damned_institute | Day 50: Sun Room (4th Shift)

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Day 50: Sun Room (4th Shift)

The Sun Room was dark when Taura re-entered it; her eyes adjusted quickly, but not quickly enough to avoid one of the 'techs coming over to talk to her.

"Were you going to join us for the movie, Kitty?" she asked, waving a hand at what appeared to be a 2-D projector screen.

"Movie?" This was, apparently, the wrong question to ask, as the woman's face fell into a moue of practiced disappointment.

"You can't keep doing this to yourself, Kitty." Doing what, exactly, was something 'Kitty' was evidently supposed to know. Then the screen flicked on, and some sort of advertisement was playing while a staffer adjusted the volume. Oh. The term was unfamiliar, but entertainment hadn't changed that much.

"I mean, er, what movie is it?" Taura rumbled, keeping her voice low so as not to interrupt. That must have been the right question; the woman brightened back up and started explaining.

"King Kong!" she said, clearly expecting a reply. Then she sighed, and continued. "It's about a giant ape, brought back from an exploration," she began. "It's also a love story -- oh, just trust me. It's a classic."

"The ape falls in love?" That sounded a little outré, at least by Institute standards of entertainment. Not by Jacksonian ones, but those Taura had been just as pleased to leave behind.

"Oh, nothing like that. Well, the ape does fall in love -- but it's just a beast. Why, Fay Wray doesn't even come up to its waist." Taura blinked at her again. What did height have to do with it, anyway? She was leaning, just a little, without even realizing it. Perhaps looming would be a better word. The 'tech blinked back, and then finally the penny dropped. "Oh...oh. Maybe it wouldn't be to your taste, dear." And with that, she scurried off to adjust a chair that was already facing the screen quite adequately. Taura sighed, and slipped through the gathering crowd to the bulletin board.

[Zack]

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Talking to Kirk had been weirdly therapeutic, kind of like squeezing a stress relief ball even though you couldn't really get at its contents. Aside from clearing up the whole "Zachary" thing (which Sylar wasn't yet sure had been worth the risk), he hadn't been able to get anything out of Kirk – or at least, anything meaty about Spock. In fact, the kid on the bus had been a lot more forthcoming, but even if Sylar was able to track him down again, a lower-ranked soldier probably wouldn't know much more than the kid had already revealed. It looked like Sylar would just have to keep trying to get something out of the subject of his interest itself.

Which was... a drag. A real damn drag that Sylar didn't want to deal with, the way his head kept throbbing and his hands kept trembling as he trudged out of the courtyard. He still couldn't shake the echoes of that weird feeling from last night, of feeling disoriented, unstable, wrong. The more mundane pain that the bastard had left with all his cutting was acting up too, and Sylar realized as he entered the dim Sun Room that a movie hall's darkness would be a hell of a lot better for his eyes than sunlight, even with all that old-time scratchy audio. Reminded him of Dale Smithers all over again.

Not really caring about the movie itself, Sylar moved into one of the back rows, gingerly rubbing the front of his head as he made his way down the aisle. Not too far in was some blonde girl, but that was about it for this row. Hopefully she wasn't too chatt–

The movie's current scene changed to something bright, and the projection screen's glow suddenly illuminated the girl's face. Sylar froze.

Of all the days.

Sylar realized he'd unconsciously taken a step backwards. His breath had gone silent, his blood icy cold. A second passed, and then something else shot up to overtake his senses, a kind of blind, irrational rage. What the hell was he doing, trying to run from Claire Bennet? What the hell was even going through his head? Last night? Last night meant nothing. Nothing. That video feed, her voice–

Almost breathlessly, carelessly, he hissed: "Out at the movies without an escort, Claire? I'm shocked."

Okay, all things considered, Claire knew that she couldn't expect much from the patients here. It was an asylum, after all, and even if most people she'd met didn't seem to belong, she was sure that some of them would be better off. Still, it didn't help her from being a little creeped out, hedging on annoyed when she noticed someone standing awkwardly in the row she was seated in.

Was sitting down that hard? It wasn't like she was going to bite. It almost looked like he was going to go pick another row, but then he talked.

