Participants:
| Scene Title | Carpe Futura |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Sylar grows tired of being treated like a caged animal by the people who supposedly have his best interests — and the world's — in mind. |
| Date | December 8, 2018 |
The Underground
It seems like this world is made up of extremes. Fire and ice, for one. While this room is better than the furnace chamber that could have ashed him to bones in a matter of moments, it's obvious that the nighttime winter of New York City has settled, and this room in particular does nothing to make it any comfier. Some sort of storage space - no doubt their are comfier places, but Sylar needs to hide while Edward does his calculations and Peter does… what it is he does now.
He lies across metal crates filled with supplies needed to keep this underground commune alive. That old fable of the ant and the grasshopper comes to mind as Sylar shifts to lie on his side, the uninjured side. He wonders about what grasshoppers will be left abandoned when the real winter hits, but then, they're likely already dead. A rough blanket has been found, draped over hard edges, and he's scrounged up the BDU shirt he'd borrowed when nothing else presented itself, and tries to stop himself from shivering, twinging the constant ache in his shoulder. Luckily, it feels only torn, not poisoned with infection, but it'd only be a matter of time, down here.
Eventually, Sylar restlessly gets to his feet, doubting he'll be able to sleep soundly while he's here, and heads towards the large metal sliding door that seals him inside. It was only a matter of time before it'd start feeling claustrophobic and besides… he wants to explore the world he's supposed to be saving. Inevitably, it's locked from the outside, but it doesn't take much - just some concentration, gently shifting the gears around, and with a flick of his hand, the door goes sliding open with a metallic clang! loud enough to wake the dead. At a casual stroll, left arm clasped to himself with his right, he steps outside. It's warmer out here, at least.
It's warmer outside, yes, but the metal catwalk beyond the door doesn't afford Sylar the same solitude as the storage room. Eileen sits outside with her back to the wall, knees drawn up and a semi-automatic rifle laid across her lap. Someone has to keep watch over their guest while Peter and Edward are preoccupied elsewhere, though it isn't clear whether she volunteered for the task or simply drew the short straw when it came time to lock him away for the night. As Sylar steps out into the open, making himself visible, she rises from her crouch and swings her weapon around to point it at him in a practiced motion flowing with catlike fluidity.
"Sorry," she says, not at all sounding even remotely apologetic, "but it's safer if you stay inside." Safer for Sylar? Or safer for everyone else who calls this facility their home? Eileen does not elaborate; instead, her finger visibly tightens around the trigger and the joints of her hand creak in such a way that only Sylar with his enhanced hearing can detect the sound, tendons pulling taut, muscle sliding smoothly over cartilage and bone.
Sylar's head turns sharply towards the source of that first sound of movement, expression severe as his gaze darts from Eileen's face and then down to the weapon in her hands, which gets a long look. Perhaps judging whether or not she knows how to use such a thing, but apparently: yes, she can. Use it well enough. He looks back towards the room he'd just walked out from, dark seeing as he'd shut down the noisy fluorescent lights, more spartan than a prison cell. And with the slightest twitch of a finger, the door comes sliding defiantly closed, metallic sounds accompanying it as he lets the locks slide back into place, securing the contents inside and Sylar outside.
"I can take care of myself," Sylar says, apparently choosing his own meaning from the woman's words despite the semi-automatic pointed in his directions. "Relax. You're not going to shoot me." He sounds so sure.
Eileen hesitates, raising her eyes from the center of Sylar's chest — where her weapon is aimed — to his face. For several long moments, she picks apart the expression on his face by slowly moving her gaze across it; either she's become accustomed to reading people in the years since he left, or she hopes to see something familiar in the slight curve of his mouth or expressive angle of his eyebrows. Whatever she finds convinces her that there's no use continuing the bluff once it's been called, and she lowers the weapon before slinging its leather strap back over her shoulder. "No," she agrees, "I'm not. It would be a waste of bullets."
She glances at the door, now shut, then lets her eyes drift down the catwalk as if half-expecting someone — probably Peter — to emerge from the shadows at its opposite end. When no one appears and nothing else happens, she seems to deflate some as she exhales through her nostrils. "If you want to explore, go ahead — but I'm coming with you."
A low chuckle, not completely communicating any real mirth, is barely audible but there, beneath his breath. "It would be," Sylar agrees, a slight smirk tugging at his mouth, before he turns his shoulder to her. Apparently trusting that she won't open fire now. He doesn't have a right to feel so secure, even if he is, but then, in his own time, he doesn't have the right to feel secure walking down the street either - it doesn't stop him from doing it. "Why not," he says, taking a step to look over the side of the catwalk, with the caution of someone wary of being seen by anyone below. His voice is tinged with irony. "You could show me around."
