log; complete

[makes-you-tick.livejournal.com]

When; About now? That is, very early Sunday morning.
Rating; R for violence, blood, and trauma. It's a Saw trap.
Characters; Gabriel "Sylar" Gray (makes_you_tick) and Emma Pillsbury (peopletalktome)
Summary; Thanks to a curse, Sylar and Emma are trapped in a horrible machine, with only a force of will separating them between life and death.
Log;

Sylar knew before he opened his eyes that everything was wrong, beyond belief. He'd lived through getting impaled enough to know that there was something unyielding placed through his shoulders. And it hurt, hurt in a way that he hadn't hurt since he'd been placed in prison by the deities. His back was pressed against straight metal in uncomfortable places and his legs were bound tight at the calf. He had been placed in a standing position, which must've been fun while he was unconscious. He could hear someone else breathing, someone close. His eyes flicked open in alarm.

This was much worse than having his attacker standing over him, unfortunately. Not more than two feet in front of him was Emma Pillsbury. She was clearly in the same position he was, with a thin (but sturdy) metal bar tracing over her clavicles in a downward V shape. Four metal loops came out from the bar and pierced her skin, leaving behind small patches on dried blood around the holes. And now that he got a look at it- the metal they were in could not look more intimidating. It was part of a large contraption, one with gears and sharp rusty parts. Sylar determined the purpose of this machine right away. After all, the cables connected to the bar hooked into him were a dead giveaway. It was a torture device.


Oddly, what registered first was not pain but confusion, where for
many it would have been the other way around. Emma, however, knowing
how she had fallen asleep, knowing where, knowing how she had felt and
all manner of other little facets, found herself alarmed first at not
being that way at all and only second at the striking and somewhat
alien feeling of physical hurt. It took her eyes moments more on the
longish side to focus, partially because she did not believe she was
awake and partially because she could not make even a little bit of
sense as to where or why she might be, if she was. Swallowing against
a numbness in her throat she couldn't explain, she more felt her eyes
widen and her heart rate speed up than anything else as she took in
the scene for the first time, comprised entirely of the contraption
holding her in and the rusted, horror-movie scene quality of
everything.

Upon entering this City, the redhead knew she was in for it. She
wasn't equipped for this kind of thing, but more than that, she wasn't
equipped for many daily normal things other people could handle
without batting an eye or both. Curses so far had been comparatively
kind to her, as if taking pity on the fact that this woman seemed to
find all her comfort in buying out the City's Windex supply and
spending all of her extra hours cleaning her apartment and the two on
either side of it until things shone and to have something out of
place would have been borderline offensive. Today, it seemed, was her
due however, a build-up from collectively harmless effects all rolled
into one nightmarish thing she could not grasp, her lips parting
soundlessly and a catch in her breath.

The only familiar factor here was the man across from her, and as many
equally nightmarish things as he had himself admitted to, she could
not process any logic about the situation, any potential for evening
odds as others might in knowing as much as she had been made aware of.
Part of this was due to the fact that her mind went blank, a white
space far cleaner than the once white walls of the room empty of
everything except the two people and the trap; there was no other word
for it.

This is a bad dream.

Funny, that's what she had told herself on getting her at all. Now she
told herself out of a necessity. If she didn't calm down in some way
she would pass out, though as she thought on it very distantly, that
might not be such a bad thing. Outwardly, she appeared altogether
frozen, held in place not only by the machine but by her own
congregation of phobias and general inability to cope, and though
moments might have passed, her only indication other than opening her
eyes was that she then closed them too, squeezing them tight against
the simultaneous urge to cry, scream, vomit, and all manner of other
things, the last of which rankled her senses enough to be fought down.
But the crying and screaming and general hysteria...

This is a bad dream. A bad dream. A bad dream.

Behind closed eyes and this silent mantra, she felt her breath growing
shallow despite her own feeble effort to regulate it, but it could
barely be helped. She was a guidance counselor in a dramatic and
ridiculous high school but a guidance counselor nonetheless, and a
mysophobic, obsessive-compulsive one at that. This could not be worse.
Well, it could, but no examples came to mind. Her mind continued to be
blank, a static area of nerves and distress she could not quell.



Sylar inwardly cursed as he saw Emma open her eyes. He didn't do much cursing, inward or otherwise, which was probably rather unusual for a serial killer, but this was one of the very few situations that warranted it. He could handle this on his own- he'd be angry, but he'd manage it. Emma here could barely manage the City itself, much less this. He had to get her out of here, that's all he knows.

