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WHO: Sylar and Sarissa Theron
WHERE: Heropa.
WHEN: Postdated to after Thanksgiving.
WHAT: No one saw this coming!
WARNINGS: Violence between people in a relationship, leading to character death. References to suicidal ideation and past domestic violence.

[ If you've ever walked down a busy street full of executives on their way too and from working lunches and felt an impulse to suddenly scream, or driving on a nighttime road in the senseless rain and static-filled radio and considered twisting the steering wheel wildly, or leaned over the edge of a bridge and wanted to follow the tug of gravity, and all for the sake of simple disruption, then maybe this could justify Gabriel Gray showing up on Sarissa's doorstep at a comfortable morning hour and knowing exactly what will happen.

It's the same thing that always happens.

He looks just a shade different from usual, in that he looks healthy and whole, but his hair is finger-combed only and there is a light dusting of grey making his clothing indistinctly sooty rather than his usual solid shadow. He hasn't slept, but it's hard to tell, and by the time he's standing in her living room, he hasn't said anything.

Something is wrong, probably, but Sarissa doesn't have a chance to inquire properly before his large hands seek and close against the sides of her face, steering her into a kiss. Prior to this moment, and even after Sarissa made her encroachments of his personal space, even after barriers were broken down, she might have always felt like she was pushing against inhibition, against his own sense of control. This is different. ]

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( She has become well-accustomed to being the chatty one. Or, perhaps more specifically, the one that kneejerks flippant, ridiculous comments and grins widely in the face of Gabriel's quiet, wry seeming responses. It's grounding, she's found, that steadiness. It's different from Georgia, aside from the obvious - with Georgia it had always been burning, passion and laughter and arguments and dramatics. Georgia was a star, bright and probably too scorching a thing to try to hold.

Gabriel was calm. It was like the relief of cold against a burn, to be able to lean against someone that steady. He wasn't without his own dramatics and passions, it wasn't that, but it felt... healthier, for want of a better word. Slower, careful, mapped out. It's not a surprise that he isn't chatty when he comes in, but it's apparent something is troubling him, and the kiss is a surprise. Sarissa felt like she had lead in most things, thus far, for all her hesitance and double thinking and caution about approaching another human being with the radical concept of romance in mind after the relative disaster that had been her engagement.

She leans into it, hands anchoring at Gabriel's waist and fingers curling into his shirt for a long moment before she pulls back the bare amount necessary to break the kiss. )

Hey. Good to see you too. ( Bemused, pleased... Bemused. ) What's up?

Edited 2016-11-13 03:29 (UTC)

[ The kiss is nice, and not enough. Sarissa, herself, is nice, and not enough. The relative immortality he took from Kavinsky is very nice, and not enough. She breaks the kiss and he doesn't back off, his fingers in her hair, but he doesn't push further than that either.

That now familiar thrum and prickle of electricity is just detectable, fine-hair raising, like a shiver. ]

I stepped off the edge of the Carlton building today, [ he says, not quite like he's talking about the weather, but certainly a lot more understated than it should be, despite the fact there is a sharper sort of intensity in his manner, in his voice. ] It was early, no one saw. And even though you know it won't hurt when you hit the sidewalk, it was still scary?

[ That curl of question in his voice is oddly youthful, a little wobbled out. ]

It's an ability I have, now. I can't die.

Edited 2016-11-13 03:53 (UTC)

( It's a bit like having the floor beneath you suddenly, unexpectedly, give way. Something can be sudden but still expected, but this was—

The steadiness she had been counting on is jerked away, and it makes her breathing stagger, the hands loosely holding his shirt both gripping tighter. One of them releases, and it's only so her hand can press against his chest instead, to track the beat of his heart. Not like Clara, who was trapped between heartbeats. Not like the other people here who were dead but not dead even if she didn't know the specifics. They had died at home, Gabriel had died here, and his heart was still beating. Suddenly she remembers what she said to Chloe, something flippant about being impressed the day she meets someone here who hasn't died, and she feels sick. )