"There's not much to see." Eileen joins Sylar at the railing and leans into it, both her small hands gripping the metal banister that separates them from a long drop and a sudden stop. With the lights dimmed as much as they are, it's difficult to decipher the vague shapes that lie several levels below, clicking, buzzing and thrumming ominously beneath their feet. What are probably electrical generators of some primitive variety send vibrations through the metal, though Sylar's skin would have to be in direct contact with the catwalk to feel them. He can almost certainly hear it. "Besides," she adds, almost as an afterthought, her tone wry, "I get the distinct impression that Peter wants to keep your presence under wraps. We're like caged rats down here. Twitchy. Some of us scare easy, and you look so much like him."
His hand wraps around the bar of the railing, feeling those vibrations, that life line of energy this place generates and keeps these people alive. "I can't stay in the room," Sylar says, evenly. Not even won't - just can't. It's too much like a cage and has that same sort of mixture of coldness, timelessness and cement that the Company cultivated so easily. A pause, and his gaze slides towards her, looking out the corner of his eye at the slightly obscured, blurred vision of the woman just beside him. He asks, curiously, "Is there really a difference? One you can see."
Eileen cocks her head, just so, and slides Sylar a furtive glance over her shoulder. There's definitely something discomfiting about the expression on her face when she looks at him, and perhaps that answers his question for him — if there's a difference between Sylar and Kazimir, it's so slight that she doesn't immediately recognize it. The florescent lights overhead flicker once, and in the moment of darkness that spans between one instant and the next, she turns to face him. "You're younger," she starts, "and a little leaner." But that isn't all. Narrowing her eyes to feline-like slits, she reaches up and places a brazen hand — the one wrapped in blood and oil-stained bandages — on his cheek. Her fingers are cold to the touch as she slides them along his jaw and, gently, uses her thumb to try tilting his head toward her, presumably to get a better look at him. "You don't have the same coldness he does, either."
Younger? The news that he didn't quite achieve immortality is— news that's confusing at best. What could possibly have stopped him? But he doesn't have time to dwell on history— future— whatever this is, before the feeling of rough bandages and cold fingers makes contact with his face, since unshaven for a couple of days now. It's not unlike Eileen, to touch like that, to direct, and Sylar allows it, looking at her when she studies him, hand resting against the railing, other hanging at his side. Cold. He supposes he would have to be even more so than he is now. "You must hate me worse than you did the Kazimir we knew before," he muses.
"I've come to hate your face," Eileen admits, unabashed, chin lifting a fraction of an inch as she continues to survey and scrutinize Sylar's features. "But I've never hated you." Unless she's vastly improved at lying during the past ten years, Eileen is as sincere as she is small, pale and dark-haired. She lets her hand drift down, knuckles brushing against Sylar's injured shoulder before she flattens her palm against his chest and splays her fingers as if feeling for a heartbeat through his sternum. "I see the way Peter looks at you too, and it isn't the same way he looks at Kazimir. There's a difference." She nods, once. "Definitely."
Sylar's gaze only tracks down towards her hand when it brushes over his shoulder, feeling it through the fabric of the old shirt and the gauze. He visibly tenses, as if expecting her to exploit that weakness in a sudden moment of indirect revenge. But there's no lift in her heart beat to indicate she'd have any such intention and she disproves his guess in the next moment, hand settling warm over his heart that he knows doesn't have that same dead, forced, monosyllabic thump that so defines the Kazimir of his time. He almost wants to ask if that's the same as well before quickly realising, it's really only a trait he himself could possibly pick up.
Besides. That's ridiculous.
He draws his head back up to look at her. "You're different too," Sylar notes. "In my time, the terrorists caught you. Helena's band of merry men. I guess they didn't have the nerve to kill you." On cue, there's the sound of foot steps— at least three. At least one man that isn't supposed to see him. No one has come into view, not yet, but they will soon. An isolated flicker of radioactive heat chars the metal railing as Sylar's hand lights up in readiness.