"Emma, this will be over soon. I'll get you out of here, just-" Well, telling her to stay still obviously wasn't necessary. "-hang on." He checked over the machine's gruesome parts. Regardless of the seemingly rusted nature of the device, it was completely sturdy. And he couldn't find weak points. He was sure he wouldn't be able to reach them, regardless, but he couldn't even find them. It felt like his head was wrapped in cotton, which was probably partially a sedative and partially- he nicked a finger and stared at it as it bled. He wiped the blood away, only to see more. That cinched it. "My abilities are gone," he muttered to himself.

He reached back again, using the focus on their escape to keep the emotions off his face. He could feel something like a switch. He flipped it and for a moment, nothing happened. Then there was a click and something started playing. It was a recording of a soft-voiced man, possibly fairly old or sick. Sylar had heard it before, and he didn't survive that time. He winced and listened, focused on the words.

"Hello, Sylar. For quite some time, you've been going to therapy, supposedly moving towards rehabilitation. But in your efforts, you've lost sight of the truth. And when one forgets the sins they've committed in their pasts, they're doomed to repeat them. And then those people who have tried to help you? They're merely doomed.

"I want to play a game. By now you've noticed that your stolen abilities have been transferred elsewhere, leaving you far more vulnerable to the metal holding both you and Emma down. It is firmly attached to your clavicle, keeping you from moving. In three minutes, the machine that you are both attached to will snap back, therefore removing that metal- and your sternum- from your bodies. The speed at which this will occur will serve to break your rib cages in half.

"However, there is a way to shut the machine down- a key, surgically placed inside the neck. I have even provided a way to get to the key, a knife attached to this machine. All you have to do is find the knife and decide which one of you has that key. Keep in mind the truth of your past, acts committed with such little thought, and you may get out of this with your lives.

"So who will it be? Live or die, Sylar. Make your choice."


Emma couldn't move for a number of reasons, not the least being the
contraption itself of course but the fact of the matter was that fear
had worked its way deep into her every remaining awareness. The pain,
the uncleanliness, the proximity of everything, the tape that spoke
but in such a way that she only tuned it out, too afraid to hear what
it had to say to her, too beyond practicality except for the tool of
denial, all of it sufficed to paralyze her under the needlepoint fine
manner of what it was to be more stricken by terror as a whole than
all the facets that made up that fear. Under the blanket of a shadowed
haze, she was aware of simplistic sentiments; I don't want to die.
That was one, bizarrely clear and crisp and a disservice to her in the
larger picture. Somewhere not far from that was the thought that the
curses had conjured up a nightmare for her and that she need only
'hang on' as instructed before waking up somewhere pristine and
lonely, somewhere emulating home as much as it possibly could.

Seconds only ticked by before part of her snapped to the flat line of
consciousness; blank.

There was not enough time to convince her and she had not even tried
to move, not even a little. At this rate everything, and Sylar too,
had become a thing in the scheme of a nightmare she steadfastly
decided to wake up from as soon as possible.

If only it was that simple.



As Sylar listened to the tape, increasingly angry at the words, he had little choice but to watch Emma. Emma did not react to the words of the tape at all- he supposed he should be grateful she wasn't listening. She was waiting it out. That was probably smart, but it also meant she was going to have to remember having her bones literally pulled out of her, and Sylar couldn't allow that.

He could hear the ticking now, and it wasn't the ticking of the Clock, but rather of the timing mechanism on this machine. He didn't even have his abilities and he could tell it was wrong- at least three seconds off the minute. But this was what was deciding their fates and Sylar had to accept that and move on. He let out a grunt of annoyance and started checking his thoat, feeling it with his hands. No stitches, no lumps, nothing. So either it was hiding or it wasn't him.

He dropped that train of thought and reached around the machine, toward the side they were both attached to. It didn't take long to find the knife, although he unfortunately found the sharp end with his finger first. He ignored the blood and pulled it out of the hooks it sat on, then looked it over. It was attached to the machine by its handle with bungie cord- apparently to keep from losing it.

And then he'd put it off long enough. The words about hurting the people trying to help him, about killing without a thought. He could guess. He wouldn't even consider it if it seemed she couldn't survive it- hell, the thought of cutting her at all rose bile in his throat. "Emma," he said. "Emma, you need to check your throat. We don't have much time."


