thepainted_lady | JMM 37.10 Defying Gravity [For hadtobeahero and <lj site="livejou

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JMM 37.10 Defying Gravity [For hadtobeahero and <lj site="livejou

Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules
Of someone else's game

The music was loud and the crowd was already drunk at noon, as Lydia made her way through the press of their too-hot bodies. She’d killed a girl heading this way and taken her clothes--her own far too ripped and bloody from her run through the woods--and boots (since she’d run off without any shoes) and felt like she fit in fairly well, though she was still occasioning quite a bit of comment.

Then again, women in leather miniskirts, corset tops and boots tended to do that anywhere. She felt a hand on her ass and let it pass. It was a grope, sure, but a quick sense from the touch...he wouldn’t take it farther if she complained. Not what she was looking for, then. She wanted her usual prey, but she needed a lot of them, or their kin. People the world wouldn’t miss, people she could use and still face herself in the morning.

Edgar had mentioned this place as somewhere to avoid, last time they passed through the area. She saw why when her attention was caught by the group in the corner.

Unfortunately for Edgar’s peace of mind, she had no intention of avoiding them today.

* * *

A half hour later, she was on the back of the bike of their leader, his blood singing in her veins--not enough to incapacitate him, but enough to give her compulsion an iron-clad hold. She’d tasted the others, too, for the same reason, and killed one more so she would be at her strongest and now they were winging their way back to Füssen. She locked down her emotions tight, letting herself go numb for the moment to give no signal of her approach. If she was right...Samuel wouldn’t be able to feel the bond between her and Sylar as sire and progeny, and if her emotions were shut down...he wouldn’t pick up on anything empathically, either.

Besides, she needed to be cold to face Peter again.

“Stay here,” she told the men, sliding off the back of the bike and pointing to an abandoned warehouse. John was down here somewhere, she was sure of it. “Don’t make any noise, don’t get into trouble. Sleep, until I call you.” She took one of their cell phones and waved it at the leader. “When I call...you’ll come immediately to me, understood?”

He nodded, looking at her a little glassily.

“Good boy.”

* * *

She visited a shop she’d found a couple of weeks before, filled with teas from all over the world, and smiled at the woman, who recognized her despite the somewhat...drastic change in her appearance.

“Everything’s at the cleaners,” Lydia said, making a face at her clothes. “All I had left was the costume I wore to a party on Halloween...”

The woman laughed, then, and they discussed the silliness of men and costumes and the things they forced themselves into, and yes, of course, she had exactly what Lydia needed, and she handed it over. Lydia shuddered a little bit, though she hid it, and was careful not to let any of it touch her skin.

“Could you mix some up for me, straight, in a to-go cup, and then another batch....blended in with something to mask it? My boyfriend hates the taste of the herb, but it’s the only thing that helps with his headaches, and he’s got such an awful one today...” She gave the woman an appealing little smile, tucking the pure herb away in a bag.

Another smile, and five minutes later, Lydia walked out of the store with one hot cup of vervain tea in her hand, ready to be poured down the throat of one Peter Petrelli, forcibly if necessary, and a neatly wrapped up tea bag, just waiting to be brewed.

Some people’s habits were, after all, just a little too predictable.

Now to find Peter, and change the rules of this game to hers.

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She shook her head a little. "No...I...I didn't figure it out until this morning, and I was right there with them, so..." She looked away, shame heating her cheeks for a moment, before she swallowed it back and focused back on him.

"I hid the herbs you brought back. We found them in the clearing. They're at the Gasthaus, but even Sylar doesn't know where they are, so Samuel won't."

She rose fairly fluidly, emotions back locked down, and held out her hand to him. "I don't know anything about ghost banishing, and I spent most of the week on trying to find you, not realizing that's what I should still have been researching. What do you need me to do?"

He reached for her hand, lacing his fingers with hers when he could, and moved towards the stairs, half-leaning on her, though not out of any want to maintain his usual illusion of infirmity. "I couldn't tell you right now, my dear. I need to see the state of things -- particularly how bad off my boy is -- before I can decide how far I need to take this."

