was not a linear one - the shifts of his moods came in waves…or more accurately tides, pooling its dismal, dreary chill around him with its vacuum weight, drowning everything it could reach and only receding when some mystifying celestial force commanded it.
The day had begun as routinely as normal. Timidly optimistic sunshine dragged him out of bed and warmed his back as he stumbled sleepily to the bathroom, and guided his footsteps as it peeked through the upstairs windows while he navigated his way down the stairs. He was at the end of a two month Lucky Charms kick - once the box was finished he’d make the switch to Cinnamon Life. Having saved the marshmallows for last, he spooned them out of the milk and munched on the sugary, malleable lumps as he rinsed the bowl and placed it in the dishwasher along with the cookware from the previous evening. He’d enjoyed poached salmon… although he couldn’t imagine where it must’ve come from. And ‘enjoy’ was really such a strong word, given the situation.
He supposed the manic swing in his attitude could’ve been attributed to the nagging threat of the mundane that was as constant as the gray sea on the misty horizon. Five steps from the bed to the toilet. Eighteen minutes spent on hygiene. Fourteen steps to the stair case. Nine stairs to the landing - turn right - three more stairs then eight steps into the kitchen. This was the fourth two-month stretch eating the same cereal for breakfast.
Straining against an encroaching lethargy, he marched the three steps from the countertop to the calendar by the door to mark off another day. By his best reckoning (which, sadly, wasn’t as accurate as he would’ve liked) he’d successfully managed to make it through his nine hundred and eighty-fourth day without killing anyone. Give or take a few days, it was hard to tell. He squared his shoulders and paused, giving the black ‘X’, etched in permanent sharpie ink, his undivided attention as if he were pledging allegiance to the flag, and he sighed a modest breath of satisfaction. When he got to one thousand he was going to bake a cake. Maybe chocolate, although he’d given lemon some thought. It was good to have goals.
Four more stairs brought him down into the shop area at 7:23am - two minutes shy of yesterday’s time, perhaps spent searching for clean towels before showering. He did what he did every day - he worked on watches for exactly four hours, no more, no less. He no longer devoted himself to the artifacts out of some unfulfilled hope he’d be rewarded with glimpses or hallucinations or voices. He certainly didn’t manipulate their jigsaw inner workings out of some heartsick, nostalgic urge to feel his detestable abilities once more. In fact, the habit was born from the exact opposite - a daily affirmation of what it felt like to no longer be puppeteered by the demon dwelling within him. The hellish quiet and diabolical solitude may have been torturous to the point of madness… but no one died yesterday. Or the day before. Or nine hundred and eighty-two days before that. In this place where all he had left was his routine or his tears, he took his solace where he could.
/Against his wishes, though, as fickle and unpredictable as an invisibly tugging riptide, his emotions began to take a turn for the morose just before the larger hand of the silver ladies’ Gucci struck 11:23am, square on the nose. Time was literally staring him in the face - cruel, mocking, endless, monotonous, bottomless, fathomlesstime. Like a shiny, ticking abyss. Like drowning.
Curious to see what effect fresh air would have, he decided lunch would take place on the beach, so he packed up his pastrami on wheat with horseradish and smoked gouda, grabbed a notepad and pencil along with a bottle of water, then hopped in the Charger for the seashore.
He had stopped keeping a journal when he was seventeen, not because he felt foolish, but because the secrets concealed tenderly within were truths he would rather not have faced, choosing to let them go ignored instead, manifesting in... well, it didn't do any good to dwell on it any more than he had. He'd begun the practice several years earlier when his science teacher had grown concerned by what she'd perceived to be his abnormally dispassionate nature when it came to the dissection of animals. And perhaps his fascination with dismembering slimy viscera was a little more pronounced than what one would consider a healthy interest for a child. Then there was the fact that he was small, pale, unnervingly quiet, and... weird. Even though no one talked about it, the school counselor became involved and encouraged Virginia to think about seeking psychiatric help for him, suspecting something was amiss - that he was ‘troubled' - but doing so would require that his foster mother confess to the crimes that landed him in her possession... and would also require that she admit something was wrong with him in the first place. That he wasn't perfect. That he wasn't her angel. He remembered the day clearly: the woman kept him after school for ten short minutes, only long enough to run a soft caress over the apple of his cheek and to tell him that it wasn't fair, that everyone should have someone they could talk to... and then she handed him the notepad. Told him it would make him feel better. Hoped that one day he would give it to her. Trust her. He didn't understand at the time, yet now the thing rolled a pencil across its face in the passenger seat, smiling blue lines at him like his only friend. So, butt growing numb on the sandy hump of rock he'd made his perch, he resurrected his only attempt at therapy once he'd tossed his bread crusts out for gulls that would never come back.
