shatterverse | (no subject)

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In Metropolis, there is a motel.

It's haunted by something that you can't see, can't hear, can't smell, can only feel as a chill in the air.

It's been abandoned for a long time. There are signs of later habitation -- clothes, disturbed dust, a little food -- but nothing more recent than the unbroken circle of salt around it that was laid down more than a week ago.

Sylar can't cross it. He's tried, many times, but an invisible wall rises up in front of him, as high as he can go. He can't touch the stuff, can't disturb it, can't do anything but hope that someone living will come and create a break in the circle. He's trapped.

The whole setting is somehow eerie.

He wasn't killed by the battle and the exorcisms, wasn't sent over to some more distant afterlife or oblivion, but he was weakened considerably. And, bereft of any human contact, Sylar is losing his grip on the world of the living.

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...Okay, salt?

Weird.

Darla pauses to investigate.

It goes all the way around the perimeter of the motel in a broad circle, the grains of salt piled thickly on top of one another so that the wind does not accidentally blow a gap through.

Though the wind isn't the only danger, is it? For some reason, no rain has dissolved the circle, no animals carried parts of it away. Of course, being surprised about magic in the Shatterverse is like going into a forest and being shocked to find so many trees.

The motel door is peeling and slightly ajar.

"Fucking-'scuse-me creepy," she mutters, and then (because when has Darla had any sense?) takes a careful step over the line.

A horrible mishap entirely fails to befall her.

And the door is still open.

"Hello? Anybody in there?"

She holds up a hand to the door, which being at least partly of biological origin graciously swings open for her.

All that's audible is a slight sound in the musty old corridor that's revealed, like a breath, or a whisper, or the near-silent rasp of a man who's lost his voice.

"Apparently not."

Shrugging, she wanders in a little further.

There's nothing living in the building anywhere. That means safety, which means she can explore as she likes.

And-- because this is Darla Wood-- talk to herself while she does it.

"I wonder what's up with the salt. Probably just one of those things."

The thick dust, partially trodden into the carpet of the hallway, shifts and lifts a little. a vase of long-dead flowers on a dumpy table wobbles, apparently without cause.

"...Okay, who's there and how do you not have biology?"

Not far down the hallway is an ancient reception desk, complete with registration book and blunted pencil.

The pencil quivers and rolls across the page, then lifts itself a little, before whatever is supporting it loses its grip and it clatters off the edge of the desk to fall to the floor.

Darla moves towards the sound.

Cautiously. Not being able to see or feel the person she's talking(?) to is freaking her out some.

The pencil levitates again, slowly at first and then with more confidence, until it reaches the book again; then it begins to write. The penmanship is slow and clumsy; the lettering what you might expect if you asked someone to write with their foot.

D, it scrawls.

"...Okay, and we're back to creepy."

A

R

L

A

...Yeah, you're not kidding.

"Okay, so we've established that you know my name. How about you tell me yours?"

Pencil touches paper again, beginning to form the curve of a line, and then hesitates.

Let's be honest here. Which name is she more likely to react positively to?

What was going to be an S is still formless enough to turn into a faltering G. And that's followed by an A, a B, an R, an I...

"...Gabriel."

She frowns.

"So you're a ghost now, huh? Damn. I'm sorry."

He's had some time to think while he's been trapped here -- well, he's been able to do little else -- and the conclusion he's come to is that he's failed. It doesn't matter at what. At everything, everything he's ever tried to do, large or small, good or bad.

That Darla reacts to him with sympathy, rather than in the angry and vindictive way he'd told himself she would, is sort of the cherry on the cake of the things he's gotten wrong.

The pencil quivers and falls again, rolling down into the fold between the book's pages.

Darla sighs.

Then she circles around to the other side of the desk, dusts off the ancient wooden chair, and sits.

"I guess I can't really ask how you ended up all the way down here, huh?"

The pencil picks itself up again at that question, and scrawls in large letters that are messy with anger:

WAS MURDERED

"By who? Anybody I know?"

EDEN MCCAIN

It is, he reasons, possible. Darla must have met Chandra somehow, and she's been to Sylar's apartment; it's not a stretch to imagine that she might have run into the woman.

"...What, the girl down the hall from Chandra?"

YES.

Instant, and even larger than before.

To add something like 'she is here as well' seems superfluous, since they've already established that she killed him in this universe.

"So she's here. And, obviously, dangerous. Well, that's fucking-'scuse-me unexpected."