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, 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."

Sylar decides to initiate a new line of conversation, one that is more relevant to his immediate predicament. Not that he wouldn't appreciate bloody vengeance upon Eden, but still.

I'M TRAPPED

(If Darla looks in precisely the right place, if she squints, she might be able to make out the beginnings of a dark stain on the air on the other side of the desk. Powerful emotions and being so close to life are making him slowly stronger.)

"In this building?"

It's a guess, but an informed one.

"How'd that happen?"

THE SALT

He's nothing if not concise!

"...Huh."

In that case, down to business.

"What're you gonna do if I let you out?"

A pause.

A long pause.

But not because he's trying to think of a plausible lie.

I DON'T KNOW.

It takes a lot out of him to admit that, and not just in the sense of injured pride. It's admitting that he doesn't have a purpose any more. It's losing drive and losing strength, so that if she noticed the orphaned shadow it isn't there any longer.

All he's ever done is lie. Sylar wonders if it's because the truth is this easy to choke on.

"Well," she says cheerfully, "I can think of worse answers. C'mon."

She rips out several pages from the book, picks up the pencil, and stands.

"Stick by me. We'll figure something out. What are friends for, right?"

And, grinning at the space across the desk, she heads for the door.

That's all that was needed? Just like that, she trusts him?

...Darla Wood, ladies and gentlemen, and he's never been more grateful for that fact. Maybe this whole shitty story can have some end that isn't disaster for him.

He swirls the dust in the doorway to let her know that he's following.

She scuffs a clear path in the salt line and beckons him out, sunnily.

It's like when your ears pop and the pressure in your head just flows away. Or when you finally chisel through a prison wall and feel the fresh air and sun on your skin. The temperature around that gap in the salt line drops by several degrees as the ghost that's been imprisoned there rushes out.

It's not often that Sylar wishes to show gratitude.

"You're welcome," says Darla, who can be oddly perceptive at times.

"Let's find someplace else to be. If whoever trapped you here comes back, well..."

At a flick of her hand, one of the papers she liberated flutters to the ground and scoops the salt more or less back into its original position.

"...I wouldn't take the chance that that'll fool them."

Having thus spoken, she calls the paper back into her hand and sets off down the street.

"I've been staying at an abandoned house on the other side of town. Something like this place, only not so creepy and with more plants. And I don't have neighbours, which is a good thing because I can't imagine they'd react well if they heard me talking to empty air. Some things are still crazy even in this bloody-'scuse-me strange world."

His new freedom has inspired Sylar to pull himself together again, to make another attempt at restructuring himself. Darla's presence makes it easier than it was before; not a smooth road by any means, but at least a few handholds cut into what was previously a sheer and inscalable cliff.

This time, when he attempts to speak, there is a whispering in her ear -- too vague to be intelligible, but audible nonetheless.

She actually shuts up for a second, cocking her head to listen.

"Did you say something just now?"

"Yes," he tries to say.

The word itself is probably not understandable, but the fact that it came straight after her question is a clue as to its meaning.

"You're really pulling yourself together," she says, impressed. "I almost heard that."