rp for girl_ofsecrets: can you teach me how to fight?

[heroslayer]

Twenty years ago, the Chelsea Piers had been a disaster area of collapsing sea walls, half-destroyed warehouses, and rickety boardwalks. Ten years ago, the city of New York had restored the place to its former glory, in the wake of its failed demolition. And now? Well, it's not the best neighborhood in the world, bordered by the Meat Packing District, but for the purposes of this exercise, Sylar figures it suits. It gives him free reign to kill anyone who bothers them, without fear of guilt, after all, and well. There probably won't be anyone around in the first place; most people still avoid this section of town.

The corners of his mouth tugging upwards into a pleased, wicked smile, he meanders down the boardwalk, heading for a warehouse he knows to be abandoned. It looks relatively rickety, like it's going to fall into the bay at any given moment, but he knows better--it's held up to super powered spars before. Still, that doesn't stop him from pausing outside of it, once he reaches it, to give it a once over. Nor does it stop him from taking a look inside, just to make sure there aren't squatters hanging around.

Then, once he's satisfied, he moves to the center of the room, leaning against a crate, listening for his niece. And to his credit, he manages to stand still for all of a minute and a half before he gets restless enough to start considering very literally climbing the walls. Hopefully, Claire will show up soon.

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[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

Claire flashes a small, genuine smile for at least knowing that lesson as well. The whole lesson three bit, she's been getting better with that since she started taking her classes in self defense. She's better at noticing things around her most of the time and this time she's not caught so off guard.

She hears the scrape of metal against the floor and she looks down to see the bar flying at her. She tries to jump out of the way but the bar still clips her, causing her to grunt as it knocks one foot out from under her and she stumbles.

So she doesn't quite go down like she would have if she hadn't tried to jump out of the way but she still goes down about half way before catching herself on a crate. "Damnit." She mutters, taking a couple limping steps as her body heals itself.

[heroslayer]

Sylar raises his eyebrows, impressed that she at least partially managed to avoid the pipe--most people wouldn't have, even with all the noise.

"Very good," he repeats, watching with interest as her leg heals itself. He may have the ability, now, but it's still somewhat of a point of interest to watch someone else heal like he does. He assumes it has something to do with the fact that usually, when he acquires a new ability, he ends up being the only person with it, so seeing someone be able to do the same as him? It's facinating.

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

"Thanks." She glances over at him as her leg heals and she catches the look that he is giving her. Blinking a little, she tilts her head to the side as she glances down at her leg and then looks at him again. "What?" She turns her leg a little to check out the back and then she glances at him again.

She doesn't realize why he is watching her in such a way but she knows the wonder. She's watched Adam heal once or twice and she would agree that there is definitely something about watching someone with the same ability use theirs.

[heroslayer]

"It's just--it's strange," he admits, raising his eyes to her, once her leg has finished healing. "I'm not used to seeing people with the same abilities as me. Even Peter, the few times we've fought, he's never used anything I already had against me."

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

"Ooh." Claire nods her head as she catches on, "I get it." She smiles a little, "It was weird for me, the first time I saw Adam heal. I mean, it's his ability for the longest but it was still weird because it was like....mine and I wasn't used to seeing someone else who could do the same thing."

She moves over, grabbing a crate to sit down as she looks at him, "I used to test my ability all the time."

[heroslayer]

He tilts his head to one side, watching her. He has a pretty good idea what she means by test--ever since he's had Adam's ability, he's been looking for ways to get hurt, just to see how long it takes to heal--but he still can't help but look confused. He's a masochist when he wants to be; he knows that. Not everyone is.

"Test?"

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

Claire looks at him for a moment before nodding her head, "Yeah, you know, testing the ability." She wasn't sure that she would ever look at it as being a masochist but perhaps it could be looked at that way. She always looked at it as making sure she was still human, because if she could feel the pain even for a second or two, she felt normal. It was a weird way to look at it but it was how she used to.

"Jump off of a high catwalk, cut myself, I've been shot...though that wasn't of my own choosing. I've walked into a huge fire, stuck my hand in boiling water....tried many different things to see if I would still heal and how quickly." She tilts her head to the other side a little, "It's weird, I know." She fidgets just a bit, "But I wanted to know how much I could take."

