Participants:
| Scene Title | Tu Fui Ego Eris |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | What you are, I was; What I am, you will be |
| Date | October 30, 2008 |
Cliffside Apartments: Gabriel Gray's Apartment
An apartment that doesn't seem very occupied at all. There is minimal furniture, an old looking couch that doesn't match the old fashioned drapes is present, along with a wooden coffee table. There's an indentation in the carpet where a TV used to be, but it hasn't been replaced. The walls have been painted a clay-like grey. Pushed into a corner is a desk, which is littered with tools one would identify as watch-repair tools, if they knew any better.
The kitchen is opened to the living area, separated by a bench that's an unattractive mustard colour. An old white fridge in the corner doesn't contain much, someone must eat out a lot, and the same can be said of the pantry, containing a box of chai tea, coffee, and a plastic container of white sugar.
The bedroom comes next, the door coming in from the living space and adjacent to the kitchen. This place is a little messier, clothes littering the floor, and a suitcase shoved into the corner where a wardrobe should have been, and isn't. The curtains are often closed and it doesn't smell like this room gets a lot of air. The bed is the neatest piece in the room, the bedsheets cleaned and spread out neatly, and on the floor (again, lacking a bedside table) is a lamp.
Lastly, the bathroom connecting to the bedroom is small, with a colour scheme of off-white and random pastels, an attempt at cheeriness but woefully dated and tasteless. The mirror has one large crack running through it, adding a note of dissonance to the atmosphere, and crinkly shower curtains, old and a little dirty, corner off a run-down shower.
Sunlight is barely painting the outside world when a woman walks into Cliffside Apartments. Pale skin, dark hair, and in clothes that don't fit her properly, people would identify her as Gillian Childs. She wears an oversized black hoodie, and pants that seems several sizes too big for her, rolled up to her calves, and her feet are bare against the pavement despite the cold. Maybe she's making a statement. Maybe she's wearing clothes adapt well to change. Because, though most wouldn't know any better, her face is being worn by someone quite a great deal taller than her.
The door to apartment 204 is slightly ajar coming up the stairs, a clear and perhaps all too obvious sign of intrusion into the clockwork order of Gabriel Gray's residence. From the hallway, there isn't a sound of anything out of the ordinary in the house, not struggle, not movement, nothing save for — thump. The sound seems jarringly out of place, a single pulse of a heartbeat, slow and languid in its beating. Then, nearly a full minute later, another slow thump. It isn't the heartbeat of anything, man or animal, that has ever touched Sylar's ears. It isn't a sound of a human heartbeat, not one that is alive. It's unfamiliar and alien in its slow and muffled rythm. But there is something else to be heard from the second floor hallway, something less subtle, a soft, wet clinking sound.
Ice cubes moving in a glass.
Sylar's walking up the stairs, hearing finely tuned, and he pauses, listening to that thud, and the gentle clink of ice against the glass. He is automatically on guard, paranoid before, its true, but so much more now. He should walk away and wait for the place to vacate itself. He should go see what that is. He fights through his own indecision, stepping out into the hallway, and staring at the opened door. There's a flame-like fwoomf sound, and unusual, orange light adds to the aura of this place. From a deceptively feminine hand, a ball of radiation wavers, ready to spring, and slowly, that hand changes, fingers lengthening, thickening, whole body transforming slowly from Gillian to Sylar, filling out his clothing like he should.
Taking a breath, he steps into his room.
Standing in clear sight from the door, an elderly man is cast in half-shadow by the lights spilling from Sylar's hand. A pitted and roughly scarred face is downturned towards pieces of a watch dismantled on the desk near the window. One weathered hand is raised, holding a glass clearly having been taken from the cabinets in the apartment. A few ice cubes and water inside of it, the crack and pop of the cubes as they strain and melt in the water punctuation to the silence the old man stands in. He turns at the sound of footsteps by the door, shoulders moving enough to cast the artificial light filtering through the windows across the front of his black suit, immaculate in its presentation.
"Gabriel Gray." His voice is deep, rough and firm. It has an adamancy to it that seems to match his almost stone-like countenance. Now shifted as he is, Sylar can see a cane tucked under his other arm, a polished steel wolf's head jutting forth on a black haft, snarling angrily. "It's a very strong name." He raises the glass to old, parched lips, taking a leisurely sip, soft blue eyes reflecting the light of the radioactive glow spilling from Sylar's hand. "It means, Hero of God." The glass is settled down onto the desk, leaving a watery ring on the surface. "Yet the surname implies moral ambiguity." Settling his cane down to use as a support to an uneven and slow gait, the weathered looking old man makes a slow approach towards the nuclear glow.