Why? ( Quiet and breathless and hurting, but hurting because he must have been - must be? - hurting. The words feel like she has to squeeze them out with air she hasn't inhaled. ) Are you—

( okay, she wants to say, but he isn't. He obviously isn't, and she doesn't know how to respond. Years working in the rescue division, in handling emergencies, and when it comes to those in her own life she's always entirely unprepared. )

[ He is half in and out of his own head; whatever is going on, complex mechanisms, wheels ticking by, they capture his attention almost completely. At the same time, he is still very aware of her as a living, breathing organism, captured in his arms. The change in her breathing, the press of her hand that can detect his own steady, beating heart and the slight ripple of scar tissue felt beneath his shirt. Pupil dilation, the microscopic muscle twinges that transform her expression.

Very aware. Flesh, bone, and the answers hidden in them. But she's speaking, too, and he has to blink to register them. ]

Indestructible, [ Sylar says, as if to answer her broken question. ] But there's only so much you can do with indestructible when your existence is just so--

[ His hands grip a little harder, enough to tug the fine strands of her hair caught in his fingers, little prickles of pain across her scalp.

He doesn't say it. Ordinary. ]

I took it. I thought it'd be enough. Unfortunately-- [ His rue is more affect, as if this were banter. ] Nothing ever is. I can't stop thinking about you.

( The fingers in her hair go from pleasant (reassuring, grounding, intimate, some mix of all those things) to hurting, and her mouth tugs very slightly. She doesn't flinch, she learned to toughen up years ago, save for when she's being purposefully dramatic or when she's so beaten down she can't hold it together any more or when things are emotional, moreso than physical. When people start to have a place with her, though, then it's harder not to flinch. )

It's okay. Hey, Gabriel.

( Sarissa brings her hand up to cup his jaw. He wasn't steady - that was okay. She was better at being steady when it was what someone else needed from her. Sometimes she slipped into it automatically, a counterbalance, and with a slow exhale she nods and tries to muster a smile. I took it confuses her, but there's so much that's unknown here. )

I'm not going anywhere. Okay? I know— I know how it is, feeling hollow. I'm not gonna pretend I know exactly how you feel, but I know it gets better. This place and the powers it gives us, it can be screwed up. You didn't take anything, and you don't have to... prove anything, or change yourself because of them. Y'know?

( She smiles, very gently. ) I'm here for you.

[ His eyes hood a little at that touch to his face, and the words that come next. His name. Guilt and regret probably feel like poison for most people, corrosive and insidious, while for him, it's more like a splinter, lodged deeply, in need of removal, and it niggles a little here and less because of her kindness but because she just doesn't know.

But she will. Maybe the sooner, the better, even if in the immediate moment, it's awfully seductive to be held by someone and given words of comfort. ]

You're right, [ he says, and he lets go of her hair enough to card fingers through it, palm gentle against the curve of her skull. It's happening, he can feel it; the numbing effect as the rest of the world melts away, like ice, like cotton wool, sinking between synapses. ] And honestly, I don't think I can.

[ Change, that is.

But he can take. A muscle seizing quantity of electricity shocks from his palms and into her body, and he lets her slip from his grasp onto the ground. His heart begins to race, familiar, intoxicating. ]

You don't have to.

( A gentle, quiet echo of what she has already said, but she knows more than anyone that hearing something once doesn't make it any easier to absorb. Lessons don't come immediately. Positives take time to learn, to try and take messages and layer them into yourself the same way that negativity has been able to build up and turn your own body toxic.

Maybe she isn't very good at this, but she'll try. And maybe they are a pretty new thing, this they that they are, but they're still them. Still important, and even if they as a they don't work out in the long term, she can still be there for him now, and in the future as well. That was just— that was what people who cared about each other did. He'd cared enough to help a stranger in a bar fight, and she cared enough to help someone she liked and that was important to her, even if it hadn't deepened into something beyond liking yet.