She had heard the message and knew what it meant because the words
were nothing if not straightforward, but they were not just
that, unfortunately. To boot, they were terrifying, not to mention
surreal. But there was that individual urgency in Sylar's tone, in the
voice of a man she had tried to help because she was too afraid not to
and because none of this had been all that real to her so far anyway,
even over time, even when metal split skin or her hair got wet or
things were cold because she had been standing still in the middle of
a painfully clean room for too long. Until now, she could pretend, and
even now perhaps she pretended a little, to cope, to be able to do
anything outside of remaining absolutely paralyzed. She moved, barely,
and then, out of order, opened her eyes, wide---the deer caught in
headlights far less metaphor than it usually might be for others, and
she fixated on the would-be patient across from her, swallowing
against everything impossible and raising a hand, mechanic-like to her
throat. The pause she had there must have been indication enough as
she stilled entirely again, or she hoped it would be. Her own voice
didn't seem to want to work and she found even breathing to be a
difficulty, the strangled huff of her exhales feathering through the
tinny air like a trap in and of itself.


He watched her swallow and pause carefully, and he noticed the catch. Leaning his head down as far as he could, he could see where the shadow caught. There was a very small lump in her throat, where a lump had no business being. And it was too close. So close to the jugular. Maybe if he was exceptionally careful, he could avoid nicking it, but he didn't know if he could manage it.

He took a shaky breath in and out and nodded. "It's there. Emma, I can try to get it out, but I won't if you don't want me to. I don't know if-" He swallowed and he could feel his lip shaking. Why was even thinking about doing this so hard? He'd done this sort of thing a thousand times before without the help of a knife. And that was the test, wasn't it? Take what you need and get out.

He wasn't going to do that with Emma. But if he didn't they'd both die. "What sort of stupid test is this?" he suddenly spat at the walls of the room, and he checked his neck again, just in case. Of course there wasn't. The clock kept ticking off-time, providing a useless undercurrent to their situation.

Sylar ran a hand over his face. Emma herself was nearly catatonic and he hoped that his outburst didn't put her over the edge. If only he had his father's ability, and he could whistle her into a more relaxed state. Damn it, now wasn't the time to be thinking about powers! He let out a long sigh and spoke in a gentler tone. "I don't want to hurt you, Emma. I won't, not unless it saves your life."


It wasn't in her repertoire anywhere, this other-world business, and
it wasn't in her job description to know how to deal with it even
though in theory one should be able to deal with oneself if one was to
deal with others; this, she did on a daily basis but it was children,
students to be precise in a high school setting in Ohio. Not even New
York, or maybe South Beach where craziness came par and parceled to
the course of things. Denial would only get her so far, and so far had
not been much even as she digested his words and their meanings in
turn. He didn't want to hurt her. That stuck out. But they would die.
That stuck out even more. He didn't know if he could do it. That much,
she hadn't heard but some keener part of her observational skills had
kicked in, as if to make up for all the other aspects of her mind and
body she had forcibly numbed. It was almost like she was feeling
nothing on purpose, as if her will alone had made her impermeable with
only the metal equivalents to poles going through her to contradict
the notion.

The cowardly part of her wished she had stayed asleep and it occurred
to her now that dying in her sleep even back home would be how she
would want it. Restful, or the illusion of rest and Emma could stand
being lied to because she'd lied to herself enough to be used to it,
sometimes at her own expense and sometimes at the expenses of others;
not something she was proud of but a truth nonetheless and one she
would not deny. The less cowardly part of her didn't know what it
wished, except that this wasn't happening at all, and that much was
useless. She knew. Could tell. Could not pretend otherwise. A list
that could go on and on, to be sure.

Willing her focus to lock to the man in front of her, she gradually
raised her gaze to meet his too, opening her mouth to tell him
something, but she didn't know what and that became abundantly clear
when nothing actually audible escaped her. Habit was too hard to will
away in addition, and she felt the sting at the corners of her eyes
when she closed them, shaking all over, violent even with the barely
there quality of it all. She shook her head, nodded, shook it again,
nodded. Incoherent, yes and no. The best she could do?

She wished not for the first time that she was the kind of person who
could do better in a situation, but what would normally be followed by
telling herself how self-pity would get her nowhere and couldn't the
bathroom use a good scrubbing down, not to mention the kitchen...was
followed instead by a shivering breath that struck her to a pinprick
of what it was to not want to die. It might not be enough
overall but it was all she had to work with.

So she nodded again, freezing completely after, chin slightly raised.

Not, a yes, it's okay, because it wasn't. This never could be.
And not I'll be fine, because she wouldn't.

But something. She hoped he would do with it what she couldn't.


