[heroes] blonde burns black
I used Canadian spelling for once. I can't not dedicate this to Pixiefy when she made me laugh on so many Heroes-related issues yesterday. Nathan's beard/Sylar's eyebrows = OTP!
Title: Blonde Burns Black
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Sylar/Claire Bennet, Sylar/Elle Bishop
Rating: R
Summary: The blood is too fresh on his hands, but he needs command now. He can’t go out in public with lightning shooting from his fingertips. Sylar is a short-circuit loose and writhing on the concrete, inches from conductible hearts. It angers him, this lack of immaculate control, because it makes him an imperfect member of the species, and Sylar cannot - will not - have that. [SPOILERS: S03E11+]
Blonde Burns Black
_______________________________________________
He is infected. He can feel it in the impetuous static crackle leaping from forefinger to thumb. He tries to keep it cradled in his palm, beneath the skin and lines, but it bursts out in an impatient orb, and it is mesmerizing. With rapt fascination, he watches until he thinks his eyelashes might singe off; then he blinks and crushes it, shoving it back into the veins pressing angrily against the flesh of his wrist.
This power is not a brief chase, a severed skull, and a coveted prize. This one is memories and a name: a pyre of sand, flame licking at golden hair, and Elle. This power is one tiny moment of remorse stretched taut into constant regret. He can control it only so much as he can control thoughts of her, and it’s becoming a nuisance.
It has only been a week since he killed her. The blood is too fresh on his hands, but he needs command now. He can’t go out in public with lightning shooting from his fingertips. Sylar is a short-circuit loose and writhing on the concrete, inches from conductible hearts. It angers him, this lack of immaculate control, because it makes him an imperfect member of the species, and Sylar cannot - will not - have that.
He thinks on it for a time, and when he comes upon the answer, he berates himself as it is alarmingly clear. What he needs is to discharge it all - the electricity, the hatred. Like an exploding star becomes a black hole, he has to flare before he can burn in silent malevolence again. But Sylar does not kill without reason, and burning his victims to death will damage their delicate brains. It’s this knot that is last before the string is smooth again, winding carefully to his answer. He unties it hastily, and he has it: Claire Bennet. He has always known her future uses were many. He hadn’t known he’d be seeing her again so soon.
If he’s regained his power, then so has she (he hopes the gunshot didn’t kill her, for his sake), which means she is in either in California or New York. In her Costa Verde home, her brother picks up the phone - non-biological, ungifted, unspecial, but useful in certain situations thanks to his supreme dearth of intellect. Sylar raises his voice to a softer, lighter pitch and recites some drivel about possibly broken gas lines and “checks for your immediate safety.” He says it all with such practiced professionalism, in a tone a little too quick to follow, that it all flies right over the little Bennet boy’s head. Predictably, he interrupts Sylar and calls out crassly for his sister.
Claire’s “just a minute!” is all Sylar needs to hear. With a wolfish grin, he flips closed his phone and starts the car. He will stop at a tourist information booth for a map to California.
Coincidence has favoured him. For appearance’s sake, Claire cannot return to school so soon after receiving a bullet wound, even if she is perfectly healthy. Lyle is attending his last days of school in this state and Sandra is out for some reason or another. Noah is probably looking for Sylar in all the wrong towns.
Five boxes are stacked in a pyramid shape outside the garage door, labeled for the rooms in which their contents belong. The Bennets are moving, probably very soon, but that’s all right: Sylar won’t take long. Locked doors and windows are not the slightest hindrance. A flick of his finger and the locks slide free; he walks in so casually that any passerby must assume he lives there.
None of the downstairs lights are on. Sandra must have taken “Mister Muggles” with her, as Sylar is not bothered by his incessant yapping. There is no fire in the hearth, and Sylar scoffs - so they are one of those families, the kind with oil-fed synthetic fires and a bowl full of fresh fruit on the counter, even though everyone’s diet forbids sucrose. It doesn’t surprise him; nothing about the Bennets seems very real, except Claire.