And then shock cracks through her nerves. Her muscles seize and her heart trips, and her body isn't hers to control, nervous system revolting against her as she hits the ground. He lost control. It was like her memory powers, he lost control. This would be fine, they both just needed to be in control. )

[ He has lost control, but it's the wrong kind of control. The voltage is calculated to incapacitate but not kill, carefully considered, and there's no sudden thump of his knees next to her, no rambling apology, no anguish. Sylar breathes out as if something in him has loosened, a kind of bleak, joyless relief.

Sylar holds out a hand, and a rope of electricity leaps from his palm to hit the nearest power outlet, and the lights go out. Brilliant Floridian sun is still pouring merrily through the windows. The fridge has stopped humming. Somewhere else in the house, the surge makes a light fixture explode with a distant, musical tinkle of glass.

He looks down at Sarissa again. That kind of flatness in his eyes has taken on a new quality; less receptive and observant, more sharkishly ambivalent.

Smoothly, he descends into a crouch, elbows on knees. ]

I take abilities, [ he explains. ] I open people's skulls and I can read what makes them tick and copy it perfectly. Except for the electricity, I took that one just through-- [ His eyes glaze, briefly, thoughtful. ] --some kind of mutual understanding, I guess. Shared pain. [ He refocuses, raises an eyebrow. Facetious; ] With a girl.

And I dunno if it's this place, or you, or me, but it doesn't work like that anymore.

( He doesn't draw back or panic or apologise. He doesn't ask if she's okay or try to fix it. It's an instinctive thing, the moment of realisation, and she feels something in herself that she'd been carefully patching up rub raw, pieces being pulled away, like wood splintering and snapping as a pieces of carpentry are pried ruthlessly apart.

(With a girl. It's a small and petty detail in the sea of revelations and actions that have played out here (paralysis, betrayal, threats), but it is an additional insult and it makes her jaw spasm before she bares her teeth.)

Her breath is a rasp, like the sound of a wet stretch of paper being slowly torn. Mutual understanding. She wonders if that's why this is happening - because she didn't throw herself in as quickly as she should have, and there's a guilty twist in that even despite all the logical evidence before her. The guilt and the shame that comes with it sparks a counter-reaction, and she struggles against her own nervous system paralysing her. )

Don't. ( Tightly; her throat feels like gravel, and her hands won't move. She can make heat flare in her hands the same way Gabriel had forced lightning through her skin. In another room she can hear the quiet chatter of a parrot, and it feels so completely out of place; there is so much silence in the wake of electricity and everything else stopping. The only sounds are Gabriel's voice, Mendel's chatter, and the sound of the world outside still moving while she lies on the floor.

The worst crimes unfold in people's own homes. She can remember it. Her mind is home to all manner of horrors, and some of it is all written in sound, from days when Sarissa was so small and the most she could do was hide and be quiet. There was pleading and pain and a visceral horror rises in her, echoes of her mother's voice taking different shape. ) Don't hurt my sisters.

( White sparks flare about her palms, though she can't move, not matter how she strains to. Her mouth is caught in a snarl that is as terrified as it is vicious. ) You're not gonna take anything from me, and I swear, if you even think of hurting them I will destroy you.

You mean your test-tube baby girl group?

[ It's an easy kind of cruelty, unthinking, while his eyes track towards the warning signs of light spitting from Sarissa's hands. Fascinated. Hungry. He forces himself to meet her eyes when he speaks again. ]

If you don't want them hurt, then they should stay away from me.

[ He shifts to balance a knee against the hardwood floor, reaching then to grab her just above the knee so as best to drag her closer, easy strength and roughly handling. Fingers of electricity leap off of his skin, smarting and wild. He's not afraid of her own sparking. ]

Because if they love you like you love them, they'll think they can come after me. You wouldn't want that, would you, Sarissa?

( For a moment, Sarissa's breath catches. For a time he had ice, the relief of cold. Now, instead, the wintery effect of him seems to flood her senses, at paralytic as the electricity he sent through her. There is a moment where she is still and silent, save for a soft shudder of breath and a tremble at her mouth.