He hadn't been sure she would be able to reply and was somewhat intending to let the clock run out when she gave her final nod. It was a relief and a burden at the same time- he swallowed as he stared at her neck.

He raised the hand with the knife in it, and- it shook.

His hands never shook, certainly not when doing anything detailed or needing precision. But right now, his hands wouldn't stop shaking. The tiny tremor was mocking him, and he didn't have time for this.

He resolutely slammed his hand back against a flat part of the machine. The pain traveled like a shock wave up his arm and he left it for a second before staring at it again. That seemed to have done it.

He place the knife back in his left hand, reached forward, and very, very carefully made an incision directly above the key. If he was lucky, Emma would remain just as frozen as she had been, and he wouldn't have to worry about moving.


It hurt, but if anything did a wonder for her it had always been her
own inhibitions, born of fear or paranoia or a dreadful combination.
This time was not the exception but it was not entirely accounted for
either as she felt her breath hiss into a splinter, the only evidence
of reaction because her posture was already rigid and her hands
clenched beforehand. Nothing changed outside of that. All she could do
was try to not focus, try to not focus on anything at all. If she
could block out everything, maybe she would be so lucky as to have it
all over.

Except it wouldn't be. She couldn't leave something like this behind
her like a bad day at work or having her heart broken after she set
herself up for it anyway, possibly deserved it too. This was another
field altogether, one she was not just a stranger to, but alien and
more than that, out of place. Not intruder, but nearly an anachronism,
or the space-truth equivalent to a space-time colloquialism she only
knew a little about from her time in the City and vague awareness of
twenty-first century kids and what varying manner of movies and such
they were into. This, however, was not a movie and she was not a mere
audience member.

That too would be its own kind of unforgivable of course.

Still as motionless as could be except for her wisps of breath, barely
evident as if she was afraid to breathe to hard would slip everything
up--she was--Emma closed her eyes again, wondering how much time had
passed...wondering with the immediacy of panic what she had done to
deserve it when the practical answer was obvious: nothing, because
what one got in the City did not often have to do with just deserts.
How was she supposed to move on from this even if they did get out of
it alive?

It was a dark space in her heart, in her consciousness she could not
find a light for but it swallowed up her attention effectively enough
and at present maybe she ought to be grateful for it even if she
didn't have the presence of mind to manage it.


She wasn't moving, good. She was still breathing, doubly good. Sylar focused entirely on the task at hand. It was his own sort of denial. When he focused like this, he didn't have to think of anything else. Consequences were lost, results were inevitable, and nothing was going to take his focus. This was habit, reinforced by a decade, only slightly changed by the addition of blood.

Only this time the results weren't inevitable. He'd gotten used to using telekinesis with his work and that's something he didn't have here. So when he found the key had somehow been sewn into the muscle, he continued at it. He slowly and steadily broke the stitching- but he also nicked that vein.

He ignored it and kept working, but tears stung at his eyes as blood came out in a gush. It wasn't until he cut the last stitch that he realized...it was stopping? He pulled the knife away with his prize, the key. By the time he had a hold of it, he reached back to her neck- the bloodflow had stopped. The skin was healed.

His eyes wide, he told her. "I've got the key. And you healed the wound. You have my ability, you'll be fine." He was almost smiling.

That was, until he realized one major problem. "I'm not seeing a keyhole."



Her brow furrowed.

"No?" her voice cracked in a thousand places.

What good was a key without a keyhole? What was the catch? She
couldn't begin to figure it out. Even if she tried she wouldn't get
anywhere; her exposure to this kind of thing having been entirely in
media and at that not very much, her imagination on the subject could
be accurately called slim and close to none. Her eyes burned but she
wasn't tearing up again somehow, and she tried not to question it,
tried just to breathe and not go into an utter stasis where she would
be negative help, less than now which was not that much to begin with.
Eyes wide again, they darted first left then right, a renewed tension
running through her as if that would help though she supposed it
wouldn't, supposed nothing was helpful here except to get out but it
was such an impossible thing from the beginning she found her brain
routing back to the possibility of a nightmare.

She could still wake up.

Unintentionally, she went inward, focus leaving both they acquired key
and the situation quickly ticking away.



He didn't wait for her, although he did keep his eyes on her. She was shutting down, and he was running out of time. He reached up and back, running his fingers lightly over the metal. If he couldn't see the keyhole on Emma's side, it had to be on his.