[heroslayer]

Sylar huffs out a sigh of a laugh--more a heh than anything else--and offers a wry smile. "I've done the same thing." He pauses, and then goes through the list, "I've been shot. Stabbed. Cut myself. Lost fingers. Had my neck broken."

None of those had been a conscious choice on his part, though they had still been testing his limits. If he didn't have Adam's ability, he would have taken steps to avoid each of those things or, at very least, done something to lessen whatever damage he might have taken otherwise. Like he'd put a telekinetic shield between himself and the bullets Parkman had fired at him, the first time they'd met, when he'd shown up at the FBI's holding facility for Molly. Or when he'd caught himself after the fall from Union Wells--even if it hadn't been the best landing, he'd still lived.

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

Claire watches him as he lets out a little noise and then at his admittance, she smiles a little more even though it's a rather morbid topic to smile about. "Yeah, me too. My neck was broken and...I cut off my baby toe. Just to see if it would grow back."

Some of the stuff that had happened to her had been of her own choosing but some had been stuff that just happened to her during fights or by accident. Sometimes she did things where the only way she could survive was because of her ability, she depended on it a bit too much at times but she was trying to learn to be better about that bit. She needed to learn how to fight without relying on her ability.

"I always worry if I tell someone that because well, admitting you hurt yourself on purporse? Yeah." She chuckles, ducking her head.

[heroslayer]

"I'm starting to wonder if it's not a side effect of the ability, honestly."

He's learned that everyone's gift seems to come with a price, after all. His own hunger. Peter's need to connect with--trust--everyone, even if they might be using him. Mohinder's aggression. Everyone has something, some critical flaw that seems related to their power, and he's only realized that recently. He wasn't half as willing to hurt himself before he had Adam's ability, after all.

Or maybe people are just stranger than he's able to see. Maybe he's just that broken, and Peter's just that naive, and Mohinder's just that violent on his own. And maybe his own willingness to get hurt is less a cost to the ability and more his own habit of taking more than just an ability, when he kills something. He did pick up Isaac's artistic talent, after all. And Zane's ability to play guitar and his bashfulness in the right situations. And so on and so forth.

"Or maybe it's just me."

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

Claire sat there for a moment as she looked at him because that was one thing she had never really thought of. Not in the same way like the hunger being a side effect of his ability. Tapping her fingers lightly on her knee, she considers what he had said and then nods, "Makes sense, I suppose." She didn't know if that made her feel better or not.

"Sometimes I did it because I wanted to feel the pain, to remind myself that I was still normal or something." She shrugs a little, "I mean, I don't feel pain like most people do. It's just a flash but the ability kicks in, so I don't register it the same. Even when I feel it, it's not very strong. More like a tingle or something."

[heroslayer]

"Really." He tilts his head to one side, eyes still fixed on her, caught between confusion and surprise.

He still registers pain the same, but then again, he has a habit of keeping the ability off unless he's in a position where he knows he'll need to be able to heal fast. And beyond that, he hasn't had the power to heal for as long as Claire or Adam. They've had it for years; he's only been able to heal like this since the end of August.

Wondering if there are any other differences, he asks, "When it heals ... there's an instant where if you touch what was broken it feels strange?" More like amazing, as he and Mohinder have learned during rough sex, the nerves new and raw, but he's not sure he should put it like that. He may be comfortable with his sexuality, but he's not comfortable discussing his sex life. That's between him and Mohinder--anything less would be disrespectful to the Indian.

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

"Really." She nods here head as she watches his expression.

"I don't know what..." She brushes her hair back from her face as she thinks about it for a moment. "Well, if it's bones coming through the skin, then I don't know...I guess it feels weird. Like I'm being connected again when I'm pushing the bones back into place."

"But if..." Okay, this was where she was edging on something that she normally doesn't talk about, "If the skin is broken or..." She fidgets a little, a blush crawling into her cheeks and finally she just nods, "Yeah, it's an overload for a couple minutes." She's not sure that she's making any sense as she ducks her head for a moment.

[heroslayer]

Sylar offers another soft, amused noise and shoots her a wry smile before finding something more interesting to stare at on the ground. "Try having Mohinder's senses on top of that."

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

"Oh." Her cheeks flood a little more and then she nods, clearing her throat, "Yeah it can feel strange at times." She rolls her one foot just a little bit and then she looks up at him, "But you said you could turn it off and on, right?"