Claire could feel her blood run cold. Her mouth fell open a little in the shock and she was too stunned to even manage to crane her head for a few moments. When she finally managed to turn and look over at him, her heart was pounding out of her chest, making her ribs hurt from the strain. The screen had gone dark again, but even in the dark, she'd never forget that face. Truth be told, she probably recognized him better in the dark.

Somehow, despite all of the terror and slowly building rage, all she could think was how out of place the smiling face on his uniform's t-shirt looked on him. It was like a bad joke.

It took her that long to process what he'd actually said, because she was too busy fixating on his voice to manage much else. That voice had, in an instant, brought her back to her house in Costa Verde. She'd seen flashes of him dragging his finger through the air as he cut her head open, she'd seen him leaning over her as he violated her brain, and it was all interspersed with that sick smiling t-shirt.

Her gut told her to get up and run, but her stubbornness alone kept her rooted to her seat.

"I don't need an escort. I can take care of myself," she was spitting venom as she sneered up at him. It was hard not to take his words as an attack on the fact that he'd had to save her from Steve Canfield. Bile rose in her throat but she pushed it back. If this was supposed to end in some fucked up heart-to-heart like he'd gone for in the car on the ride back, she'd have to pass.

One thing was for sure, though, she wasn't getting her shift's worth of quiet time. Just another thing she could blame him for in her laundry list of offenses to raise against him.

"That right?" Sylar shot back, curling his lip as he took a slow step toward her. He shoved down the irrational panic that came with it, instead moving to place his hand on the back of a nearby chair and grip it tightly, reassuring himself as much as he was using it for leverage.

Claire was acting the same as she had the last time they'd met, trying to be tough, putting on a front to cover up the fact she was helpless and scared. Sylar remembered the time he'd been that close to tasting her beautiful ability. He could almost see it right there, behind her pretty, fearful eyes.

He leaned down toward her, grasping at the old feeling of power, the familiar satisfaction of seeing terror in someone else's face. But, as he did so, a realization dawned on him. As he looked at the girl he'd hunted down like an animal, he felt like he was staring at Spock again, into eyes that so closely reflected his own. He remembered the video feed. He remembered last night.

"Is that what you've been doing?" he asked quietly, eyes intense, unreadable. "Taking care of yourself? Because you sure looked like you needed your hero last time I saw you."

He took on a sneer of his own, strangely bitter. "You sure looked weak."

Oh, God, he was getting closer. Why was he getting closer? The impulse to cause a scene was already rising, she didn't need him making it worse. Her hand had found the side of her chair, like somehow, if he got much closer than he already had, she'd be able to throw it between them and run. Or hit him with it. Either option felt appealing, at this point. It was a strange place to be, stuck between wanting to turn and run until she couldn't anymore (given her ability, she wondered how long that would be) and wanting to stab him until he died for good. Or until she was tired of stabbing him. Again, there was no saying how long that would take, but the nurses would probably pull her off of him before that.

The fact that she'd seriously considered the possibility that far had her kind of concerned, but this was Sylar. It wasn't as though she was inherently that violent.

And really, anyone would react the same if he'd taunted them like he was taunting her. Bringing up him saving her? What did he want, a thank you? He'd get a plastic fork in the eye before he got that. It was really to bad she didn't have that glass from the previous night on her. That would have helped this conversation go a little more smoothly. It would have helped her feel more in control, instead of letting him menace her like this.

"Keep this up, and you're going to be the one who needs a hero to save you. Then we'll see how weak I look." Somehow, she managed to work up a cocky, challenging smirk onto her face, the hate still coming through her expression in waves. A threat. Yeah, that would help. She certainly felt more confident, even if it was mostly bluster. "The thing is," hopefully she could get under his skin and make it worse, "I don't think you have anyone who would save you."

For a second, Sylar froze. Something flashed over his face, something that felt like last night, whenever the doctor had injected something new into him, had flipped a switch and sent electricity down his spine and skin like a lightning rod. Had forced him, changed him. Had shown him Sylar, and Gabriel, and so many others. Had showed him a man who was no one at all.

And then it was gone. He tilted his head, considering, like nothing had happened. He smiled.

"You'd be surprised how many people would run to rescue little ol' me. Literally."