One of his fingers caught on that same sharp spot, pricking it. He used the pain to focus. Emma was still breathing, that was good. He started to despair of having enough time to do anything about it even if he did find the keyhole- the timer was so very inaccurate. That was when his hands brushed over the switch again. And a little further to the left- there it was.

He immediately brought his other hand up and slammed the key into the hole. It wasn't the right way, he could feel that immediately, so he turned it upside down (almost losing it in the process). In it went and he turned it. There was a click, and then a loud snap. The straps over their legs let go. The cables that had been attached to the bars on their chests zoomed up, but it seemed that the cables were no longer connected. They smacked into the ceiling and Sylar had to duck to keep one from hitting him on the rebound.

He panted for a moment, but- they were free. Emma was a little bloody and they had those bars, but they could leave and she was alive. He stepped forward, just to make sure that was the case, and reached out to touch Emma's arm.


Being free did not register to the redhead. Over and over in her head
there was just the word 'nightmare' and over and over in her throat
the simultaneous urge to scream and to cry or, better than all of it,
to just stop. Not die, that wasn't it at all. But she wanted this over
with, whatever it was and when a hand found its way to her arm she
flinched out of the distance she had tried to sneak herself off to,
some nondescript nothing where she could pretend things weren't
happening. Turning her eyes up to focus on him, she did so as if she
did not recognize him, stuck in a limbo between knowing who she was
and who Sylar was and what had just happened...and knowing nothing at
all. No sound escaped her, no movement. The most that could be said of
her was a shell-like presence, physically aware of how, for example to
walk forward but with no mental presence as to why she should. Shock,
perhaps. Something more deeply rooted now, if worse. But it was
impossible to tell without time as the rule.


"Emma," he said, putting emphasis on the word. He wasn't sure if he was going to get through to her, but he was sure as hell going to try. He didn't like the idea of trying to manhandle her out of there. "We can leave." Hopefully that much would leak through.

"Come on," he said, a plaintive edge to his voice. "We'll leave and it'll be over. Like it never happened." He knew that was likely not true for her, but maybe her denial skills were as great as his. Maybe she'd be able to box this up and put it away just like everything else.

He knew it was wishful thinking, but that was all he had right now.


To say she snapped out of it would be inaccurate. To say she dragged
herself toward following someone else's instruction would be close
enough if not quite it. She felt her feet move more than she
told them to go forward and she was aware of Sylar being there but the
remnants of the why and how and what of everything were fading fast
under an incredible onslaught of combined denial and scarring that
would leave no physical mark. A nightmare. A dream. A reality. Who
could be certain? Least of all, she knew, herself, even under what
equated to titanic doses of refusal to acknowledge, an almost
opiate-veiled state as she walked, walked only a few steps that seemed
to take her quite a long time.

Outside the room she wanted to find Ohio, wanted to find her perfectly
kept bed and her boxes of office supplies ready to move on from the
now comparatively simple trouble of heartbreak and childish mistakes.

What she found was the City, the City that did not offer comfort
because it only cemented the idea that what had just happened was
real. Real enough, at least.

Statue still again, she lowered her head, whispering nothing in
particular to herself, something about calming down even though she
knew before she started trying to that it would all be a lie. It would
have to be an exceptional lie, monumental even. It never happened.
Because like it never happened was not good enough. Something
out of a movie. Something out of a conversation about a movie
overheard. Not real. Not real. Not real.

What was real?

Her shoes. Her clothes. Bloodied. No good.

She started over.

Her shoes. Her heartbeat. The smell of open air.

Her breathing, somehow, miraculous or mistaken, began to regulate.



He'd found the door behind the machine, and he'd pulled them both through it. As soon as they exited, the space disappeared. He wasn't surprised to find it gone as he turned around. He felt a rush and a tingle in his fingers as they healed- clearly, his abilities had returned to him.

He turned his attention back to Emma, and she had started to breathe a little better. "Emma?" Sylar said, worry finding its way into his tone. "What can I do for you? What do you need?" He was completely at a loss. He was fine, but she wasn't- she couldn't be.

"Let- let me get you home," he finally proposed. Of course, in that case, it would be best to find out where they were. It seemed very similar to the hallways in his building. He started toward the elevator down the hall, watching to make sure she followed.