The first time they met was in the doorway of her bedroom, and it’s where he looks on her now. She’s sitting cross-legged on her bed in grey sweatpants and a pink tank top, with a myriad of brochures and papers spread out in front of her. She cradles her chin in the palm of her hand and idly flips them over, opening them, flipping them over again. Her eyes skate across them all without really seeing any of them. It doesn’t take a mind-reader to know the mundaneness of this task (selecting a college, he guesses) is boring her beyond reason.
Sylar steps in with the grace of a shadow. It isn’t until the light from her window catches him, serrated by the blinds and casting his silhouette against the slats on the floor, that she raises her head in alarm. Her eyes widen then narrow and she crawls backward off her bed like frightened prey, clumsy fingers scrambling for a weapon.
“What do you want?” she asks. An elementary question that has him rolling his eyes, but if he’s generous with her, he’ll admit it is logical. He already has her power. What more could he want?
The primal answer, the one assumed in the eyes of broken mothers and teen counselors alike, is obvious, and he grins but shakes his head. “Not what you’re thinking.”
“I don’t know where my dad put his files,” she says, raising her chin. She’s found a trophy, possibly the same one she struck him with last time. Now she holds it more wisely, with the golden cheerleader in her hand and the base ready to inflict blunt force trauma. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Don’t want that either,” he says. He places himself between her and the door; if he wanted to, he could take the trophy right out of her hand without moving a muscle, but he lets her keep it. Lets her feel useful. She almost looks a little cute, defiant as she is with it poised like a baseball bat. “No, what I want this time is very simple, Claire.”
He loves to use victims’ names. It unnerves them. He knows there’s a shiver struggling to wrack her spine, so it’s interesting that her glare doesn’t waver. As if she’s almost used to hearing her name in his feral growl. As if it’s almost normal, now.
His smile widens.
“You know what?” she spits. “I don’t care what it is. You can’t have it. Get out.”
“You can’t tell me what to do, Claire,” he says playfully. “But I can tell you.”
With a small flourish, the trophy flies from her hand and clatters against the wall. She gasps, then makes a dash for the door. He catches her by the arm and suppresses her thrashing telekinetically as he drags her out of her bedroom and down the stairs.
“Tell me, do you have a basement?” His tone is light and conversational.
“Go to hell!” is her response.
“Don’t do that,” he says, grip tightening. He doesn’t want to hear her ask “do what” so he immediately continues, “Don’t revert to generic threats. It makes you sound pathetic and stupid.”
She twists a little harder, despite his telekinesis. Her language doesn’t impress him, but that does.
“Fuck you,” she says on a dark laugh.
Irony is intelligent, so he’s not upset with her anymore.
The Bennets do have a basement, which is a relief. It’s just a small door and a steep staircase that disappears into a pool of darkness. Electricity dances on his fingertips and helps push back the encroaching dark. The energy he’s been strangling since he arrived has started to grow frantic and excited at the prospect of release.
With a thought, Sylar closes the door behind them and drags Claire down the stairs. She makes an attempt to push him, but he keeps his balance and sends a punishing shock through her arm. He expects a whimper and doesn’t get one. Another accidental surge of blue light illuminates the slight furrow of his brow.
At the bottom he releases her. There must be a light somewhere, but it doesn’t matter: the now constant stream of electricity running through him casts light and shadows equally along the walls. The basement is solid concrete, with no windows or doors. No anything. It must have been a storage space, before everything was moved to the garage.
It is well suited to his needs. Last time he hadn’t cared about the neighbours hearing. To slice open someone’s head is one short scream and then silence. But this is not the same thing, and he doesn’t want to be disturbed.
Sylar removes his coat and sets it aside. If a netting of sparks weren’t brightening his skin to a neon glow, he could easily disappear into the darkness. Black jeans, black shirt, black shoes. Claire is visible in her relatively bright clothes, and it is an amusing contrast.
She searches the darkness for a weapon, and failing that, she searches his face for a reason. Sylar has never come back for anybody. This is a break in his pattern, an anomaly. As he prides himself in being unexpected, he’s glad of this, and that she appreciates it in her fear-stricken way.
Claire watches electricity arc across his shoulders and her face contorts in amazed disgust. “You killed Elle.”
“I’ve been having a bad week,” he says, seemingly ignoring her, “and a stress ball just isn’t cutting it.”
“You can’t control it,” she says with a smirk. His own wicked smile falters. “It’s too much for you.”
