Who: Sylar gabrielgray & Elle Bishop ellectric What: Discussing immortality When: Tuesday, May 12, immediately after this Where: Outside Copperstone Apartments Rating: Audience Discretion is Advised Warnings: Language, psychopath and a sociopath meeting up to talk about immortality. If you're religious at all, it'll likely offend you. Status: Closed/Compled GDoc
~*~
Life was precious. It was meant to be protected. Heroes protected life. Sylar considered himself the perfect example of a hero because he would never die. His life was eternal, endless. He would have all of eternity to protect life on Earth. During his existence, he would even have time to learn how to be loved. Already he had learned how to love on his own. It could not be too terribly difficult to learn to be loved. Elle could learn to love him. She would now have time. She, too, was eternal.
Opening her door with his mind, Sylar stood outside the entrance to her apartment to ask her, "What have you become?"
Darkness did not frighten him nor did the thought Elle had become a monster. Neither of them were anything but monsters; Sylar only wanted them to be the kind of monsters who fought on the side of good rather than that of evil. They were to be heroic monsters. Demons with souls? Was that a possibility? Virginia, his adoptive mother, had been fascinated by zealotry. Her ideology was something which haunted his dreams on some nights. Sylar remembered being that woman's son, Gabriel Gray.
He was Gabriel for Elle the way Elle was only Elle for him.
They were not monsters to one another. Their lives ran in parallel on too many paths for them to see each other as anything except kindred spirits. Harmony existed between them because they played out the hands dealt to them in life to the same tunes. Sylar and Elle. Elle and Sylar. She had made him what he was as surely as he had made himself. He lived because of her the same as she had died because of him. Test City was giving them another chance together. What kind of chance was it giving them considering Elle's current condition?
"It is not reversible. There is no cure. You will be this way until something ends you or until the world ends around us. Are you happy? Can you be happy?"
Sylar wanted her to be happy. Very much. If anyone deserved a taste of happiness, it was Elle Bishop, the broken little girl who had never known love. Her father had tortured her, used her, abused her. He himself had used and abused and murdered her. Elle had never known true kindness even from true heroes such as Peter Petrelli. That one was a mess of his own making if ever there was one.
How could this state of being make Elle happy? How would she live? Would she have to murder to survive?
His gift tried and failed to puzzle out what had been done to her. All he could tell was her gift worked as it always had though it was damaged from the damage done to Elle herself. She was out of control. Sylar would have to help her. Again. They could repeat the cycle of their lives. An ouroboros. They could be their own eternal infinity, eating their own tail even as they ate forever. Would she need to feed from him? If she did, she'd not have to kill anyone.
He could keep her alive and stay a hero.
Sylar would be a hero. He would make Elle whole.
~*~
Elle was having a difficult time processing what had happened to her. It certainly hadn’t been what she intended. And she was given no warning at all before her life was taken from her again. Oh, she’d come back again. But at what cost? Who was she now? What was she now?
Gabriel’s question lingered over her. What had she become?
She didn’t know how to answer him. Eleanor Zoe Bishop was likely the last person that should have been granted any kind of immortality. And most certainly the last person who should have become a vampire. She had no warning, no idea what her life would be like now. All she knew was she felt everything so much deeper, and the pain and guilt were crushing her. How was she supposed to live this way?
She’d been an emotional mess as a human, like a little broken doll, child like, sometimes so playful, sometimes just mean and bitchy. She had so many mixed emotions. And now all of that was increased tenfold, maybe more. Part of her wanted to beg him to kill her. Really beg. But then all of this would have been for nothing.
Klaus had been trying to give her some screwed up version of a happy ending. How was he supposed to know what would result from it? Did he even care?
Elle had hurt a lot of people in life. She didn’t want to be the same way now. She wanted to be the person that Gabriel thought she was. That he wanted her to be.
She was on the verge of tears at his words, but Elle didn’t want to cry in front of him. No, she was stronger than that. She’d have to find some way to live with this. It hadn’t been anything she’d considered or wanted, but there was no going back now.
And one good thing had come out of it. She could now be with Gabriel. Really be with him. The idea terrified and delighted her. What if she wasn’t what he wanted? She wasn’t the pure and innocent little cheerleader. She was damaged, now more than ever. What if he decided she wasn’t worth trying to repair?
She was okay to hide her tears, but she couldn’t hide the way she was shaking. No one told her it would be like this.