"It paints fanciful notions of a hero who must act in ways that appear unheroic, to do great, even divine things." Those eyes narrow, judgementally, peering at the man standing in the doorway. "I heard you wanted to meet me, Mister Gray." Brows raise slowly, looking down at the bones alight in Sylar's hand, "My name is Kazimir Volken." A hand is slowly extended, the old and wrinkled palm of an elderly man.
This is not what he expected. A shoot out with the FBI, perhaps, or any number of threats because golly, his list of enemies grows day by day. Sylar stands tensely at his own door way, maintaining what can only be described as the core of a potential explosion pulsating around his hand, from the bones and out, rendering his skin almost clear. Slowly, slowly, the light starts to dwindle, until he makes a fist, and it goes out. He steps inside, just enough to telekinetically close and lock the door behind him without a thought, and looks down at the hand offered to him.
"My name is Sylar," he finally corrects, despite the meanings so carefully attributed to his true name, head tilted a degree to one side. Not for the first time tonight, Sylar finds himself shaking hands with someone, his own skin unnaturally warm from the radiation that had emitted from it, not a very pleasant feeling, almost clammy. "I take it you're the alpha."
"And to some the omega." Kazimir states rather flatly the moment the hand is taken. There is that brief sensation that something is terribly wrong from the touch as Kazimir's grip on Gabriel's hand seems absolute, squeezing firmly with a strength that should not seem so opressive, were it not for the remarkable pain shooting through flesh, bone and muscle. Almost immediately upon contact, the skin around Sylar's hand where Kazimir's touches it turns a chalky white as all color is drained from it. Veins blacken, and shadows begin to grow in the darkened recesses of Kazimir's eyes, clouding that soft and gentle blue with a haze of darkness.
"The name Sylar, that is also a unique name," Bones begin to heat up from within, a searing heat in the back of Gabriel's throat as the skin on the back of his knuckles dries and parches, a withering and wrinkling of flesh making his youthful hand look more like that of an old man's. "It was originally a German name; Sëyler — Ropemaker." Those gray brows lower, as Kazimir keeps his focus on Gabriel, "I should let you die, right here. Let the authorities wonder who this dusty set of bones belongs to." The hand releases, fingers spreading as the prickling pain in the skin and the ache in bones begins to quickly fade. He gives no explanation as to why this life, of all the lives he's taken has been spared.
"Tell me, Mister Gray, will you hang yourself so quickly with that rope you seem so willing to weave?" With the assertion of strength made, Kazimir's eyes clear, returning to a pale blue, focused on Sylar's darker counterparts, waiting expectantly.
Sylar is only human, though some might disagree. He, at the very least, has a working body - a heart that beats, a nervous system that reacts, and the important ability to feel pain. So despite claims to the contrary, he cries out in that pain as life seems to drain from his arm, not softly, but brutally, knees almost buckling and his other hand going to steady himself against the door from. There's a flash of light from his free hand, an encore of that previous radiation from before, but it's gone quickly - he doesn't have the energy, as his hand gripped by Kazimir's dwindles to that of someone far older.
When he's released, his back hits the locked door behind him with a thud, clasping that previously gripped hand to his chest, in which his heart pounds thunderously with a mixture of fear, adrenaline, and pure anger, turning a furious gaze towards the older man. The temptation to attack is so strong that it's almost tangible, but he reins it in, piece by piece, only talking when he's certain he has himself under control. "I have no intention to hang myself, Kazimir Volken," he says, voice a little roughened. "What gave you that impression?"
That flash of nuclear energy peels skin and muscle clear off of Kazimir's right hand, scoring it to black bone. In that same moment as the hand is pulled away, tendrils of black smoke seem to be pulling free from Sylar's hand, slowly swirling over the wounded area as muscle is grown anew from ashen bone, and skin hardens across the surface, completely with gray hairs and liver spots. Reaching inside of his jacket, Kazimir produces a pair of black leather gloves, one by one slowly tugging them on as his cane once more gets tucked under one arm.
"With the way you have lived your life, I'm surprised you do not feel that noose tightening around your neck." His eyes close halfway, "My Conscience has a unique talent, to see the pasts of others upon a touch. There is much to be said for the book you write with your life, Mister Gray." His fingex flex, accustoming his hands to the texture of the gloves. "Sum quod eris, Mr.Gray. I am what you will be." He extends the hand again, this time gloved, as if testing in some fashion. "I may be willing to explain to you, just how true that phrase is." His eyes assess the dark-haired man, "But you must first be willing to understand your place."