The tenuous sunshine faded behind a creeping roll of clouds.
His first step was to identify what he was feeling, then acknowledge those feelings and give them their due process.
One: anger. He was angry at Virginia for letting him live a lie - for allowing him to toss the first ten years of his life into the steel jaws of amnesia; for sweeping what happened to him under a proverbial rug, unspoken for decades even up to her death; for trading the help he desperately needed for something as silly as pride. He was angry at his own inability to ever feel normal. He was angry at the schoolyard bullies - faces branded with brilliantly burnt detail against the fleshy pains of his heart - who drew ashamedly unwanted attention to the fact that his own pitiful existence was so wretchedly insignificant… accessorized by matching bruises and bloody lips. And broken glasses. He was angry at Noah Bennet for baiting his mortifyingly virginal appetite with silky blonde hair and a pair of succulent breasts, freeing the caged killer wriggling in his brain while he poured his aching burden inside her, sweat mingling with hers in tiny dribbled drops. He was angry at Claire Bennet because at one point… her father chose to help her. So why not him? He was jealous of her and angry at her for blindly rejecting the potential she’d been gifted upon her birth, and for willingly wishing to throw away the kind of life he’d wanted for all of his. For fantasizing over sleazy or neglectful biological parents instead of seeing what was right in front of her… least of all being thankful for it. And, lastly, whether he wanted to be or not… he was angry at Matt Parkman, for tricking him when he needed him most… regardless of the fact that he probably got what he really needed.
Two: guilt. He felt guilty over an anger he had no right to possess. He felt guilty for being alive. He felt guilty over a raging hunger he feared he could not control. He felt guilty for not turning himself over to the authorities, for not paying his penance before his penance became… this. He felt guilty for hating innocent people who wouldn’t have hated him had he not maligned them. He felt bitterly guilty for every rationalization he made over the cost of a human life. It made his skin crawl and his stomach turn. It made him want to cut himself open - gut himself like the frog on the black slate lab table that bore the brunt of his teenage wrath. It kept him awake at night as he prayed for a death that shunned him as much as everything else.
Three: Hopelessness. His suffering would never end. Three years would stretch into thirty that would yawn away into three thousand and eventually three million. Everyday waking up, showering, eating breakfast, working on watches, eating lunch before taking a nap to deaden his boredom, waking to treat himself to a light five mile jog after which he’d spend his evening doing chores, making dinner, and reading until bedtime. His life was hung suspended in an eternal loop enriched by nothing more than occasional baked goods and frequent masturbation while his vocal chords shriveled from a prolonged lack of use and recognizable facial features began to ebb out of his memory as if they were slipping away by the pull of the moon.
Four: Frustration. He had unmet needs. His guilt strove to deny them, but his frustration beaconed their presence like a lighthouse in a storm. They were still there. It wasn’t so much that he couldn’t compare the flavor of his own corned beef reuben to that of Eisenberg’s Sandwich Shop in Manhattan… when it was populated. It wasn’t so much that he’d stopped staring at the static on television to fool himself into believing he saw faces. It wasn’t so much that he missed smelling smog and exhaust and patches of tacky cologne and roasting peanuts in the park or tantalizing hot dogs from vendors on every corner of the city. It wasn’t even the certainty that he’d never hear ‘I love you’, although that was close. It was touch. He couldn’t get her out of his head, the last person who’d dared to touch him. Her insincerity still rippled up his spine, the way her trailing fingertips traced the contours of his chest and combed through his hair, declaring him ‘soft as a baby’, whatever that meant. And before her had been a good woman who, by contrast, had loved every inch of him with a purity and conviction the likes of which he’d never known… and none of it had been for him, for she had believed him to be someone else. And now it tore him apart.