She didn’t even want to answer him. There was no right answer to his question. She just looked up at him with her big blue eyes, as she fought back tears. She was a lost little soul who had been granted an incredible gift, and all she wanted was for him to be able to take it back.
She’d rather be dead...than this thing. No one loved Elle. No one could. And now as a vampire, that wasn’t likely to change.
~*~
"May I come in?"
Sylar could not puzzle out the way to react to Elle's lack of verbal response. He knew he couldn't get angry with her. She would crumble before him. Theirs was not a relationship which could thrive in the face of his anger. His wrath was all consuming. It was as uncontrollable as Elle's gift when she was emotionally unstable. They would not survive if he fell victim to his own selfishness again. Sylar would have to let someone permanently negate him as a threat if he were to sense himself falling down that oubliette again.
Monsters had always existed for him in theory. In reality, they were far worse than in theory. All their hurts were more hurtful. All their victims were more innocent. Their crimes were unpardonable, often even unmentionable. Sylar was not a monster any longer. He had been a monster however and he could sense when he was in the presence of one. Elle was an enigma for his gift in some ways. She still had the same basic algorithm however which meant she was no more a villain now than she had been before.
She was a lost girl.
Leaning down closer to her, he tilted his head to the side, lowering his voice as he murmured, "I don't know what you are now. I can't read you the way I did before. If you don't talk to me, I don't know how to help you. I don't know if you want me to help you. You're a new puzzle now."
~*~
“Sorry, of course you can.” Elle said, stepping out of the way. She was doing her best to process this all. It was difficult for a mind as damaged and fractured as hers was. Somehow Gabriel being there made everything better, even if she wasn’t sure he could ever love her now.
She supposed she’d asked for this, in some way. She had made the comment that she wasn’t going to live forever. And now...she was. At least if nothing killed her. There were things that could, she was sure of that.
Once Gabriel was inside, she closed the door behind him. She wished she knew what to say. How could she explain this to him? She couldn’t even really explain it to herself. She bit on her lower lip as she watched him, watching her. This whole thing had gotten so strange.
“I don’t know if you can help me.” She said. “I don’t know if anyone can now.”
~*~
"I can help you."
It was a simple statement of fact to Sylar, the villain turned hero who had once been only a man named Gabriel Gray. He could fathom out the hardest of problems. Elle was a new enigma, but even she could be figured out with his gift. His certainty in his own abilities was half of what made him a dangerous creature. His inability to understand the consequences of his actions was what tended to truly make him a force to be reckoned with---though he was working on that part of things.
Everything could be learned if one put forth enough effort.
A sociopath could even learn to obey the rules of society if given enough instruction prior to being unleashed upon the population.
Sylar would control himself because he was determined to be a hero. He would help Elle because he deemed it possible for him to do so and he could never fail himself. The thought about was ludicrous. Insanity was not a state of mind he sought out. He would protect her. He would love her. He would make her whole and then? Sylar would keep her forever because she was meant to be his. It had been a mistake to lose her. He'd done it when he was weak, confused, unstable.
He was none of those things now.
"I know I can help you. If you need blood, we can get you blood from the banks they keep it stored in within the hospital or the clinics. Should you be unable to drink blood not fresh from a victim? You can feed from me. I'll never die. No matter how much you take. My life could be your life. We would become our own ouroboros: the eternal serpent eating itself for eternity."
~*~
He seemed so determined to help her, to save her. Elle could tell instantly that he was not the same man who had killed her on a beach eight years ago. Sylar had changed so much. He was a better man now, but the deeds of his past would always haunt him. And he was going to live forever, so that was kind of messed up. And now she would too. Her own past sins haunting her. Would it be too much to take?
The way he seemed to believe in her was incredible. No one had ever cared for her, been proud of her. She’d tried so hard to be a good daughter to Bob but she always fell short. Bob was long dead now, and Elle had been given a second chance at life, and then she’d been given immortality. It was quite something, when she shouldn’t have had either.
Though she knew she could, she was reluctant to feed from him. If she could just get blood from the hospital, that would have to suffice. It meant a lot to her that he was so willing, though. Not a lot of people would have volunteered for something like that.
“I don’t want to feed from you.” She said. She knew he wouldn’t mind, and it probably wouldn’t even really hurt him but she didn’t want to chance hurting him. Not after all they’d been through. They had this chance together here, and she was going to make the most of it.
“I can try the hospital.”