A flicker of recognition lights in Eileen's eyes, and she gives Sylar a nod to confirm that — yes — she remembers, but before she can open her mouth to explain why she's standing here instead of rotting in a shallow grave somewhere else, the sound of footsteps reaches her ears and she roughly seizes Sylar by his arm. "Don't argue," she grinds out through gritted teeth, dragging him back toward the door from which he emerged not five minutes ago. "And, please, don't kill anyone. Our numbers are so low we don't have anybody to spare." Unless he stops her, her other hand closes around the handle and she heaves the door open with a quiet grunt. She may be fitter and a little more muscular than Sylar remembers, but the task still requires a goodly amount strength, effort and expended energy to complete. "Hurry."
He doesn't help her with the door, yanking his arm out of her grip with a soft, protesting growl as it jolts his injury, inevitably. Sylar would rather just kill them, frankly, and toss the corpses over the edge of the catwalk, but he remembers the sound of the lynch mob from— he's not sure how long ago, and he can feel the gauze at his shoulder start to become damp all over again. Weakness and mortality, and trapped inside this rat hole with people willing to tear whatever unsettles them to pieces. His eyes roll in exasperation, and he moves for the room— but not without reaching to grab Eileen's arm in turn and drag her inside after him, the door rolling shut with the barest flick of his free hand.
As the door clicks back into place, the automatic locking mechanism engages with a dull clack of finality. Although Eileen hisses out a curse under her breath and gives Sylar a reproachful shove with her shoulder, she does not cry out or struggle against him when he pulls her into the room after him. Instead, she falls still and silent, listening for the sound of encroaching footsteps, then waiting for them to pass. She really should have seen that coming, and so she mentally berates herself while she holds her breath, slim face drawn into a gloomy expression of self-hatred that looks a lot more like "Munin" than Eileen. Only once she's sure the threat has passed does she inhale sharply, whip around and turn her ire on him. "I told you," she glowers, exactly five feet and two inches of green-eyed menace personified, "it's safer in here."
His hand reaches out towards the wall, and a click later makes the lights above them flicker and buzz to life in their own cages, white and harsh. The light is kind to neither of them, showing up every little flaw and sign of fatigue, shadowing eyes and cheekbones. "For you," Sylar says, completely unapologetic about this almost run-in. And under the invasive fluorescent lights, he can spot the vaccine shot, just like all the others, at her throat, gaze lingering there almost rudely before he moves to take a seat, apparently not about to open the door for her.
"Nobody out there has orders to shoot me on sight." Eileen doesn't press her point any further. She catches Sylar's eyes on her throat and instinctively reaches up touch the mark there. It doesn't hurt, but the fleshy lumps of scar tissue she feels beneath her fingertips serve as an unpleasant reminder of everything that she and the others have lost. She remembers a time when Sylar once told her that he coveted other people's abilities; this, she imagines, must have been similar to what he experienced. Envy burns all the way through to her core, makes her blood run hot until snorting at him is all she can do to keep herself from saying something she knows she'll regret as soon as the words have left her mouth. In the end, she settles for a very soft, very dismal, "Don't look at me like that." There's heat behind it, but not nearly as much as there was a few moments ago when she was trying to wrangle Sylar back into the storage room. "It's the only way we can stay alive."
On the row of crates he'd used to lie down, Sylar sits, back against the wall, and watching her with hooded eyes as he slumps, wincing only minutely when his shoulder makes contact with the concrete behind him. Sylar's expression is neutral, not particularly enjoying her obvious loss, but he lacks the pity that might show in others as well. He nods once at her explanation, still eyeing the mark before looking at her eyes, almost intrigued by the obvious anger the woman carries with her. It's not shocking, but it's another difference. "How long?" he asks. "Before I have to start taking them?" He doesn't want to be here long enough for that measure of caution, but— that little, niggling concern that he'll be here forever burrows into his insides like a worm.
"Peter should have dosed you when he locked you up in the containment room as a precautionary measure. You haven't been showing any symptoms yet, but that doesn't mean you aren't incubating or something equally horrific." Eileen's hand drops back to her side and she looks back over her shoulder, toward the door. If Sylar isn't going to open it for her, she's just going to have to wait for Petrelli to get back and unlock it from the outside. "It doesn't matter," she says, reaching into her coat, her anger beginning to ebb away. "I don't think Edward plans on keeping you any longer than he absolutely has to, but while you're here—" Her hand slips back out, a silver chain laced between her slender fingers. Dangling at its end is a small metal timepiece. "Would you mind taking a look at this for me?" The pocket watch is one that Sylar should recognize — he did, after all, give it to her.