“It is not too much for me!” he says shortly, then reins in his temper. “And I don’t have to discuss this with you. I’ll just get what I came for.”
She’s almost euphoric with superiority. “How? Elle had to get rid of her power to make it stop. What are you going to do, Sylar?”
“The same thing,” he says, and his smile returns. She catches the flash of terrible intent in his eyes. “Incrementally.”
In the flex of his arms and the spread of his fingers he feels it scream freedom. Lightning pours out of him in a flickering stream, into her with such force that she’s blown back against the wall. Her mouth is open and her eyes are closed but something tells him she’s not in as much pain as she should be. He’d screamed when Elle shocked him. It hurt so badly he’d almost cried.
His jaw tightens and his arms become stiff. The ability is taking control, so with a strained shout he dams its release. Already he can feel it building in his fingertips again.
Claire falls to the ground. Enough sparks are skittering across his skin for him to see her blackened flesh bubble as it heals. Within moments all that he can see of her is flushed pink, the way it should be. He’s about to aid her up with telekinesis, but she stands on her own. Hair falls into her face. The sight of burnt blonde is sickeningly familiar; in his hands, the electricity grows demanding.
“So that’s it, huh?” she asks, her voice a bit hoarse. “Does anyone else know you’re having this little problem?”
“It’s not a problem,” he says, hands sparking. “At least it won’t be much longer.”
Claire laughs. It is a toxic sound. “I always knew you were impotent.”
Blue light shoots into her with more rage than before. Her head cracks against the wall behind her and a starburst of blood spatters the cement. Her body shakes and her top has burned off - charred tatters of cotton flutter down around her like confetti. He yells as the power overflows, and the anger with it. Silt in a current. Sylar narrows his gaze on her lips, spread open in a wide smile, even as electricity pops off her tongue.
He can almost hear her laugh over the crackling. It reminds him of Elle’s wicked giggles when she snuck a shock on him and he yelled at her; when she’d send a bolt after a squirrel or bird in a tree; when she’d put a little in her lips and surprise him during a kiss. It reminds him of how childish she was, and how childishness does not necessitate innocence. The fact that Claire should be screaming reminds him of slicing open Elle’s skull for no reason, having already acquired her ability: killing her that way not because it was the only way he knew how, but because it was the way he liked best. Then burning her, watching her turn to ashes in sand.
The reel in his mind rolls to an end and he falls to his knees. The last sparks tumble from his fingers but never reach the concrete, even as he collapses. Lethargically, he rolls his head to look at Claire, lighting the room with a tiny, nearly harmless ball of nuclear energy.
She is lying on her back, breathing heavily and brushing hair from her face, seemingly immodest about her bare chest at that moment. Hints of burnt flesh disappear from her cheeks and lips.
“Didn’t hurt at all,” she breathes.
He isn’t sure if he was hoping it would or not, but she doesn’t sound sarcastic. “Can’t feel pain?”
She shakes her head and looks up at the ceiling. “Not since you cut off my head and screwed with my brain.”
He laughs a little, as he has no energy to deny her something that simple. “You’re welcome.”
“I’m not grateful,” she says, and her voice is hard.
“You don’t want to be a monster,” he remarks after a pause, then, to humour her silly notions of him, “like me.”
“No, I don’t.”
“But you will be,” he says. “Eventually everyone is.”
He’s not sure if it’s the reverberating truth in his words or the fact that she’s just had over a thousand volts stream through her, but she doesn’t argue. After all, could anyone with any semblance of humanity go through what she just had and live - let alone laugh? Could someone human yearn for pain the way she is now?
With some effort, he hauls himself to his knees, then his feet, using the wall for support. Claire doesn’t move. Her eyes stay transfixed on the ceiling, but he can tell she is deep in thought, perhaps contemplating how long she has before she’s like him. He knows, he could tell her, but he’d rather savour the moment she finds out on her own. Somehow he’ll be with her then.
“You’re just going to leave.” It is very clearly not a question.
“Nothing to stick around for,” he says, something he knows will hurt her. It’s a little present from him, along with the coal-coloured coat he spreads over her bare chest. She looks at it, then at him, confused. “Don’t bother returning this to me. I’m sure it’ll fit you, one day.”