~*~
Sylar nodded at her decision. She had made a wise choice in his mind. There was more blood in the hospital than in his veins. The human body only held so much. His would regenerate fast, but what if she needed more than he could generate? Would she suffer eternally starving because he couldn't provide enough for her? Hunger was something he understood on as much a metaphorical plane as a physical one.
There had been a time Sylar had never been full.
All of the gifts in the world had seemed not enough to satisfy him. His need for more powers, more abilities, to be more had seemed impossible to meet. There weren't enough gifted alive for him. They were evolving too slowly. He'd wanted to find a way to evolve them faster at one point simply so he could feed from them sooner, earn more gifts more quickly. The idea of running out of new powers had been unfathomable to him. His thirst had been impossible to slake. He'd been a drowning man in the ocean: all the water in the world with not a drop fit to drink.
"I will go with you," he said, nodding along in time with the beating of his heart, "We will explain to them they must help you. Blood is donated for those who need it. You need it. You need it more than another patient. You are special. I will make them understand."
He could create understanding in even the simplest of minds. Sylar knew how everything worked except -presently- for Elle. It would be no real task to explain how they had to save a future hero with something they already had in stock. To him, the idea of handing Elle blood bags to drink dry was no different than going in with an open wound to get someone to suture it closed. They were medical staff. Healers. It was their job to fix those who were hurt, heal their wounds, unbreak the broken.
Elle was hurt. They could fix that.
She was broken, too, but only he could fix that.
~*~
Elle wasn’t quite as convinced that the hospital staff would see it that way. She wasn’t sure how they’d get the blood, she just knew that they had to. And she didn’t want to bite Gabriel, not unless it was her only option. A wicked part of her had a passing thought of biting Claire, but she wouldn’t act on it. It was just a tiny and amusing thought for a moment.
“We can wait a bit.” She said. “Come up with a plan.” She just couldn’t see them willing to just give it over. How would people here react to having vampires around anyway? In the movies, the vampires always had to be discreet. They couldn’t live out in the open. They could steal the blood bags of course, but people would notice them missing. It was hard to know what to do.
She wouldn’t desiccate in a few days. They had time. She was so grateful for Gabriel because she knew this was not something that she could have faced alone. She needed him. She needed him to be there for her, even though she’d gone through this big change. She needed him to accept that this was who she was now, because then maybe she could start to accept it too.
“We’ll go soon, though.” She said.
~*~
Nodding agreement seemed the appropriate response. Words were strange, slippery things he often did not have the firmest grasp on. Sylar knew the words he wanted only when he needed to know them for a purpose. Otherwise his life was a string of explanations or -worse yet- feelings. He couldn't often put his feelings into words which resulted in him exposing more of himself through his actions than he wished. His hands would make gestures he couldn't control, his body would use powers he wanted to keep inside. It was terrible.
Elle seemed to be feeling a bit of the same turmoil. Sylar had always appreciated she knew how it felt to feel more than everything else around her. They were of a similar material, the pair of them. He felt as if there was a reason for his having met her when she looked to his gift as she did now. There was a promise of understanding with her he would find nowhere else, not even with Claire with whom he shared so much in spite of how she hated him, and Elle was precious to him for that promise.
She was precious.
Lifting a hand near her face, he hesitated, "May I touch you now? Your senses are heightened. More like mine. It may not feel the same."
They had touched. The two of them had touched in ways he'd never touched another. It wasn't as if sex had been high on Gabriel Gray's priority list and it had never been the goal of his evolution into Sylar. Sex was a mammalian bodily function. It existed on a baser level than anything he wanted to experience. Most of the time when he thought of it he was repulsed. Why would anyone want to devolve into a grunting animal, heaving and panting and sweating for a momentary flash of pleasure when they could be seeking infamy?
He was going to be a great hero.
Sylar transcended humanity as much as he wanted to protect it. Now. That was his goal now. He had to remind himself or he would forget. Forgetting he was going to save people was not the way to remain a hero. It was necessary for him to remember his goals. Always keep them in mind. It was the only way he'd stay a hero, never become a villain again, be worthy of standing at Claire's side---of saving Elle. Both of them needed him to remember his goals if he was going to be worthy of being in their lives.
He would be worthy.
Sylar was the only one who would be worthy.
"I'm going to fix you and then we're going to have forever together. You. Me. And Claire. We will be all that is left in the world in the end and we will be perfect together. I wish you could see the future, Elle. It's as beautiful as you."
He cupped her cheek -cooler than he remembered it being except after her death- in his hand without waiting for permission and willed her to see the future he painted.
Sylar could understand the way anything worked in enough time, even Elle.