Time ages things and the pocket watch is no exception. No one can preserve things forever - metal scratches, finishing fades. But Sylar, of course, recognises the timepiece instantly - he knows its make, design, everything. An eyebrow twitches up in vague surprise, and, gripping the edge of the crate with his hand, he pulls himself up to sit properly. He'd given it to her… he barely understands why, now. A thank you. An apology. A sign of— something. Words he can't express or even necessarily feel and so he gave her something he likes. Used to like. His 'yes' comes in the form of his hand reaching out for it - no telekinesis, letting her approach. "You kept it," he says, pointing out the obvious.
"Mm," comes Eileen's softly-voiced affirmative. Not daring to drop it, she lowers the pocket watch into Sylar's palm, watching as the chain slides through her fingertips with a whispering tinkle of metal against metal. "I keep it around as a reminder." Of the man he used to be. Of the man he might one day be again. She doesn't voice these thoughts aloud, but her features soften, growing warm as the silence stretches between them. The rosy tint to her cheeks darkens a shade or two, still faint but visible and distinct in the unflattering light that shines down on the both of them and casts their bodies in a sickly glow.
And Sylar doesn't ask for clarification, just studies her features for a moment in a silence that might extend too long, before his gaze lowers down towards the pocket watch in the center of his palm. He opens it at first by hand, but to get to the insides… it's a careful use of telekinesis, gaze switching into a more telescopic mode to be careful of the details. He's only done this a handful of times, fixing watches without tools, without the lenses - he'd prefer tools, the lenses. He'd make do. Wheels and pieces of metal floats out as if on minute strings, shifting around, tightening— wishing he had replacements for certain things but again, making do, almost forgetting Eileen's presence as he sits, still as a statue. A look of soft concentration is on his face as he fixes the watch - he seems almost to be another man entirely, the polar opposite of Kazimir, the other end of the spectrum that Sylar sits in the middle of.
As Sylar works, Eileen crouches down in front of him and rests her arms across her knees, watching his activities intently. She notes the difference, and — for the first time since he arrived — a real smile finds its way onto her face. Impish, it curls at the corners of her mouth and belongs to a girl on the cusp of adulthood rocking back and forth on her heels rather than this world-weary woman pushing thirty with an AR-15 slung across her back. She does not disturb him.
The smile is missed, Sylar's world very much contained to the inner workings of the watch for now, absorbed, owned - forgetting, almost, his injuries and surroundings. There was a reason a disturbed but not irredeemable young man in Queens devoted his life to his father's watch shop. And finally, the gentle ticking starts to fill the room— at least for him— and he watches the insides work, like a surgeon might witness a heart beating in a chest cut open. They're covered once more, and he turns the watch so she can see, hand lowering down to show off his work - it's even set to the right time, the hands in place like semaphore signals and the seconds racing in its pace around the white, aged surface. "Thank you," he says, almost mysteriously, seeing as he just performed a service for her.
There's a short pause in which Eileen leans forward, a curious furrow appearing on her brow. There are a lot of other things that sound like "thank you," but she has faith in her ears; he did say what she heard, even if doesn't make much sense from where she's sitting. Unless the world operates differently here in the storage room, she's the one who should be expressing gratitude — not Sylar. She reaches out and, her fingers grazing lightly against his, removes the watch from his hand by its body rather than the chain. A moment later, she's holding it up to her ear with her head canted sideways, listening intently to the steady tick-tock-tick emanating from within the timepiece's thin metal shell. If Eileen had any lingering doubts about the man's identity, they've since dissipated and been replaced by the low chuckle she feels beginning to bubble up from the pit of her chest. "You're very welcome."
Maybe things do work differently here. It wouldn't be the first time Sylar's had a 'through the looking glass' experience ever since he was sent here. Unlike the White Rabbit, however, Eileen won't be late for a very important date if she were to guide her time by the watch in her hands. "One thing down," Sylar says, almost wryly, leaning back against the wall again. "Now I'm supposed to fix everything else." A pause. "What went wrong? Before?"
"Fix— is the wrong word. Peter tried to fix things, but he only succeeded in making them worse." Eileen rises from her crouch and slips the pocket watch back into the interior of her coat where it belongs. "You aren't changing anything when you go back because — at least in your time — nothing's happened yet." She offers Sylar a small shrug. She's no Doctor Edward Ray; if she told him that she understood the way time travel worked, she'd be lying at best and purposely deceiving him at worst. "I don't think there's any one thing that leads to this. Too many variables. Too many question marks."