Slowly relaxing, Sylar slid into a seat just two down from Claire's, draping his arms over the backs of the neighboring seats as he slouched. He wanted to make sure she knew how little this bothered him. He wanted to show her how his power, right now, over her, was just as potent as it'd ever been. He was weak here, yes, but that also meant Claire herself had been made much more... vulnerable. She'd kept hiding from him for so long, only popping up here and there on his radar, but she was still in his web, and he'd catch her. One day. When her spirit got broke and the fun ran out, and Peter Petrelli was watching. He'd catch her, any way he could.

On the grainy projection, the monster snatched up the girl and pounded his chest. Sylar smirked, then glanced at Claire.

"Haven't seen your daddy around. Discharged for... good behavior?"

Even in the darkness, the twitch in Sylar's expression didn't go missed by Claire. Maybe because she was so hyper-fixated on trying to take in every bit of advantageous observation she could that her nails were digging into her sweating palms, breaking skin.

It'd probably be painful for anyone but her, but Little Miss Miracle Gro didn't even notice.

Instead, she noticed that he seemed to ease into the chair, and she noticed the way he seemed to engulf the chairs around him as his own territory. Great. No one to sit between them and diffuse the situation. Where was Peter? But, no. She had to force herself to stop hoping that he'd come help her. She didn't need him to come help her, she was strong enough to do it on her own. That's what she was preaching to Sylar, wasn't it?

As he spoke, she only found herself more and more enraged -- the fact that he had allies alone was disconcerting. How many? Why? -- until … Her father? He'd been in the Institute. A fact that Peter had somehow neglected to mention during their talk, and here Sylar was passing it out casually.

Maybe he didn't realize yet that she'd forgotten the time she'd spent here. That alone was something to even the playing field, wasn't it? She fought hard to keep the surprise out of her expression and instead focused on sneering in his general direction, shoulders tensing as the beast on the screen roared. Claire swallowed hard. He thought he had her cornered. She'd prove it was just the other way around.

Sylar wasn't the hunter here. Not anymore.

"Do I look like a nurse?" She hissed, leaving off the much desired or his babysitter line off in the interests of keeping her emotional response to a minimum. Sylar had caught a good enough glimpse of her feelings on her father during the Canfield debacle, she didn't need to give him a one-sided encore. "I haven't seen him." Not yet. But, it was better to let him assume that sentence ended in 'not since …' "I'm sure he'll be touched to hear you're keeping tabs on him." Touched? Not really. Concerned. Horrified. Then again, it went both ways, so Noah probably wouldn't even be surprised.

In her mind, she could hear him trying to convince Canfield to kill Sylar. To force him into the vortex.

Yeah. He probably wouldn't be surprised in the slightest that it went both ways, she reminded herself bitterly. Again, she was finding herself wishing she had some sharp implement on her. It just didn't feel right, being this close to Sylar and not having something to hurt him with. It did a good job of reminding her just why she was going to need to go hunting for a real weapon tonight. As if she could forget.

Sylar glanced up from the screen to see a nurse prowling at the side of the rows, thinking vaguely on how much he could get away with in the darkness of the makeshift movie theater. Not much, he was guessing from the amount of staff around, but he was used to that. Almost pathetically used to it, but he could allow himself that weakness if he still had someone to actively torment. Claire's tough show didn't fool him at all; Bennet was gone and had been for a while now. His little girl was trying to grow up without him, but so far, she was only succeeding at acting like it. That was the problem with sheltered kids: they never grew up past where their parents wanted them to; they were only cherished as far as they could make their caretakers proud.

Sylar's knuckles had gone white where they gripped the back of a nearby chair. He didn't know why.

"I'm sure he will be," Sylar echoed as if unconcerned, keeping his eyes on the screen. He craned his head to glance at the snack tables behind them. No popcorn? Lame. "And I'm sure he'll be even more touched to hear about how I'm keeping an eye on you. Gotta be careful with kids in a place like this. So much in danger with their abilities gone, so... vulnerable. No safety, no powers, no chance of escape..."

His eyes slowly slid back toward Claire as he steadily turned toward the screen.

"You never know what's going to get them when the lights go out."