She can imagine it. Sarah going in guns blazing - possibly literally - it the first thing that came to mind, the fury in her about the corpses before, the worry in Alison's voice when she'd listened to that message over and over before calling back and how desperately sad Cosima had been just to see her burned. They couldn't be collateral in this.

Sarissa wouldn't let them be hurt by this. Not in an aftermath, and not with discovering a ruin. His hand is grasping her leg, and the contact of skin on skin makes her lip catch in a snarl. Fireworks she can control. Memories have occurred many times over and she can't control it, not yet, but stopping the momentum of something is so much harder than setting it in motion. She's always been better at swinging her fists than blocking punches. Gabriel drags her closer, leaves scorches on the wooden floors from her hands as the the curves of her spine and her hips pressing painfully into the surface, and she grasps for memories the way she might otherwise scrabble for something very heavy or very sharp to swing. Her mind finds purchase on something, and she shoves it towards him as viciously as she can. A hook-like feeling catches behind her lungs, and there is a sick kind of satisfaction in knowing she chose it, this time.

The memory is a place that's cold, with low light. An abandoned seeming office, carpets stripped back to reveal, Sarissa standing with binoculars as she watches. The context doesn't matter, why she's there or how or the fact that she's toting surveillance equipment and weaponry. What matters is this: the cut of winter air in a room with no heat, and the sudden fracture of glass, webbing out from two points of focus. It's quick and agonising: two shots to the abdomen, tearing through the left side just beneath her ribs.

It's not enough. There is another memory, a back up swing, of Sarissa on the floor, shoulder exploding with the same kind of dizzyingly sharp heat and pain that only seems to throb and expand and spike, but now there is someone pressing down on the wound. Theron, come on, stay with me— the voice is a distant echo. Its not the point and it's not the most significant part of the memory. Pain is the point, and she tries to keep pushing it, looping it over as she struggles against paralysis.

The backlash is that she relives the pain as well, but she's lived through this before, is braced for it, and she feels her right hand able to ball into a fist as she pushes herself to move, to just move, as she strikes at Gabriel with her right hand - the rest of her body still unable to comply, but heat sparking from this one weapon she has to her. )

Edited 2016-11-13 07:29 (UTC)

[ He'd seen a flaming firework crash into Kavinsky's shoulder. He'd watched Kavinsky curse and laugh while he put out his own shirt with slaps of his hand. He's plummeted 700 feet into concrete. Sylar's movements are of the bold certainty of someone who considers himself untouchable, and capable of withstanding pain as necessary.

The attack comes from within, where it's soft, sensitive, flinching, in contrast to impervious skin.

The daze of memories playing out behind his eyeballs shove aside the rest of his capacity for sensory input, jaw going slack and pupils going small in dark, dark eyes. When she strikes him, it's short and sharp enough to knock him aside, sparks and heat catching against clothing, little embers burning, the smell of cotton scorching. Despite everything, he is no physical fighter, and spills clumsily on the hard wood floor. The memory does its part to drive him down, the impossible pain, the dizziness, the daze.

He bares his teeth, a hand coming down to lay flat against the floor, grounding himself. ]

( Sarissa made a lot of promises to herself when she was younger. The first had been that she'd never love, when she saw what loving did to her mother. The way that the Elysia Theron was not marble brought to life under the hands of Sarissa's father, but a statue being slowly disfigured and compromised. She was losing pieces of herself and giving way, and Sarissa had been six years old when she told herself love was too dangerous.

She'd been older when she'd realised it wasn't so simple. That she loved men and that she loved women, and that maybe she loved people who didn't fit into either category so simply and cleanly - that declaring she would never do a certain thing was not a realistic promise to keep, especially when love entered the equation. That love was not necessarily so terrible had been a lesson she'd absorbed sometime in her teens, when she realised that her uncle and aunt and other people didn't guard away secrets the way the way her parents had, and that love was not equal to wearing bruises under your clothes.

One promise she'd made when she was older, though, and that was that she would never hit someone she cared about. Not family, not someone she was involved with. Love was not expressed through violence. She might rage and burn, but her temper never stretched to striking those she cared for. And this is promise it hurts to break, because she does care about him. She cares about Gabriel Gray, even when electricity has burned through her and he has declared what he'll do, because it doesn't seem like it can be real when she has been friends with his man for months, and dating him for a slice of that, too.