He lets it go. Sylar doesn't expect Eileen to explain the situation to him but you never know - maybe she somehow held the key, the solution to all of this. Of course it can't be that easy. One thing? "Of course not," he says out loud, and it's hard to tell if he's being dry or agreeable. He shifts to lie down, now, across the crate, as he had been before - and much like before, he's still restless, but at least he's faking the relaxation his body needs. "I saw your string in Doctor Ray's room," he says, looking at the ceiling rather than her. "It goes with Peter's. I suppose you don't hate him anymore. I remember that you did."
"I stayed with the Vanguard until the end," Eileen explains, taking a seat on the edge of the crates, "same as you. That was my mistake. I'd known something wasn't right for a long time, ever since you showed me that painting Kazimir asked you to keep from us. Sometimes I wonder what might've happened if I'd acted before it was too late, if I'd—" She cuts off abruptly, pursing her lips into what is obviously an aggravated expression. "Everybody passes the time agonizing over what they should have done — even the ones who are almost too young to remember it. We all carry a burden of responsibility. Some are heavier than others, but Peter's is the heaviest of all. Survivor's guilt. I have a hard time hating a man who already hates himself."
Sylar makes a contemplative 'hn' sound at that, now looking at Munin as she comes to sit just near him. "For a hero, he sure does destroy the things he touches," he says, tonelessly. Blew up New York. Made the virus strain even worse than it was already was. "I asked Kazimir," he starts, new subject, "who would be left alive after he got his way. He told me no one. He told me I'd be a god some day." There's reverence for his own words in his voice, almost whispered under the constant thrum of machinery outside.
"You're a god insofar as you're a giver and taker of life, but it isn't really you, is it? It's Kazimir wearing your face, Kazimir using your hands to sculpt what's left of the world in his own image." Eileen places one hand on either side of Sylar's shoulder, turning her body at the waist so she can lean down over him, lowering her voice as she speaks. "He lied to you. Just like he lied to Ethan and the others. The only difference between them and you is that they're all dead and you're being kept a prisoner in your own body. That man out there is not Sylar. He's not Gabriel Gray, either. He isn't even anything in between."
There's a pause, Sylar's gaze shifting easily to her eyes as she speaks, and his expression remains stoic, but it becomes clear this is a frozen sort of disbelief. Then his hands come up to grip her arms, not harshly, but firmly. More than a few different questions war for attention, mouth opening to ask one but unable to decide, for the first second, what makes the most sense. Finally, he settles on, "How?" How does she know. How is that possible. How could that happen. Covers a broad range.
"I don't know how." Eileen is, if nothing else, honest. She tenses at the hands grasping her arms but does not pull away — he isn't hurting her. "I don't know when. Or why. Ethan locked me in Jennifer Childs' storage container the night before Kazimir sent him away. If he'd taken me with him, like he was supposed to, I would have been ambushed and slaughtered along with the others. The last time you spoke to me with your mind was when you were walking away." Her bitterness is so potent that she finds herself faltering, disgusted by the sound of her own voice. "When you turned up again, months later, I barely even recognized you. Then I reached out. Nothing. The link was gone."
Slowly, slowly, Sylar lets go of her arms, and he pushes himself up to sit, no longer looking at her despite their closeness. This new variable changes everything. Everything. "It's not a title," he murmurs, if only so he can understand this by verbalising it. "Ray was wrong. It's just one man." He falls silent, again, furiously thinking over all the conversations they'd had, right back to the first time he had met Kazimir, when he had followed him out of his own apartment and never looked back. How special he'd told Sylar he would be. Finally, his dark eyes meet Eileen's again. For a man so cold and so certain about everything, he seems lost, but that's what betrayal does to people. "Were you even going to tell me?"
"We make our own fate," Eileen says, leaning back as Sylar sits up, though she does not pull entirely away from him. "I would never take away your right to choose. For all I know, you made a bargain with Kazimir and are content in your role as Puppet King of the Brave New World. You aren't the man you were, but neither is he. You shouldn't let your decisions hinge on my beliefs, because no matter what you do, now that you've seen it, your future will be different from my here and now."
Sylar studies her, seeming to accept her answer. Especially now, if this is true, that Kazimir's been leading him so blindly down this path, he'd like to choose his own damn future. Without anyone deciding where he should be. Not the Company, not Kazimir, not even Eileen or Gillian. "Then I guess there's only one way to find out what I really think," he says, raising an eyebrow.
The obvious response is: "What's that?" But Eileen verbally doesn't take the bait, if Sylar is indeed dangling it that way. She lifts her chin, defiant in spite of the fact she currently has nothing to be defiant about (except, perhaps, that he's locked her in the room with him and still won't open the door), and raises both her eyebrows. While the question goes unspoken, it does not go unasked — Eileen's query illuminates her eyes, and she challenges him with a heavy-lidded, admonitory stare. Oh?