He paused, waiting for the familiar satisfaction to well up in him, and it did, to a certain extent. But that extent was cheap, and smaller than it had been yesterday. He was smaller than he had been yesterday, and watching Claire Bennet try so hard to act grown up made him feel pity for someone long gone.

Every time he looked back at her, Claire could feel her chest and shoulders try to shake, but she wasn't letting it happen. The corners of her mouth twitched, but it was the only indicator she was willing to provide to show just how good a job he was doing of getting under her skin.

Keeping an eye on her. Why did he need to keep an eye on her? And why did it sound so much more dangerous than apologetic? He tried to tell her he understood what he did to her. If he understood, then why would he ever try to step in and take over 'watching out for her' for her father? It didn't make sense. Something didn't add up.

Or maybe he'd just given up on trying to play nice.

At his last statement, a shiver ran up her spine that caused her to gasp quietly. Luckily, it was covered by the soundtrack of the movie growing louder as the scene grew more intense. That was right. She'd nearly let herself forget, but when it was dark, when all the doors opened …

What was she supposed to do? She really would be a rat caught in a maze, and whether he wanted anything else from her or not, she didn't like the idea. In fact, she just about the opposite of liked that idea. She'd rather throw herself in front of a train than be stuck in the Institute at night with him. Sure, it had occurred to her earlier when Peter was warning her, but while she was preparing for the night, she'd let it slip her mind. She'd let herself get comfortable.

But, here it was, her worst fear, confirmed. He'd be out there. And he'd be looking for her.

She felt her fear twist into rage in her gut. This wasn't fair. This wasn't right, that he had this kind of power over her. That he thought he could just get away with making her tremble in fear and hide from him. He should be the one hiding, after what he did. No, she could take care of herself. She'd done fine with Canfield, if Sylar and her father hadn't interfered -- Claire was certain. She could take care of herself now, she could help people, protect them. She could stop the bad guys.

She could stop Sylar. Make him pay for everything he'd done -- not just to her, though that was a strong motivator, but to everyone else. Slowly, she turned to stare very hard at him. The fear, the delicate demeanor, any trace of it was gone from her expression, replaced with pure, unadulterated loathing. She placed her hand firmly on the seat beside her and leaned closer, voice dropping.

"If you come near me. If you try to hurt me, or if I hear you try to hurt any of my family?" She took a moment to try and level her voice, which was now shaking with fury, by taking a deep breath. It didn't work. "I'll personally make sure that you can never hurt anyone again. Don't you dare think I can't."

Sylar didn't mind waiting on Claire's reply. In fact, he didn't mind waiting for most things if he knew they were shaping to end up in the middle of his lap, and from the way he could feel Claire's hatred radiating off her, things were going exactly the way he wanted them to. This was how Sylar operated: subtly, slowly, in the shadows, urging on emotions and biding his time until someone misstepped right in front of him. Usually that misstep was because of fear, but he'd obviously used up that resource with Claire and in the end, he didn't really mind. Anger could be more fun than fear: fear paralyzed while anger enabled, and with anger, people did some ugly things that they once would have never dreamed of.

Like upright Peter and sweet little Claire both swearing to kill him in the space of a week. Sylar slowly closed his eyes as he heard her words near his ear, a smile spreading across his face at the sheer predictability of it. He threatened, she threatened back. He wondered what would happen if he shoved.

But again, his satisfaction was limited, like something had put a lock on it and held it back from growing to full size. Some people did ugly things. Some people became ugly.

"What's your plan, then?" Sylar's eyes snapped open as he turned his head and looked at Claire. "Keep talking to me? Bleed on me? I appreciate the act, I really do, but if you haven't noticed already, I'm still alive and kicking."

Even after last night. Even with a big fat bandage on his head and needle bruises down his neck, but Claire could only see so much in the light casted by the old movie, and what she did see would make her underestimate him. Grinning, he raised a hand to his head and pressed slowly at his temple. "So many things going out of their way to get me, and look at you! Sitting right here, next to me, just inches away... "

He leaned even closer than she had dared, looking between her angry blue eyes.

"And you won't even raise a finger."