He smiles at the way her eyes glisten and extinguishes the light in his hand as he climbs the stairs.
Title: Blonde Burns Black
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Sylar/Claire Bennet, Sylar/Elle Bishop
Rating: R
Summary: The blood is too fresh on his hands, but he needs command now. He can’t go out in public with lightning shooting from his fingertips. Sylar is a short-circuit loose and writhing on the concrete, inches from conductible hearts. It angers him, this lack of immaculate control, because it makes him an imperfect member of the species, and Sylar cannot - will not - have that. [SPOILERS: S03E11+]
Blonde Burns Black
_______________________________________________
He is infected. He can feel it in the impetuous static crackle leaping from forefinger to thumb. He tries to keep it cradled in his palm, beneath the skin and lines, but it bursts out in an impatient orb, and it is mesmerizing. With rapt fascination, he watches until he thinks his eyelashes might singe off; then he blinks and crushes it, shoving it back into the veins pressing angrily against the flesh of his wrist.
This power is not a brief chase, a severed skull, and a coveted prize. This one is memories and a name: a pyre of sand, flame licking at golden hair, and Elle. This power is one tiny moment of remorse stretched taut into constant regret. He can control it only so much as he can control thoughts of her, and it’s becoming a nuisance.
It has only been a week since he killed her. The blood is too fresh on his hands, but he needs command now. He can’t go out in public with lightning shooting from his fingertips. Sylar is a short-circuit loose and writhing on the concrete, inches from conductible hearts. It angers him, this lack of immaculate control, because it makes him an imperfect member of the species, and Sylar cannot - will not - have that.
He thinks on it for a time, and when he comes upon the answer, he berates himself as it is alarmingly clear. What he needs is to discharge it all - the electricity, the hatred. Like an exploding star becomes a black hole, he has to flare before he can burn in silent malevolence again. But Sylar does not kill without reason, and burning his victims to death will damage their delicate brains. It’s this knot that is last before the string is smooth again, winding carefully to his answer. He unties it hastily, and he has it: Claire Bennet. He has always known her future uses were many. He hadn’t known he’d be seeing her again so soon.
If he’s regained his power, then so has she (he hopes the gunshot didn’t kill her, for his sake), which means she is in either in California or New York. In her Costa Verde home, her brother picks up the phone - non-biological, ungifted, unspecial, but useful in certain situations thanks to his supreme dearth of intellect. Sylar raises his voice to a softer, lighter pitch and recites some drivel about possibly broken gas lines and “checks for your immediate safety.” He says it all with such practiced professionalism, in a tone a little too quick to follow, that it all flies right over the little Bennet boy’s head. Predictably, he interrupts Sylar and calls out crassly for his sister.
Claire’s “just a minute!” is all Sylar needs to hear. With a wolfish grin, he flips closed his phone and starts the car. He will stop at a tourist information booth for a map to California.
Coincidence has favoured him. For appearance’s sake, Claire cannot return to school so soon after receiving a bullet wound, even if she is perfectly healthy. Lyle is attending his last days of school in this state and Sandra is out for some reason or another. Noah is probably looking for Sylar in all the wrong towns.
Five boxes are stacked in a pyramid shape outside the garage door, labeled for the rooms in which their contents belong. The Bennets are moving, probably very soon, but that’s all right: Sylar won’t take long. Locked doors and windows are not the slightest hindrance. A flick of his finger and the locks slide free; he walks in so casually that any passerby must assume he lives there.
None of the downstairs lights are on. Sandra must have taken “Mister Muggles” with her, as Sylar is not bothered by his incessant yapping. There is no fire in the hearth, and Sylar scoffs - so they are one of those families, the kind with oil-fed synthetic fires and a bowl full of fresh fruit on the counter, even though everyone’s diet forbids sucrose. It doesn’t surprise him; nothing about the Bennets seems very real, except Claire.
The first time they met was in the doorway of her bedroom, and it’s where he looks on her now. She’s sitting cross-legged on her bed in grey sweatpants and a pink tank top, with a myriad of brochures and papers spread out in front of her. She cradles her chin in the palm of her hand and idly flips them over, opening them, flipping them over again. Her eyes skate across them all without really seeing any of them. It doesn’t take a mind-reader to know the mundaneness of this task (selecting a college, he guesses) is boring her beyond reason.