So much depended on how far Samuel's hooks extended into Sylar. If he was still at least partially aware, it would be easier -- he could even potentially help them get Samuel out of him. If Samuel had forced him into some dark corner of his mind and trapped him there, though, things would be more difficult. Either way, getting Samuel out would still be possible, if not highly unpleasant for Sylar and potentially him, too, if Samuel could manipulate the bond he had with the killer, but how much it would take would depend on Sylar himself.

She listened, and felt something twist inside of her, worrying about Sylar, worried that John wouldn't be able to just be able to make him go, and what if he couldn't at all? What if it wasn't fixable? She tried not to think about it, just nodding. "I...last night...I think I felt something...as I left. Felt him try to take back control, but I didn't know...didn't understand what it was," she said softly. "And maybe that wasn't what it was at all..."

The sun had finished setting while he fed and she worked on his back, but she paused anyway, before they reached the door, to press his ring into his hand.

"Peter gave me this to return to you..."

"How exceedingly generous of him," he muttered dryly, plucking his ring out of his palm and raising it to eye level to inspect it. Then, once he seemed satisfied, he slid it back on and flexed his fingers, readjusting to the familiar weight, and moved outside. If there was a bit of hesitation on his part, it was because he was half-concerned that Peter might have done something to it and something terrible would happen in spite of the sun having set. He breathed a sigh of relief when nothing did.

"And back to the situation, I'd imagine that was exactly what it was. Apparently he didn't have much luck in the matter, but ... I doubt very highly you would have felt anything if Samuel had him in entirety." And the fact that he didn't was good. Very good.

"I didn't want to...after everything, I didn't really want to hope," she said softly, wrapping her arms around herself briefly, and then straightened, taking a deep breath.

"I told Peter to meet me back at the alley after he made sure Samuel drank the tea." She wouldn't call him Sylar, wouldn't combine them in her head, not anymore. She needed to make that difference for herself, to remind herself of why she was holding on.

"Well, now you can, my dear." He shifted a bit closer to her, fingers brushing over her arm lightly, reassuringly. "And even if he hadn't been able to try and fight, there would still be hope. Him trying to regain control helps us, yes, but it neither makes nor breaks the situation. It would have admittedly made an unpleasant situation far more so for the lot of us -- particularly for my boy -- but it wouldn't have made it impossible."

He slid his fingers back down to hers, taking her hand again, and moved towards the Gasthaus again. And while he didn't pause at the mention of tea, he did arch his eyebrows. "Tea?" She'd mentioned giving some to Peter so he couldn't be compelled, but ... he did the math, and frowned. She planned on drugging Sylar. It made sense, he supposed, and it was possibly the only way to keep him from running or killing them both now that the game was over, but he still couldn't honestly admit to being happy. "Mm, I see. I suppose, at least, that will make things easier for us."

Oh. She supposed she'd skipped that part of the explanation. Words and timeframes were sort of slipping together and colliding in her head, even as she struggled to keep them all straight. She was so far out of her element as to be more than a little disorienting, and she tried to keep herself focused back in, now that she'd achieved her second aim of the day.

"The only reason any of us are still alive is because he was still finding it amusing to torture me," she said quietly, holding on to his hand a little bit like a lifeline, taking some sort of assurance in the fact that he seemed to know what to do. Whether he approved or disapproved of her choice didn't matter as much as it might have any other day. She knew Samuel better than any of the rest of them. She knew what needed doing, there. "The moment he realized the game was up...we'd all be dead. I had to stop him from that, or from doing something to harm Sylar." The tea Sylar could recover from.

She ran her free hand through her somewhat tangled hair. "Is there something we can do to keep him from jumping bodies again, before we go in? Keep him from taking control of Peter or one of us, if we start in getting him out of Sylar?" A slight shudder ran over her. "I don't want him any more in me than..." He'd already been. She looked away, cutting the thought off, switching it. "We need to make sure he's contained."

His eyebrows crept higher when she stopped, but he did not prompt her to explain. He didn't need to her. If he had Sylar, then he could venture a guess, and it wasn't particularly important anyway -- or at least not when she was looking to him to find a way out of this.

"Unfortunately, no. I need those herbs you spirited away first. I can keep him out of us after that, when we're trying to get him out of Sylar, but before ... " He looked away and down the street, sighing, and shook his head. "We can only hope the vervain will affect him, too, if only for long enough to get what we need out."