His arrogant response just made her shake with further fury. So much for any kind of redemption. So much for feeling sorry for what he'd done and whatever other lies he'd had to tell Angela to get himself a position working with her father. Her stomach churned at the very thought and she realized just how badly she wanted to rise to his bait.

More than anything, in that moment, she wanted to reach out and grab and punch and kick and jab -- whatever she could do to hurt him. She'd smash her chair over his head if she had to, at this point, and not stop until he had stopped moving and was lying in a pool of his own blood.

The degree of her own violence surprised even Claire, and it was that thought that she latched onto in order to keep from launching herself at him. So, she took a deep breath instead and just worked on keeping up that snide, murderous smirk.

"You're right," her voice was shaking with fury, as hard as she tried to keep it level, "I can't do anything. Not now. Not with all these …" she looked thoughtful, taking another deep breath and looking around for emphasis, then letting her eyes fall back on him, "people around." He wasn't worth ruining the trust she was building with the staff from playing nice. "But, like you said. They're not always going to be around."

She mirrored his actions, leaning in and fixing her gaze firmly on his, almost daring him to do something.

"You never know what's going to happen when the lights go out." Throwing his own words in his face felt good. Even if she couldn't feel nearly so confident that, when the lights did inevitably go out and all the doors opened, she'd be able to hold her own if she did run into him, especially given her limited access to a decent weapon to defend herself. A flashlight and a shard of glass was only going to get her so far.

She needed to avoid him tonight. Despite her threats, she knew it was better if she chose flight for now and lived to fixate on making him feel just as trapped and helpless and hurt as she had another time. So, she'd spend tonight finding a way to remedy her own weapon situation, and then consider it again when she really did have something to bash his head in with.

Oh, Sylar was fully aware of what could happen when the lights went off. Blood, gore, torture... if anyone was well-versed in the routines of this place, it was him, and he wasn't lying when he said that he had much bigger fish to fry than some screwed-up teen, healing powers notwithstanding. There was a certain... discomfort in seeing Claire Bennet, or anyone else he'd been forced to face last night, but discomfort couldn't kill a man, not like a mutant freak of nature or some surgeon with a god complex.

Sylar slowly rubbed at his temple a little harder, but that was his only show of weakness. He smirked calmly as he leaned away from Claire, glancing over her face as if to gauge it as a whole.

"Learning from the best," he murmured, almost appreciatively. "I... admire that, Claire."

But he was sure that she didn't, and that was the important thing here. His smile widened as made the hand at his temple into a fist and jerked his thumb back at the nurses.

"And I'm sure that your father admires them. With all the abduction and torture... must be like a home away from home for you."

If Bennet was really gone from here, then he was probably a sore spot, and given what Sylar had read in the Company files before Mohinder's return to his apartment, good ol' Noah wasn't exactly an active member of the organization anymore. Possibly to shield his daughter? The protectiveness he'd shown back in Odessa had definitely been that of a caring parent, but in that case, why the hell had he entered his line of work in the first place? Had he been blackmailed when Claire had first manifested? From what Sylar could tell, he was a true believer in the Company's cause, but people did change – just not all that often, and not all that surprisingly. Still, it was a mystery Sylar hadn't really thought on, and given the key figures involved, the subject could maybe do with a little more... investigation.

Edited 2010-08-14 23:55 (UTC)

The way he said it made her want to throw up. As if that was anything knew. Everything Sylar did made her want to throw up, even when he was saving her life. That was probably the worst part. It was like he thought he could get away with all of this; like he thought that they were suddenly similar in some way. Like he could talk about their humanity and their shared experiences. Like he understood her in some way.

But, he didn't. And whether he'd looked inside her head, or … felt her pain or taken her ability or not, he never would understand, because he was a monster and he deserved to really feel the pain he'd caused her. But not through sympathy. Not through fake apologies. He deserved to feel it by having it happen to him. The disgust in her expression made her jaw shake and her face twitch, contorting slightly in sheer detest.

"Don't you dare talk about him." Yeah, so, he'd fucked up. Majorly. Being Sylar's partner, betraying him, all of it. But, her father was still miles ahead of Sylar in her books and she wasn't going to let him sit here and try to backseat father her again. She'd had enough of that on the drive home only a couple days ago. "What he does? What they do? None of it's as bad as what you've done. People make mistakes. People follow orders that they shouldn't and make bad decisions. You? You're not even a person. You're a monster. You always will be, and I'm not going to rest until I see you dead."

