heroslayer | for muses_gonewild: shark tank (with ambitious

When Sylar was a child, his mother had insisted he take swimming lessons at the local community pool. He'd always thought it was stupid since, barring the weeks he'd spent learning, he'd barely ever used the swim club membership Virginia Gray always kept current, and his father had been too constantly busy to bother with a vacation to the beach. Though, even if he had seen water more frequently, he still would have thought the lessons a massive waste of time, because even though he'd passed the test at the end of them, he wasn't particularly good at swimming. He could tread water well enough, but that was about it.

And standing in the middle of yet another party in a France long forgotten by time, that's exactly what he felt like he was doing. Treading water.

Where he'd had his mother standing by the edge of the pool before, however, now he was completely on his own. He hadn't seen Reinette yet tonight--she was probably and understandably spending time with her King--and he didn't really know anyone else in the court. Oh, he knew a few names and knew that a few people knew his, pointing fingers and whispering when they thought he couldn't hear them, but he'd never actually spoken to any of them for more than a few minutes.

This was a shark tank, and he was drowning, alone.

Frowning at the thought, he pushed through the crowds, out to the very same balcony where he'd met Reinette, and leaned on the railing, pretending to take interest in the gardens as he considered simply leaving. Going home, back to his time. Getting out of this ridiculous costume Reinette had found for him, weeks before, and back into his old clothes, so he could get back to work. Places to go, people to kill, after all, and anything would be better than this, but as per usual, something stopped him. His promise to the good madame.

When they'd first met, she'd tried to send him away--expected him to want to go--and he hadn't then. He'd told her he'd stay, and he was, generally, a man of his word, when he wanted to be. The honorable villain, if he could even be considered a bad guy anymore, so fascinated with the clockwork in her head that he hadn't killed a single person the entire time he'd been here. He'd promised, and so he'd stay, even if it meant sulking out on the balcony, pointedly avoiding the scavengers inside.

And with any luck, Reinette would show up soon.

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She found him on the balcony.

The strange, reclusive impossible man that had entered her life some months before. One month, then two and still he remained. Reinette herself was the consummate echo, the departing footstep. Sometimes in small measure, day by day and interaction by interaction until the whole of a relationship was altered. Sometimes in the turn of a fireplace, the regret that throbbed in her veins coming far too late.

But this man? He remained.

He also watched her.

Louis came to know her in pieces, most markedly the ones he wished to see. That he found most attractive. It would be many years before he knew what was to be known. The Doctor? Was a man compelled to find that which he sought. Specific information for a specific journey.

But him.

When she felt his eyes on her? He was seeing everything. Every hair, every thought. The reason she took a step and the why she did not smile. He knew.

It was frustrating. Challenging.

Even seductive.

Reinette stopped some distance away.

"I did not think you one to hide."

Edited 2008-12-31 02:26 (UTC)

He'd heard her coming, of course--it wouldn't have taken his enhanced hearing for that, her shoes loud enough on the marble of the balcony--but he didn't move. Didn't turn to face her. Didn't even shift or straighten, to suggest that he'd heard her coming. Instead, he'd simply stood there, intently focused on the gardens below, and when she stopped to address him, he did much the same for a long moment, before casting a glance over his shoulder at her.

"I'm not hiding," he answered, calmly, honestly not sure if that was the truth or a lie. "I needed some fresh air."

Every movement he made was so deliberate, and slightly forgein. It had never been thus, not even with the Doctor. In fact there was much of him that was deceptively the same, until his skin burned cold against hers. An she felt the double beat of his hearts.

But this man? He was some unknown, exotic animal. She watched him with a lidded-gaze, still fascinated.

"The air within can be stale," Reinette agreed.

"The company as well."

Sylar made a soft amused noise at the back of his throat, the corners of his mouth tugging upwards, slowly.

He'd read about her in history class, during his days as a school boy, of course, knew what a perceptive woman she'd been. How well read, how versatile--he'd even had the pleasure of seeing some of that, in the time he'd spent her, and yet still she amazed him. No one at home would have made that leap, or spit it out if they had, and yet her she was, putting that on the table as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And for not the first time, he found himself wondering if it was a cultural difference, something that people had shied away from over the course of centuries, or simply her.

Either way, however, it was enough to make him turn to face her in earnest. "You know how I feel, then," he murmured, canting his head to one side, studying her intently. "So why do you come to these things?"

Whenever he look at her in such a fashion, Reinette was compelled to maintain his gaze. Because to look away was a form of submission. Because it sometimes seemed to her most important to meet, rather than submit with this man. Not that she sought to submit by her nature, but she could play at it well enough. And because, Reinette rather thought, that there was something inherently compelling about the chocolate depths of his eyes.

Her chin lifted slightly as their profiles faced one other.

"Because they told me I could not."

It was at one both a simple and complex answer.

"Because they presumed to think I was not high born enough, not school enough. Nothing that would hold his appeal long enough to prove any real threat."

Her voice is direct, and clear. Reinette does not care of they hear.

"So I prove them wrong with my mere presence. I do as they do, only with more skill. I go where they go, only further. I continue to hold the heart of the King, even as our relationship changes, when they cannot even hold his attention."

A whisper of smile appears.

"And I miss no opportunity to remind them of this."

Sylar continued to study her as she spoke, silent, listening. He should have known everything she'd told him, certain that it must have been covered in the history books, but either he couldn't remember it--his memory hadn't been perfect, while he was in school, after all--or his classes had skipped over it. Regardless, however, he figured it was more interesting to hear hear tell it. To know why she was here from her own mouth, that she didn't care whether or not the other courtiers heard her, all of it. And when she finished, he offered her a wan smile of his own, knowing what it was like to want to do things better, and to remind people that you were better, all because someone had said that you couldn't. That you weren't special enough--or, in her case, well-born enough.

"I know the feeling," he admitted, finally. "And I think that's admirable. Most people wouldn't have the courage to go against what their place is supposed to be." He fell into silence again here, eyes dancing over her face as though he was searching for something he just couldn't find, and then, "What changed your mind? What made you know you could be better than them?"

For him, it had been Chandra.

"You must understand that initially my convictions were not my own. My mother took me into the home of Madame LeBon, and it was her sight that predicted this life for me. From then on there was no question of our goals."

Reinette glanced over the balcony, into the darkness. The stars were especially bright that night.

"And I accepted them, happily. What little girl does not enjoy being informed the are special? And even then I understood that the education that was provided for me was far superior to what I would have known otherwise. Above all, it fed my desire to learn. That is what it was, in the beginning. The knowledge that I could meet them, in this place. That one day I would."

She met his gaze through the shadows.

"Then I came here, and realized that to merely meet them would mean giving them far too much credit, and undervaluing myself.

OOC: Forgive work and inventories and funerals. Hugs.

"Special," he repeated, the word no more than a murmur, so that she could continue with her story, relatively uninterrupted. And while he listened to her, absorbed and would remember, he was somewhere else at the same time, connecting more parallels between them. He hadn't had a precog to tell him what he would become, of course, nor was he entirely sure this woman Reinette had mentioned was the real deal, as he'd yet to run across anyone who sounded wrong during his stay here, but still. She'd been told she could be special and she'd taken it to heart, going further than anyone had ever imagined; so had he, even though his path had been bloodier.

"Sounds familiar," he said, once again giving more of himself away now than he had in the entire time they'd known each other. He didn't look away, however, regardless of how uncomfortable the idea of someone knowing him generally made him feel. "My mother used to tell me the same thing. That I could be something more than what I was."

(ooc: *snuggles*)

for muses_gonewild: shark tank (with ambitious_woman)

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