Emma followed, followed because anything else didn't occur to her.
Sylar said follow. So she followed. Sylar could have said stay and she
would have stayed. Her own decisions didn't seem to be connecting to
actual manifestation, and though she knew in some sharper part of her
mind that it would be best to make a choice on her own to remind her
she had control again, she found she couldn't. So she only followed
him, followed Sylar to the elevator, followed Sylar out of the
building, told him where she lived which under other circumstances she
would not have in all truth, and then she let him walk her home
because to refuse him that still set alarms of in her mind even though
he had so far been nothing but decent to her. Distanced or not from
another person's world and the history and crime or lack thereof that
went with it, the extreme violence of this trap had not just rattled
her to a nothingness, but it had effectively trapped her after
release, stuck in a moment where all she could focus on was the idea
that if she had not tried to help someone she might not have been in
that situation. Part of her reprimanded herself in spite of it all.
Don't go back on your intent, she told herself. Her good will was
sometimes all she felt set her apart and even that was self-important,
but it helped her to help others sometimes, to make a difference here
and there even if only with kids and Will and...well it wouldn't be
like that anymore would it, but she could go back to those points of
focus, to those moments when she knew the right thing had happened.
Now she could not clearly recall to that extent, could only get to the
point where she knew to regret trying to help was not how she usually
assessed things, but what she did normally do escaped her.

It did not occur to her that she was outside of her apartment, though
she stopped in front of it after the elevator ride up, staring at the
doorknob like it had an answer she was looking for, though all it
actually had was a way into a flat that smelled neatly of air
freshener and a little too much hand sanitizer.

Barely, she remained aware of the man at her side. A bad man and not a
bad man, a problem born more from his situations than his intent from
what she could tell, though maybe that wasn't right. Who knew how much
would still have happened with his longing to be special and his need
to affirm? She certainly didn't know, but these thoughts brought her
darker places again so she tried to empty her mind, going almost
lifeless again for all the absence of her expression and movement.


Sylar watched her as they walked, and- well, it was better, he supposed. But she still wasn't reacting with lucidity, and he couldn't just leave her like this. He watched her for a moment, trying to think of what he could do. But he had no idea how to help trauma- he was far too experienced in causing it.

"Emma, what do I do? I don't want you to- you're the one who knows how to fix this. What do I do? How can I help you?" He'd read books on shock, but it had all disappeared, vanished like it had never existed.

He bit his lip and stared at her. "I'm sorry," he finally said, letting out a long breath. "You should never have been there."



There was a lump in her throat, no key of course, just that half
imagined tangle of knots that always finds its way to that spot when a
person is about to cry or worse, sob. She couldn't do that in front of
him though and even hearing his words, if she was honest, and she
could be nothing but a paradoxical juxtaposition of honest and
denying, she did not want his help. She didn't want anything except to
go inside and clean everything. Perhaps reorganize her books----a
hefty archive for the short time she'd been here. Perhaps sit very
still on her couch the perfectly complementary shade of yellow to the
lavender curtains. Maybe none of it.

"Nothing," she replied. And then, "It's...I just need..." to forget.

Forget.

"I think," she pressed her lips together, swallowing, shaking her head
slightly. "I think you should go." Then she bit her lip. "I should go
too," it was as close as she could get to 'it's not your fault' even
though part of her said it was as much as the other part said it was
the work of impossible forces labeled as deities. The overlying part
of her whole self said it was all insane. That she'd lost her wits
entirely. Maybe this wasn't the sleeping kind of nightmare but the
kind of nightmare she lived through in four white walls she never
actually, consciously saw. This took her too far, however, and she
slipped her hand over the doorknob, twisting it gracelessly, like she
didn't know how to open a door, like she didn't know how to do
anything. "We just...we need some...rest," she clarified, shakiness a
given and avoidance its companion as she ducked away from him. Only
when her back was to him could she muster enough of something she
could not name to add, "It was a curse."

Closer to 'it's not your fault', but not quite, and she knew it even
as she tacked on a barely there 'Good night' even though it was barely
noon, and slipped into her flat with an even quieter click of heels
and the catch of the door.



Sylar's heart sank into his stomach as she merely told him to leave. Of course he couldn't do anything for this. This was what he'd broken- it was what he'd always done. Even Claire had seemed to snap, finally, at the news of her father. She wasn't fully broken, but it was beyond what he could fix. And Emma...well, look at her.

He'd been in between trying to decide whether he should demand to check in with her, or just leave and stay out of her life. That was when Emma made it better, if only a little. She acknowledged it was a curse. And it had still wouldn't have happened if he hadn't sought out her help, but...maybe she didn't blame him completely.

He closed his eyes and nodded, and by the time he opened them, she was gone. He wondered if he'd ever see her again. And more importantly, he wondered if he should ever see her again.