Talk about a sore spot. She walked right into that one, honestly, and it didn't even seem to occur to her. She was too busy fuming about the fact that she was this close and she couldn't even throw herself a few chairs over and strangle him. As if it would work. As if he would feel anything. So, she just continued, furious but still hissing all of her threats in a low growl for the sake of the rest of the rest of the institute as well as for the sake of privacy and not drawing attention, something she'd never quite mastered but continued to strive for.

"So, you can keep your admiration. I'll just take your head on a stick."

Sylar might've been hearing Claire's words, but he wasn't reacting much to them, instead staring at the movie screen in front of him and thinking a little harder on the info that she'd so graciously spilled for him. Speaking about her father and the Company in present tense, huh? Bennet must've still been working for them after all, at least in some capacity, which meant that either Mohinder's files had been designed to keep him out of the loop or Claire didn't come from the same point in time as Sylar did. Maybe from before Kirby Plaza? Or... maybe after. Claire was throwing around a lot more anger than fear, which meant long-term coping, which meant the passage of time.

Then again, there were other factors at play here, like Bennet being a conniving bastard and the times that Sylar had already encountered Claire around the Institute. The only way to know what was in her pretty head would be to prod deeper, trip a couple more triggers. Claire wasn't thinking straight right now; she was throwing Sylar's words back in his face, which meant that if he hit on the right topic, she'd babble on about it as if by command. The trick was to keep her here, keep her stupid, and keep her seeing red.

Given what he'd seen so far, he didn't think it'd be particularly hard.

"Shhhh," he hissed, pressing a finger to his lips. He glanced at her with exaggerated indignation and then gestured at the screen. "You're ruining the movie."

If she thought Sylar wanted her to shut up, she'd keep talking. If she thought she wasn't getting to him, she'd work at it more. Beautiful.

"Besides," he added nonchalantly, draping his arm back over the seat next to him and letting a arrogant smirk touch his lips. "We're the same, me and him. We... collect people, study them, find out how they work. And you. Well..."

He turned deliberately to face Claire, fixing his gaze on hers.

"You're his perfect little rat in his perfect little cage."

His eyes wandered almost leisurely to her forehead and brought a finger to his own, drawing a line across it.

"And I can't even imagine the things he's seen in that perfect little head."

And she'd been doing so well, too.

For all of his taunting, pretending her words didn't mean anything, and about her dad and the company and the movie and all of those similarities the he liked to latch onto, she managed to keep a straight face. She even managed to let her rage remain at a low boil while he had the audacity to shush her. But the one thing she couldn't stand for was watching him sit there and pretend like he didn't know exactly what was up there. She wasn't going to sit there and let him scare her with something that he'd already done, something he'd have no reason to do again.

That was one thing he couldn't hold over her head. Because he'd never be able to hurt her again. No one could. She couldn't feel enough to really get hurt.

The worry about making a scene was pushed to the back of her mind. It didn't matter how much she wanted to stay below the radar here, because she'd rather strangle Sylar at this point and the nurses should just be grateful she didn't go for the throat. Instead, she just planted a hand on the seat between them and leaned across, no longer bothering to keep her voice down as she swatted his hand away from his face with her free hand.

"You think because he … humors you that you're the same? Don't kid yourself. He's nothing like you," there was an unspoken concession that her dad wasn't all that much of a hero, either, though. A kind of nuance in her growled tone that indicated that he still hadn't made it back into her good books. But, that was the best Sylar was going to get on the subject.

"My dad's not the one who cut it open. You should know better than anyone what's up there, right? It's too bad you don't remember, because you're not getting another look." Her speech was rushed and heated, and immediately afterward she got to her feet and stomped away, the sheer haste of her flight from the chair causing it to screech loudly over the tile floor. One of the nurses tried to stop her to talk to her, but she was trying to get out of the room before the furious tears that were already threatening to fall from her cheeks. She was bound and determined not to let Sylar see them.

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Day 50: Sun Room (4th Shift)

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