She pushed back the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach and nodded a little instead, looking down the street, half searching for Peter, half trying to draw into herself a bit more.

"Hopefully it's working, then, and we can be in and out fast, and deal with whatever comes."

"If he managed to get the tea in him, it will be. It doesn't take much for someone of your age or for someone of mine." He glanced back at her, his expression unreadable, emotional roadblocks shifting into place for one reason or another. "It's why it's favored by vampire killers."

And somewhere down the street, Peter appeared from the Gasthaus, half-running, looking around for them.

Normally she might have resented the feel of the blocks, after how far he'd let her in, before, and the whole rescuing him, and how...rather desperately she needed to feel and know people were who they seemed to be right now, but, honestly, he'd been through so much, and she was half shut down herself, and she just...nodded slightly, still no remorse for what she'd had to do showing, and feeling the flicker of Peter's presence, she almost instinctively shifted to put herself between the two of them, though which she was trying to protect wasn't clear even to her.

John bristled when he caught sight and scent of him, a sneer forming on his lips, a growl in his throat. It was a miracle, honestly, that he didn't throw himself at Peter and make him pay for what he had done to him, whether it had been his fault or not, and the only thing that stopped him was Lydia in between them. He glanced to her, his eyes threatening a shift to darkness, something dangerous in them in spite of his walls and the fact that he managed to hold off a change, and then back to Peter.

Peter kept his distance when he approached, though he hadn't seen the look in John's eyes, not quite able to meet them. "I got him to drink the tea. He's upstairs."

Lydia kept her hand in John's, touch solid and there, though she knew she had no real chance of holding him if he threw himself at Peter. Even after all he'd been through, now that she'd fed him, now that he had most of his strength back, he was stronger than her by far. But she didn't think he'd really fight her, really hurt her, at least not now, when Sylar was at stake.

She nodded sharply, not smiling, but acknowledging. "Did it...work?" She'd been a bit concerned that somehow with the ghost and all of Sylar's abilities maybe the magic or whatever of the herb wouldn't work.

Peter nodded, running a hand through his hair almost nervously. "Yeah, but I don't know how long he's gonna stay out. I mean, he didn't really drink much before he realized something was wrong. Just, like, a couple of sips."

"It'll have been plenty, I assure you," John answered tightly, nearly spitting the words. He glanced up at the window he knew lead to their room, then back to Lydia. "Where did you leave them, girl? One of us needs to go get those herbs, and if you leave me here with your human, I may accidentally tear his throat out."

Lydia glanced between them, deciding staying with Peter was clearly the better choice. "There's a hideaway tucked up in the right corner, as you come in, against the outer wall--a natural hollow in the roof rafter." She shrugged a little. "I put all the magic supplies there. I didn't want the maid getting suspicious about what we were doing there, and I just...never thought to tell Sylar what I'd done with them."

Humming, John took his hand back and moved towards the window, pushing past Peter with intentional roughness. Peter did not look affronted, however -- if anything, he looked away as if he felt he had deserved that -- and even if he had, John likely would have ignored him, focused solely on his task.

He climbed up through the window hurried and took a quick look around once he was in the room. Sylar, still wearing Samuel's face, lay face down in a wet mess that could only be the remains of his tea, and John was half-tempted to go over a kick him in the ribs on principle alone, knowing that he would heal. He thought better of it, though, not willing to risk waking him up or alerting him to his presence if Samuel's ghost was still aware even if his boy was not, and steeled his jaw, forcing himself to move past them and to the hideaway Lydia had mentioned. He reached up into it, pulling down the bag of herbs he'd bought, and moved back towards the window, pausing only long enough to retrieve his cane when he spotted it. Magically or otherwise, it was only a prop, but he damn well wanted it for what he was going to do.

He jumped back down to the street, landing in a crouch, graceful despite his exhaustion and his juggling act, and moved back over to them. He leaned the cane up against the wall, shifted the bag from one hand to the other, and started going through it, looking for something. What he came up with was a handful of small white flowers, and he handed two of them to Lydia, keeping one for himself, before dumping the rest of them back in the bag.

"Eat that." He hoped he didn't have to tell her to just eat one. The other was for Peter, but hell if he was touching him to hand it to him, himself.