Sylar steps in with the grace of a shadow. It isn’t until the light from her window catches him, serrated by the blinds and casting his silhouette against the slats on the floor, that she raises her head in alarm. Her eyes widen then narrow and she crawls backward off her bed like frightened prey, clumsy fingers scrambling for a weapon.
“What do you want?” she asks. An elementary question that has him rolling his eyes, but if he’s generous with her, he’ll admit it is logical. He already has her power. What more could he want?
The primal answer, the one assumed in the eyes of broken mothers and teen counselors alike, is obvious, and he grins but shakes his head. “Not what you’re thinking.”
“I don’t know where my dad put his files,” she says, raising her chin. She’s found a trophy, possibly the same one she struck him with last time. Now she holds it more wisely, with the golden cheerleader in her hand and the base ready to inflict blunt force trauma. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Don’t want that either,” he says. He places himself between her and the door; if he wanted to, he could take the trophy right out of her hand without moving a muscle, but he lets her keep it. Lets her feel useful. She almost looks a little cute, defiant as she is with it poised like a baseball bat. “No, what I want this time is very simple, Claire.”
He loves to use victims’ names. It unnerves them. He knows there’s a shiver struggling to wrack her spine, so it’s interesting that her glare doesn’t waver. As if she’s almost used to hearing her name in his feral growl. As if it’s almost normal, now.
His smile widens.
“You know what?” she spits. “I don’t care what it is. You can’t have it. Get out.”
“You can’t tell me what to do, Claire,” he says playfully. “But I can tell you.”
With a small flourish, the trophy flies from her hand and clatters against the wall. She gasps, then makes a dash for the door. He catches her by the arm and suppresses her thrashing telekinetically as he drags her out of her bedroom and down the stairs.
“Tell me, do you have a basement?” His tone is light and conversational.
“Go to hell!” is her response.
“Don’t do that,” he says, grip tightening. He doesn’t want to hear her ask “do what” so he immediately continues, “Don’t revert to generic threats. It makes you sound pathetic and stupid.”
She twists a little harder, despite his telekinesis. Her language doesn’t impress him, but that does.
“Fuck you,” she says on a dark laugh.
Irony is intelligent, so he’s not upset with her anymore.
The Bennets do have a basement, which is a relief. It’s just a small door and a steep staircase that disappears into a pool of darkness. Electricity dances on his fingertips and helps push back the encroaching dark. The energy he’s been strangling since he arrived has started to grow frantic and excited at the prospect of release.
With a thought, Sylar closes the door behind them and drags Claire down the stairs. She makes an attempt to push him, but he keeps his balance and sends a punishing shock through her arm. He expects a whimper and doesn’t get one. Another accidental surge of blue light illuminates the slight furrow of his brow.
At the bottom he releases her. There must be a light somewhere, but it doesn’t matter: the now constant stream of electricity running through him casts light and shadows equally along the walls. The basement is solid concrete, with no windows or doors. No anything. It must have been a storage space, before everything was moved to the garage.
It is well suited to his needs. Last time he hadn’t cared about the neighbours hearing. To slice open someone’s head is one short scream and then silence. But this is not the same thing, and he doesn’t want to be disturbed.
Sylar removes his coat and sets it aside. If a netting of sparks weren’t brightening his skin to a neon glow, he could easily disappear into the darkness. Black jeans, black shirt, black shoes. Claire is visible in her relatively bright clothes, and it is an amusing contrast.
She searches the darkness for a weapon, and failing that, she searches his face for a reason. Sylar has never come back for anybody. This is a break in his pattern, an anomaly. As he prides himself in being unexpected, he’s glad of this, and that she appreciates it in her fear-stricken way.
Claire watches electricity arc across his shoulders and her face contorts in amazed disgust. “You killed Elle.”
“I’ve been having a bad week,” he says, seemingly ignoring her, “and a stress ball just isn’t cutting it.”
“You can’t control it,” she says with a smirk. His own wicked smile falters. “It’s too much for you.”
“It is not too much for me!” he says shortly, then reins in his temper. “And I don’t have to discuss this with you. I’ll just get what I came for.”