Sylar does not miss the way Kazimir's hand heals - in fact, it steals his attention until the glove is replaced over it. It completely derails his anger, and in its place, a sort of anxiousness. Not really a fear, but out of the knowledge that this meeting is suddenly very important. You can't let immortal people just slip away.
"If you know so much about my past," he says, dragging his gaze up to meet Kazimir's pale eyes, "then you'll know why. Everyone has a noose tightening around their necks, Mr. Volken, some quicker than other's, that's true, but the end is the same, for most. 'And then they died'. But not for everyone."
A moment ticks by, looking down again at that gloved hand offered to him. The use of his true name, that statement alone, makes him bristle. He hesitates, but finally, he draws his hands out of its protective clasp, slightly more gently taking a hold of Kazimir's, more than ready to spring away if need be. "Where do you percieve my place to be?" Sylar allows. He wants, after all, to know exactly what he means.
This time there is nothing wrong with the grasp of the gloved hand, as if Kazimir were any other old man in a suit. "There are many places someone with your unique talents belongs, Mister Gray." His brows tense, keeping the handshake firm, but unline last time where there was a momentary show of dominance, this is something far more welcoming. "For someone as special as you are, however, there is a place I have reserved. One man can be considered my gentle right hand, the hand which nurtures and guides." His eyes scan up and down Sylar, assessing him intently. "You, Mister Gray, I would like to be the hand that deals judgement. The iron fist." Squeezing the hand somewhat more firmly, Kazimir lets it go to slowly slip down to his side.
"I would like to begin training you to be my successor, Mister Gray." It is not often that the gargoylish countenance of Kazimir Volken shifts from something other than a neutral look. But twice now, once in the admittance of Adam to his side, and then now, there is a smile creeping up on his lips. "I believe you have the potential, to be the next in a long line of successors to my power…"
Sylar's face is a neutral mask, in contrast, but he perhaps relaxes a fraction when the leather of Kazimir's glove provides a decent barrier. The handshake over, it's now that he moves, finally, further into his apartment, moving around Kazimir, mostly so that he doesn't have his back so close to a wall. Freedom to move. "Successor," he repeats, almost softly, drawing out a chair and placing his foot against it so he can roll down the hems of his pants to hang about his ankles once more, repeating this with the other leg before turning back to Kazimir.
"What is it you and your people do, Mr. Volken?" he asks. "When I asked this question of one of you men, he told me it's one only you're suitable to answer. So tell me, why do you kill?" If that demonstration was anything more than a show of dominance, it also was indication enough as to who mummified those bodies. "I know why I kill, but I get the feeling this isn't a game."
The smile slowly fades from Kazimir's face, "We're saving the world, Gabriel. We're all angels with ashen gray wings." Pale blue eyes assess the younger man, watching him with a studious and judgemental stare that an over-attendant parental figure man. "You are right, though. This is not a game…" There's a click as Kazimir settles his cane down, turning to walk around Gabriel towards the now closed door. He looks over his shoulder, head tilting to the side. "Death is but a part of the plan… and if you'd like to come with me, I would be more than willing to show you just where that plan ends."
There's a moment of pause, eyes wandering over Sylar's features, "You're a man with an uncanny ability to learn, Gabriel." He reaches to the door, unlocking and opening it, drawing it back slowly to reveal the hallway beyond, motioning towards it as if he were suggesting that Sylar leave everything that resides within the apartment behind. "Now you have a teacher."
Do you stay this course and ride it out for as long as you can? Or do you flee, now, before you get in over your head? To be fair, Gabriel Gray was in over his head the day he bludgeoned a man to death to see what was inside his head, cracking open his skull the hard way. As Kazimir talks, shoes are pulled on, until he's standing in the center of the room just as Kazimir gestures for him to follow.
There is tense silence - silence that's not true silence, as the weight of the old building always makes otherwise inaudible creaks and groans, the sound of breathing is deceptively loud, and Sylar's own beating heart is a racket in his own head. Somewhere in a smaller apartment on the other side of New York City, he has someone waiting for him. His gaze moves from the open door to Kazimir's eyes. "Sylar," he says, flatly. "My name is Sylar." Despite this little statement of defiance, he steps forward. "I'll follow." His tone holds the otherwise unvoiced 'for now'.
 October 29th: Honeysuckle |
 October 30th: Strings Attached |