She didn't really need it explained, figuring it out when he only had one, and she popped one in her mouth, making a slight face at the whole eating it by itself, and handed the other one to Peter, though she, too was slightly careful not to touch him for too long.

Then again, that wasn't quite as personal against Peter as just...John was about the only person she felt comfortable near at the moment.

"To keep him from jumping into one of us," she explained, so Peter wouldn't think they were trying to poison him or whatever.

"Yeah, I figured as much," Peter answered, staring down at the flower dubiously in spite of her reassurance. After a moment, however, he followed suit, making a series of faces as he ate it even if it wasn't actually half-bad. When he finished, he looked over the building again, frowning. "So, now what?"

"Now we head upstairs and hope he's still unconscious," John answered, moving back towards the window when he was done with his flower, the bag slung over one shoulder. "We may be safe, but the people downstairs are most decidedly not. I want to trap him in the room before he realizes that."

Lydia felt her stomach clench and try to rebel at the thought of returning to that room, but after one tiny half step back that she hoped neither of them noticed, she nodded and moved after John, figuring Peter would follow.

He maybe couldn't jump to the window, but he could fly, so.

Peter did indeed fly to get up to the window, and when they were all inside, John looked to Samuel, making sure he hadn't moved from where he'd left him, then moved towards the door. He knelt down in front of it, setting the bag down next to him, and rifled through it again, pulling out a handful of leaves this time. He set it down around the edges of the bottom of the door frame, reached for another handful, and repeated the process on the other side of the frame. He studied the tiny piles for a moment, frowning, then sighed and got back to his feet, moving to spread a sprinkling of leaves along the window sill.

He moved back to the center of the room, gathering Power around him like a cloak with each step he took, and unsheathed his sword from where it had been hidden in his cane. He pointed it towards the floor at the base of the door and flashed Lydia a wry smile, his eyes slowly darkening as the feel of magic electrified the air. "I do hope they didn't ask you to put a security deposit on this room. You're about to lose it."

Without waiting for her to answer, he raised the tip of the sword, following the line of the door frame with it, and as he did so, the leaves he'd spread at its base followed suit, snaking up the wood slowly and from both sides, hissing with a rustle of unfelt wind. They continued on, creeping higher, covering the frame until they met in the center, above the door, and John pushed more Power into them, closing his eyes. They did nothing for a moment, a slow, sweet smell filling the room as though something were burning, and then they dissolved abruptly into a shower of ash. A delicate pattern of leaves and branches remained on the wood where they had been, apparently burned into the wood.

John studied the markings, then satisfied, he nodded, turning to repeat the process on the window.

Lydia hadn't expected him to be in Samuel's form. Peter hadn't said. Nor had John. She'd braced herself for near everything but that, and for a moment it felt like a blow to the chest, one she was fairly certain was about to stop her already slowly beating heart. Once Peter was in the window, she backed to it, again, pressing close to it, feeling the slight bit of tightening panic rushing in on her.

Then John was doing his thing, and there was magic, and it was far more powerful than anything she'd done.

She moved away from the window, letting him do what he needed to, eyes taking in the vines, the smell of the herbs, and tried to steady herself, adjust to the adjustment in the plan.

John reached out to her a she passed, fingers brushing over her arm lightly as if he had sensed her distress. He hadn't thought to warn her about how he'd found Sylar, the fact that he was wearing Samuel's face just a footnote in the story as far as he had been concerned, and now he wished he had. He could apologize later, though, if she required one, and he offered her a sympathetic look in spite of how otherwise cold he was, before raising his sword to finish the window.

He stepped back away from it, nearly bumping into Peter who was staring, rapt. Apparently one of them turning into a wolf or a leopard, a crow or a lion, was perfectly alright, but such an overt display of Power was worthy of staring at. John rolled his eyes, grateful that the fool boy didn't express his surprise verbally, and willed himself to move around Peter and over to Sylar, each step heavy, his exhaustion showing. It would be a miracle if he made it through this and didn't pass out at the end, he decided.

"You're welcome to leave, my dear," he said, nudging Sylar (Samuel) with the flat of his sword. "This ... won't be a joy to watch, I can promise you that."