She’s almost euphoric with superiority. “How? Elle had to get rid of her power to make it stop. What are you going to do, Sylar?”
“The same thing,” he says, and his smile returns. She catches the flash of terrible intent in his eyes. “Incrementally.”
In the flex of his arms and the spread of his fingers he feels it scream freedom. Lightning pours out of him in a flickering stream, into her with such force that she’s blown back against the wall. Her mouth is open and her eyes are closed but something tells him she’s not in as much pain as she should be. He’d screamed when Elle shocked him. It hurt so badly he’d almost cried.
His jaw tightens and his arms become stiff. The ability is taking control, so with a strained shout he dams its release. Already he can feel it building in his fingertips again.
Claire falls to the ground. Enough sparks are skittering across his skin for him to see her blackened flesh bubble as it heals. Within moments all that he can see of her is flushed pink, the way it should be. He’s about to aid her up with telekinesis, but she stands on her own. Hair falls into her face. The sight of burnt blonde is sickeningly familiar; in his hands, the electricity grows demanding.
“So that’s it, huh?” she asks, her voice a bit hoarse. “Does anyone else know you’re having this little problem?”
“It’s not a problem,” he says, hands sparking. “At least it won’t be much longer.”
Claire laughs. It is a toxic sound. “I always knew you were impotent.”
Blue light shoots into her with more rage than before. Her head cracks against the wall behind her and a starburst of blood spatters the cement. Her body shakes and her top has burned off - charred tatters of cotton flutter down around her like confetti. He yells as the power overflows, and the anger with it. Silt in a current. Sylar narrows his gaze on her lips, spread open in a wide smile, even as electricity pops off her tongue.
He can almost hear her laugh over the crackling. It reminds him of Elle’s wicked giggles when she snuck a shock on him and he yelled at her; when she’d send a bolt after a squirrel or bird in a tree; when she’d put a little in her lips and surprise him during a kiss. It reminds him of how childish she was, and how childishness does not necessitate innocence. The fact that Claire should be screaming reminds him of slicing open Elle’s skull for no reason, having already acquired her ability: killing her that way not because it was the only way he knew how, but because it was the way he liked best. Then burning her, watching her turn to ashes in sand.
The reel in his mind rolls to an end and he falls to his knees. The last sparks tumble from his fingers but never reach the concrete, even as he collapses. Lethargically, he rolls his head to look at Claire, lighting the room with a tiny, nearly harmless ball of nuclear energy.
She is lying on her back, breathing heavily and brushing hair from her face, seemingly immodest about her bare chest at that moment. Hints of burnt flesh disappear from her cheeks and lips.
“Didn’t hurt at all,” she breathes.
He isn’t sure if he was hoping it would or not, but she doesn’t sound sarcastic. “Can’t feel pain?”
She shakes her head and looks up at the ceiling. “Not since you cut off my head and screwed with my brain.”
He laughs a little, as he has no energy to deny her something that simple. “You’re welcome.”
“I’m not grateful,” she says, and her voice is hard.
“You don’t want to be a monster,” he remarks after a pause, then, to humour her silly notions of him, “like me.”
“No, I don’t.”
“But you will be,” he says. “Eventually everyone is.”
He’s not sure if it’s the reverberating truth in his words or the fact that she’s just had over a thousand volts stream through her, but she doesn’t argue. After all, could anyone with any semblance of humanity go through what she just had and live - let alone laugh? Could someone human yearn for pain the way she is now?
With some effort, he hauls himself to his knees, then his feet, using the wall for support. Claire doesn’t move. Her eyes stay transfixed on the ceiling, but he can tell she is deep in thought, perhaps contemplating how long she has before she’s like him. He knows, he could tell her, but he’d rather savour the moment she finds out on her own. Somehow he’ll be with her then.
“You’re just going to leave.” It is very clearly not a question.
“Nothing to stick around for,” he says, something he knows will hurt her. It’s a little present from him, along with the coal-coloured coat he spreads over her bare chest. She looks at it, then at him, confused. “Don’t bother returning this to me. I’m sure it’ll fit you, one day.”
He smiles at the way her eyes glisten and extinguishes the light in his hand as he climbs the stairs.