Five: Loneliness. He wanted a chance. Wanted to find… it. Wanted to fall in love, and be loved in return. Wanted to be a husband and father. Wanted a family. Wanted to let it all go, figure it out.
He wanted. His. Body. Back.
A nebulous drizzle dampened his dark hair as he stepped out of the car to jog quickly back into the house -
Clang!
He paused a moment before deciding it was only an echo of the car door shutting, drifting back to him on the rising wind. He turned the doorknob -
Clang!
His fingers fell away as he narrowed his gaze down the long asphalt corridor. The rain suddenly cleared. His shoulders bunched with unease as he backpeddled toward the car.
Clang!
Was something happening in the outside world? Something that would threaten to tear this one apart? Send him reeling and spinning into a black void of nothingness or maybe even… death? He dared not hope. Entranced, his feet began to lead him down the street. A dry, brisk wind blew sound around his ears, played tricks with his mind.
Clang!
“Sylar!!!”
He knew this day would finally arrive. Terminal insanity had come to claim him at last. Numb with acceptance, he decided to let it - let his face dip beneath the surface.
Clang!
“Sylar!!!”
A long figure, like a mirage, moved on the horizon, coalescing into… into a ghost… from years ago… felt like centuries. He made a slow, cautious approach, enraptured by the sight of foreign eyes… a nose… a speaking mouth… eliciting real human speech… his name…
“There you are.”
Sunlight filtered through a crack in the hazy grey canopy overhead.
“Peter…?” he rasped.
One touch was all it took. One blessed touch and he was real. He clung to it like a life raft.
~*~*~
Claire snapped the book shut. The sea was turning rough and the waves were buffeting the ship too violently to sit and read without being doused by a thick, fine spit of sea spray. She had only just awakened a scant few minutes before, unaware of what had happened, unable to remember, knowing only that they’d sailed off from port.
But no, before that… there was something. They’d entered a large hold in the belly of the vessel with the intention of systematically teleporting people away to safety using Peter’s borrowed ability. What they’d found was a chaotic throng of sweaty, disoriented bodies teetering on the edge of panic-driven hysteria as they all began to swim back to reality. The air was stuffy and smelly, and Claire felt herself growing dizzy with claustrophobia as more people swelled through the entrance to envelop them. It felt like a trap and for a moment she thought Matt had tricked them.
“Peter,” the man had murmured at her uncle’s elbow, “you start zipping people out of here, and we’re gonna get swarmed…”
“We’re already getting swarmed,” she’d whined with wide eyes.
“I won’t matter,” Peter had answered, “I have no idea where we are. The instant I teleport away from here, I have no idea where to get back to.”
“So, take them to the cabin,” Claire had offered. “Take them to Molly. Have her find me.”
“Yeah… yeah. Yeah, that’d work. Sylar, buddy, can you help me control this crowd?”
He hadn’t answered.
“Buddy?”
His body language had been tensed for flight. He’d reluctantly lifted his chin to make eye contact with Peter but kept his mouth shut, lips sucked between his fiercely biting teeth. He’d been pale and clammy with his hands drawn tightly under his clamped arms. He’d been just how she remembered him from the cave.
“Maybe that’s not such a good idea,” she’d suggested before adding as his eyelids lowered in shame, “at least not so soon.”
Peter didn’t get a chance to form a response, or take any sort of action - the hatch had opened to admit the passage of two armed men, shoving their two additional captive hostages before them into the hold. Claire had almost felt the long hiss of air leaving Peter’s body when he saw the woman who stumbled in first.
Emma’s arm had been bound in a sling, her shoulder in need of a bandage change, and she’d been white with distress but was otherwise just fine. She’d suffered a non-lethal shot, which had explained the bloody mess left on the grass where she’d fallen, but the rest had been a complete fabrication - one of Matt’s illusions. They’d invisibly taken her after that, right out from under their noses.
“I’m sorry, Pete,” Matt had sighed, “I hope you can understand… it was my wife and son…”
Peter never heard him. He had lurched forward, out of earshot, trying to saw his way through a solid wall of people to get to her as they’d pushed her into the room to join the others. Like an idiot he’d called for her, knowing she couldn’t hear him… or anything. He’d been acting on blind impulse. He’d reached her just as she’d toppled forward, there to break her fall with an emotional, smothering embrace.