It occurs to him about then that she is, in fact, 29. Barely a year younger than he is. The decade that normally stretches between them is gone and though she'd proven to be dramatically different to the Eileen he knows in the year 2008, her age seems to make itself clear, here. Sylar studies her features for a moment, more drawn and pronounced through age, staring in the way he tends to do that makes most people shy away uncomfortably, before he answers, simply, "I'm going to find him."
"Kazimir? Here?" Eileen looks as though she's about to laugh, but there's absolutely no mirth left in her tone when she next opens her mouth. "No," she says, "I don't think so. You're luckier than a fucking leprechaun you haven't contracted anything yet. If you go back up there, without the injection?" She shakes her head, refusing to flinch away from the suggestion or allow her gaze to stray away from Sylar's. Although his stare is making her uncomfortable, she is anything but shy. "It's too risky." Too dangerous.
"It's the only way I can know," Sylar insists, almost serenely. But the injection. He can't. And even if he did, the virus wouldn't get to him but what else can he do to defend himself against every other danger? Resentful, he casts a glance towards the door, obviously tempted to walk right out again as he goes over the possibilities in his mind.
As much as Eileen might want to be on the other side of that door herself, she seems to sense what Sylar is thinking and reaches out to place her hand on Sylar's arm. She does not grab him as he grabbed her, or as she did before when she was trying to force him back inside — her grip on him is loose, just firm enough for him to feel her fingers curling lightly around his bicep. "Don't," she says, waiting a beat before she very quietly adds, "Please."
Whatever conclusion he comes to, he doesn't voice it. But he also doesn't get up and move towards the door and leave Eileen inside as he could very easily do, so perhaps, for now, that will be answer enough. "Then I'm just going to have to trust that you're not lying to me," he says. "That none of you are." His tone communicates enough - he doesn't have that many reasons to do so. That these people might just be playing him to save themselves. But then… He looks down at the hand she's placed on his arm, then back at her. "I wonder what will happen to you if I change everything. Don't you?" Time travel. It's enough to keep you up at night.
Eileen's grip on Sylar's arm tightens enough that he'll feel it but she probably won't. It's a reflexive movement, subconscious, a gut reaction from someone who's just been confronted with something they didn't want to hear. "I could die tomorrow," she murmurs, "and even if I don't, I'm going to die eventually. Either I go down fighting, or I'm snuffed out of existence because Edward sends you back to your own time. It doesn't matter. When you're dead, you're dead. When you're gone, you're gone." She wishes it was this simple. Her conviction couldn't make her thoughts on the matter any clearer. Still, the troubled creases at the corners of her mouth don't smooth at the end of her explanation. If anything, she looks more troubled than she did before. "This is it."
Carpe diem. Seize the moment. The only real family she's ever known, her chance at a better, brighter future, everyone she dared to care about — Eileen has already lost everything worth losing. She'd sooner join Ethan and the others than let this one last lost opportunity slip through fingers. Without giving Sylar time an opportunity to respond, she moves her hand from his arm to his face, grasping his chin roughly to prevent him from recoiling as she covers his mouth with hers.
He goes still under the kiss, unresponsive for a moment, taken off-guard - but he doesn't recoil and it doesn't take long to regain a sense of balance. Sylar's right hand comes up to lace fingers through her hair and he opens up, responds. He should feel more disturbed than he does, but this isn't Munin. Far from Munin. Eileen, whoever that is, someone he's never going to see again. Carpe… futura?
His arm goes around her waist, drawing her closer even as he gives a rough sound of irritated complaint when his shoulder twinges accordingly but it hardly matters. But then Sylar's hand encounters the rifle still strapped to her back and that brings him pause, drawing away to look at her for a moment, before he wraps a hand around the gun, shifting just enough to unsling it from her shoulder. No, not Munin at all.
Without her ability, without a city of birds at her command, Eileen is defenseless but for her rifle. At first she resists, echoing his sound of objection with a low groan of her own. He has powers — she does not. Moreover, her body — aching in sympathy — remembers every little thing he can do with them. "Nn," she starts, "don't—" but her protest ends less than a heartbeat after it begins, and she shrugs the weapon the rest of the way off her shoulder, onto the floor with an abrupt clap and bang of metal against metal.
Thankfully, it does not discharge. She's made her decision.
| Previously in this storyline… The Butterfly Effect Next in this storyline… |