[heroslayer]

He shakes his head, assuming she's talking about Mohinder's ability. "It's one of my abilities that doesn't have an on and off switch. Like my hearing. I'm learning to cope with it, but ... "

But it's not coming to him as quickly as the rest of his powers have--probably having something to do with the way he picked it up.

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

"No, I meant the healing." She shakes her head, clarifying for him because she didn't mean Mohinder's ability but the one that he had gotten from Adam. Or maybe she was thinking of Peter who could turn it on and off.

[heroslayer]

"Oh."

He doesn't answer, instead holding out his arm, fingers curled into a fist. Nonchalantly, he rolls up the sleeve of his shirt, and then drags a finger over his arm with a wince, a line of blood welling up in the path his finger had traced. Then, reaching to thumb the blood away, he tilts his arm a little so that she can get a better look at it and the cut there that's not healing.

"It doesn't work, if I get hurt too badly," he explains, shrugging. "Self-preservation instinct."

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

Lowering her eyes to his arm, she watches as he cuts his arm enough that the blood wells up to the surface. When he rubs away the blood though, she can see the cut is still there and it hadn't healed. For a moment, she's almost jealous but the feeling subsides very quickly.

"Mine just works all the time. You could cut me the same way and it would heal just the same as if you shot or injured me some other way."

[heroslayer]

Sylar lets out a breath he didn't seem to realize he'd been holding, and as he does, the broken flesh on his arm pulls itself back together. Idly, he thumbs the rest of the blood away, and then he's rolling his sleeve back down before returning his attentions to her. And as he does, something occurs to him.

"You're jealous."

Funny, he hadn't been able to feel anything she was, the entire time they'd been fighting, but now that he's calmed down, he catches that little stab of near jealousy as easily as if it were his own. He wonders what the difference is.

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

She glances down again, watching his skin stitch back together and the cut disappear. Then he points out the flash that she had felt, not really surprising her because she was used to Peter and him picking up her emotions as well. Sometimes he could tell her how she was feeling even before she could.

"A little." She nods her head in confirmation, "You can choose, you have a choice." She looks down at herself, lifting her one hand to press her nails to her arm and then does so hard enough that she breaks the skin. Lifting her hand, the crescent marks quickly disappear, even sucking back in the tiny bit of blood that started to seep out.

"I don't."

[heroslayer]

"With your ability, yes," he agrees, trying not to be too enthralled by the sight of her hand healing. "With mine ... I tried to turn it off once, so that Mohinder could drug me long enough to take a sample of my spinal fluid, for his formula, so he could have an ability. It nearly killed me. Even with Adam's ability. I guess my brain doesn't like having parts of itself shut down."

He offers her a rueful smile, shifting a little so he can drape his arms over his knees. "One day, Peter will be able to control my ability. I never will."

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

She caught the slight enthrallment at her healing and she smiles a little bit as she looks down to the spot where she had marked but now it was perfectly smooth. Then she nods, "So even if you can control it, you'll still be immortal as well, right?" She tilts her head, knowing it's a touchy subject because it is for her too.

"So we can't control our original abilities, well most of us." She nods because she knows there are some who can, like Hiro. He could control where and when he wanted to go, most of the time.

[heroslayer]

"I will be." He makes a face, eyes drifting down to his own hands, curling them into fists for a moment, before letting them go. "I didn't think about it, before I asked Adam for his power. He tried to warn me, but ... "

He doesn't want to think about what will happen when Mohinder dies. He's already almost positive he'll never love again, and the few times he has thought about it, he's entertained notions of breaking into the Empire State Building and throwing himself off of it. Repeatedly.

"Does it bother you? Knowing you won't be able to keep him forever?"

[its-notluck.livejournal.com]

She nods her head, feeling a bit bad for him because he hadn't understood fully what he was getting into when he took Adam's power. Just like she didn't understand it, nor did Peter when he took hers through absorption just by being around her. Saving her life.

Then came the question that she dreaded and it was the first time that anyone else had asked her it. She had asked herself the question plenty of times. Staring at Sylar, her eyes show the sorrow that she already feels for the day that she hopes is far, far away in the future.

"Every day." She murmurs.