Claire remembered starting forward to join them, but an abrupt movement had caught her attention. The second prisoner had raised her arm. Her lips had moved and her eyes had shone a mellow blue. One by one, like dominoes, people had begun to fall until she, herself, felt sleepy and… she stopped seeing.
And then she woke up, surrounded by adults napping like kindergartners. Figuring it had been her super-human metabolism that had woken her before anyone else, she stepped out of the hold and onto one of the decks outside, relishing some fresh ocean air while she waited for her fate, reading to calm her nerves. Finding it too wet to continue, she pocketed the journal and wandered to the edge, pressing her body against the railing as she let her hair fly in wet strings over the side. She wondered what would happen if she flung herself over, wondered if the water was cold or warm, wondered what sea she was even looking at. Would her ability to regenerate keep her muscles refreshed as she swam for days or potentially weeks? Until she reached dry land? Or would she succumb and drown, live in the belly of a shark until the creature was caught by a fisherman… or until it died and deposited her inert remains on the sea floor never to be found by human eyes unless she became part of the archaeological record…
She backed away from the railing. She couldn’t leave her Peter behind, anyway, let alone the rest of those people.
She winced as something suddenly slammed against the wall beside her, scraping and thrashing and pounding away on the inside before blasting through the hatch. She scrambled out of the way as three men wrestled each other in a thick knot raging with popped knuckles and noses spurting blood. Unsurprisingly, Sylar was in the middle of the mess. The two men clambered over him with the forcible vehemence of parties who’d definitely been wronged in some easily guessed way, and she marveled over how Sylar managed to defend himself through completely normal human means. Was he so stunned he merely forgot that he was an amazingly powerful telekinetic? Or did he enjoy the pain that came with a fractured jaw and a broken nose? It wasn’t like he wasn’t trying… his long arm jutted forward and, with a resounding crack, one good fist collided with the face of an attacker. The man fell backward and lost his balance, landing with a hard thud on the deck. Sylar took the opportunity to thrust his shoulder into the gut of the remaining man, bashing their combined weight against the bulkhead. Claire gaped in confusion. What was it about a good old-fashioned fist fight that he wanted so badly, that he didn’t just end it before it began? Was it the release of tension? He struck at them without any of the finesse of a seasoned street fighter or a skilled martial artist - he fought with the fury and desperation of a bullied teenager on the school yard after class, wildly throwing punches where he could with a strength no one suspected.
Before she could wonder what she should do, more men filed through the hatch, anxious to carve their own mark in his hide. Did they know they wouldn’t be able to kill him? What were they trying to do? The deck rang beneath her feet when the mob upended Sylar’s struggling form, smashing his weight flat upon his chest, his arms and legs pinned by a flurry of eager hands. Unless he used his abilities, he would no longer be able to resist them as they pummeled him to a bloody pulp.
“Fight back…” she whispered, caught off guard by her own reaction. He managed to twist his chin around, lining one eye up with hers, the other too swollen to be of any use. He blinked away a trickle of reddened sweat. What was he looking for? Did he want her to see him suffer? Was he looking for help? What assistance could she possibly offer without an offensive ability? She was no life raft… And really, didn’t he have this coming anyway?
“STOP!”
Peter charged through the hatch. He sustained several cuts and bruises in his attempt to rescue his brother’s killer before the entire brawl was brought to a screeching halt by the sound of one woman’s voice.
“Leave the other one alone.”
Finding herself gripping the railing, Claire turned and watched a regal and stately African woman emerge from within the hold.
“The other one, though - the monster… he goes over the side.”
“Wait! No!” Peter cried in spite of knowing Sylar could fly. He must have been thinking the same thing she was. Would he?
“He didn’t kill anyone,” the words leapt to her mouth. She knew the truth, though, and with everything she’d dealt with over the past few days, she was tired of fighting. “I know it looks like it, but he didn’t do it -”
“And who are you?”
Defiance burned inside her. It wasn’t one of the better Bennet traits.
“Who the hell are you?!?”
“My name is Monique, and I’m in charge here. Not that it matters because now you’re going to join him. Hope you can swim, sweetheart.”