She twists, managing to push herself up on her left forearm, shaky and unstable as it might be, and she jerks her right leg to kick him - knee or groin, it's hard to aim well when your body is barely within control. Still, like she told Darlene - eyes, ears, knees, groin. People had all manner of weak spots, and maybe—

Maybe something's gone wrong in his head, because he wasn't sounding like the guy she's known for so long. Or maybe that's a delusion, and maybe she can just escape, and that'll be enough. )

Edited 2016-11-13 10:46 (UTC)

[ The kick she lands finds the side of his knee, hard enough to cause a sprain, but instead, it seems to collide with someone braced for it, borderline immune to pain. Hard muscles and stubborn, locking bone, and although it makes him pause, it doesn't knock him down like her first flailing strike did.

His eyes are on her again, now, a mad-dog locking of eyes. ]

New trick, [ he says, a tough breathless. His ears whining, adrenaline bitter in his blood. Rather than engage in a messy fight on the ground, he retracts out of range so he can get to his feet. Where flame and heat has burned through his clothing in small spots, all that can be seen is healthy skin. ] I'll make sure I don't miss anything else while I rummage around in there.

[ In contrast to her own turmoil, his manner and will seems to have resolved -- no longer the shaken up man she found on her doorstep mere minutes ago, but close to blank, devoid of rage or confusion or softness. Whatever he's seeing, it isn't, really, Sarissa.

Sylar raises a hand, and blue-white electricity crackles between his fingers, gathering like a little ball of energy, ready to leap.

Gathering a charge. ]

Edited 2016-11-13 11:01 (UTC)

( The problem is that knees are hard, and Sarissa's foot feels jarred with the impact and his resilience against it. Indestructible, fine. )

Fuck you.

( Not an especially witty or clever response, but neither are especially high on her priority list at the present moment. She is focusing all her power to her hands, a white glow that spits sparks and exists just beyond her palm, expanding. It's not always fast, this power, and it's harder when her hand is still shuddering, Sarissa holding her right wrist steady with her left hand. She can't outrun electricity, and she'd tell him to get out but if he sought out her family instead—

A burst of heat bursts forward, a shower of sparks exploding against Gabriel's face, his eyes as she scrambles to stand, to move. )

[ He doesn't move. He doesn't fire first. His posture is only this side of defensive as he watches her steel and steady herself, absorbed in his own study for just long enough that it becomes apparent to anyone watching that he wants to see her power in action. Real action, not just beach party special effects. That it's directed at him is a natural consequence.

She fires. Gabriel puts up an arm reflectively, a guttural growl at that sear of heat -- but nothing more. There's nothing to catch on, only his clothing, heat touching black material with embering fingerprints.

His hand turns, and lightning, jagged and clean, hits Sarissa just as she has her feet under her.

Her heart stops. Brain activity stops.

Time doesn't transpire for her, but it transpires for Gabriel. He sits for a while and he watches the sun crawl in increments and gradually shift the angle of the light coming in through the window, his ankles crossed and arms roping around his knees. She won't sense his footsteps creaking through her home, the opening of a door, the shutting of a door. She won't even feel when he lifts her corpse into his arms and takes her into the bedroom, placing her on the mattress.

But maybe, just as blood is thinking about moving again, as natural electricity makes neurons fire, as her heart twinges like a flinching sea creature, something in her will register the grating hum of the electric knife just as it pierces her skin, her skull, and blackness and silence devours her once more.

He's pushing it for time when he leaves.

When she wakes up, a gallon of blood will have soaked through her mattress. Loose hair in her gory pillows. The cap of her skull and the redraggled scalp of flesh and hair has been replaced, leaving her with a neat, still healing crown where skin and bone was split. Where blood might have pooled in her eyesockets, masculine hands have cleared her face, some, of the scarlet turning dark in the open air. She will wake to this, but, he expects, not alone. ]

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