The expression of sympathy, however small, was enough to remind her that there was a bigger issue here, and while Peter and Sylar would know what had been done...it wasn't something she wanted to think about. She gave him a forced smile to show she was all right, but after a quick assessment of how tired he looked, she shook her head, eyes going a little flat.

"No. I need to see it through. I need..." To know he was gone. To have him know she'd seen him gone. To tell him she knew. To...something. "Besides. You might need me." She'd gotten far better, just in a week of practice. Necessity was a hard taskmistress, but powerful.

"Remember, then, that I warned you," he said, all but ignoring the part where she suggested he might need help. He could do this -- would do it, for his pride and his progeny both -- but chances were he wouldn't be doing much in terms of Power and magic for awhile after this. Not until he had time to recuperate and had a few good meals in him. Maybe he'd go back to London for a time.

He shook his head, forcing the thought of mind, and lowered himself to his knees beside Samuel, fingers slipping under one of his shoulders to roll him onto his back. He looked down at him, willing himself to see his adoptive son rather than the man that had hijacked his body, and brushed his fingers over his forehead lightly, murmuring an apology. He leaned away when he was finished, allowing himself a moment of silence, gathering Power to him again and pushing it through the blade, then leaned back in, hovering over Sylar, and drove the tip of the sword through the top of his head savagely.

Samuel cried out, half-sitting up for a moment, before sinking back into the floor. For all that that likely would have killed anything, though, vampire or not, he continued breathing, albeit suddenly heavily. More than that, he was writhing on the floor now, fingers balling into fists and then relaxing, head snapping from one side to the other, his skin running riot as if something was alive underneath it. And while the latter was not particularly part of the process, John imagined it had something to do with the fact that Sylar's body was wearing Samuel's face and ignored it. Just as he ignored Peter who had appeared at the edges of his vision, apparently startled.

Leaving the sword where it was, he pulled away again, and put his hands to his chest just above where his rib cage came together and started muttering fiercely, whatever he was saying far too low to be picked up by even Lydia's ears, and in the same tone he had used on Halloween. It was clearly having some sort of effect on Samuel, though, as his movements became more violent, John's hands on his chest following suit, holding him down now rather than touching him. This continued on for several minutes, all of it building to fever pitch, the sense of raw Power in the room tremendous, Samuel's eyes snapping open, black and unseeing, slurred curses slipping out between clenched, fanged teeth, and then finally, he stilled. John, however, did not move his hands.

"Let him go," he ordered, loudly and clearly, though his voice was strange. Like fire on some deep, visceral level. Peter shrank back out of his line of sight. Samuel screamed, the sound building in volume, shifting halfway to Sylar's voice as his body snapped back into its rightful form in a swell of Power, and then cut off abruptly, Sylar sinking back into the floor, tendrils of smoke rising from his flesh. It spiraled up, encircling the pommel of John's sword, sinking into it, and then it was gone.

John shuddered, swaying as he leaned over Sylar again to curl his fingers around the grip of the weapon, barely conscious himself, and took a deep breath. Then, once he felt at least somewhat steadied, he pulled the sword out of the top of his head, the blade unbloodied, and dropped it to the ground. With shaking fingers, he pushed Sylar's hair out of the way, checking for a wound, and when he found none, he reached for the sword again, and got to his feet, moving to the mirror.

"Bring the bag over here," he said, his voice faint now, distant, as if he were barely managing to stay awake and upright. "I need more of those leaves to trap him further."

Lydia stifled a cry as the sword went in, moving forward with an aborted motion. She trusted John as much as she could trust anyone at the moment. She had to. There was no one else. But it still...

The whole fight made something twist inside of her, as if part of her was rioting in concert with the battle raging between the two souls she'd loved most in her life. If she hated one now more than she believed possible, well...two sides. One coin. It played into a lot of things around them, apparently.

John's voice, speaking to her, not to the ghost, a request she could fill, broke the reverie, spell woven by far more than the magic in the room, and she moved without thinking. Her body felt like ice, but she didn't heed it, getting the bag and bringing it to him, digging out the leaves he'd used earlier, some part of her having noted them exactly, though her eyes never left the sword.

JMM 37.10 Defying Gravity [For hadtobeahero and <lj site="livejou

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