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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Peter let her take his weight, touching back down when it was gone from his shoulders, and shifted to look around the room. Their things -- Lydia's, Sylar's, some of his own that he hadn't collected when he'd been kicked out of the room -- were spread far and wide. Some of it was in neater piles, where Sylar had been compelled to put things in some state of order before Samuel had taken, but this had been their living space for a good long while and none of it was in any real order for packing.

He made a face, moving to grab one of Sylar's bags off of the luggage stand where he'd left it, and looked towards the window. "This is gonna take a couple of minutes, so ... if you wanna take him downstairs and wait for me?" He wouldn't blame her, really.

Edited 2011-03-03 20:47 (UTC)

Waiting downstairs with an unconscious Sylar, she couldn't see how that wouldn't raise questions she didn't really want to answer. Sure, she could just compel anyone not to notice, but that was a lot of people to compel, and she was tired after doing so all day.

Another idea occurred to her, and she shook her head. "Why don't I go on ahead and you just bring the stuff?" She gave Peter the directions John had given her to his house. "We can come back and officially check out and settle up tomorrow, after we've rested."

In all honesty, he'd been expecting her to go out the window and wait with Sylar down in the alley, maybe see if she couldn't rouse him into consciousness and find him something to eat to flush out the poison he'd fed him. He supposed that her idea made just as much sense, though, and even if he hadn't, he was too tired to argue, so he simply shrugged, repeating the directions Lydia have given him over and over again in an effort to memorize them on the fly.

"Okay." He reached up to comb his fingers through his hair, then haltingly, as if he half-expected to go to the house and find it empty, he asked, "I guess I'll see you there in a little while?"

As tired as she was, somehow the option to just wait in the alley hadn't occurred to her. It did now, catching the bit of the thought from his head, and as well as she'd fed, she flushed a little, but didn't quite meet his eyes for a moment.

She read the uncertainty in his voice, though, and in his thoughts, and glanced back up at him with a vague frown and nodded. "We'll be there." It wasn't easy to have to reassure him, but she tried to sound as reassuring as she could. Whatever had gone on, she wasn't just going to abandon him.

"Okay," Peter repeated. He chanced her a glance, his jaw working faintly as if he planned on saying more. Whatever it was, he seemed to think better of it rather quickly, however, and looked away again, shifting to packing her and Sylar's things away.

Lydia watched him for a long moment, then moved swiftly to the window and out. She hit the ground harder than she would have liked, with Sylar's added weight, but she only let it throw her a bit. Grateful for the night that had fallen, she moved through the shadows as swiftly as she could, following the directions John had given her.

When she found the house, she hesitated, uncertain if she really should be here, even though he'd offered. But they needed somewhere, and she needed to put Sylar down, so she fished the key out and fitted it to the lock, letting them in. She found a sofa to deposit Sylar on, fairly gently, and brushed fingers through his hair before she moved away from him, looking around the place in the dark, not bothering with lights for now. Those filtering in from the street were sufficient to see by for the moment.

Sometime later and slowly, Sylar stirred. His movements were slow and sluggish, thrashing in half-time against the cushions of the couch like an insect caught in tree sap. He managed to roll over onto his stomach before he decided that movement was more trouble than it was worth, and groaned weakly, breathing hard into the arm of the couch as if he'd run a marathon rather than simply rolled over.

And really, he felt as if he had. He was tired, his stomach rolling in protest, and when he managed to pry his eyes open, he found he couldn't focus properly on anything, the room surprisingly too dark to make out more than a few shapes, and those that he could pick out were horribly blurred. He imagined this was what it was like to be drunk -- truly drunk, human drunk -- and closed his eyes again, trying to resist the urge to be sick that had come with those few seconds of vision.

Lydia heard him move and shifted her focus from exploring the limits of the room and the hall beyond, back to him, drifting back into the room, settling her gaze on him, near wary again. What if he were still...wrong somehow? What if not all of Samuel had gotten out of him? John had said he'd be fine, but John was gone now...and not that Peter would be much help if he weren't all right, but even Peter wasn't here now to help.

It hurt a little to be afraid of him. She never had been before. Swallowing it back, she moved across the room to kneel next to the sofa and reached to brush tentative fingers through his hair. "You're okay," she said, voice so soft no human would likely have heard it, and it was as much prayer as reassurance. "Just...rest. It's okay, now."

"Feel sick," he muttered, swallowing thickly in an effort to battle his nausea. It didn't help, but in hindsight he would be almost grateful for as hellish as he felt at the moment, his misery all he had room for at the moment, what had happened and what he had done as fuzzy as the room had been under how weak he felt.

"That's probably at least partly the vervain," she murmured, feeling vaguely guilty, but, well. Vervain poisoning was better than Samuel-possession in the grand scheme of things, so. "It will pass." He'd need blood, eventually, but as sick as she'd been recently, she didn't want to force it on him until he felt ready.

Dimly, he could recall drinking a cup of tea, brought to him by Peter, and his stomach rolled, the certainty that Peter had poisoned it creeping in slowly. If his stomach wasn't rolling, if his thoughts didn't feel like they'd been wrapped in wet cotton, he might have been angry -- as it was, he just made a miserable sound and buried his face in the cushions of the couch. "Peter."

It would be really easy to let Peter take the blame. There was a really big part of her that wanted to just let that go. Eventually, Sylar would probably remember on his own, maybe. Or she'd have to tell him if he didn't. Still, after everything the last few days, part of her didn't mind Peter bearing a bit of the blame for just a few minutes.

Except...this part really wasn't on him, and as much as she wasn't exactly known for fessing up to things and putting herself out there...she sighed, and brushed her fingers through his hair.

"He brought it, yeah. But I gave it to him. But only because I really didn't see another option." She still didn't. Samuel with possession of all of Sylar's abilities and conscious could have killed them all before they could have done anything to stop him.

His stomach twisted again, though this time it had less to do with his physical state and more to do with the little flutters of memory that picked at the edges of his thoughts. He shifted away from her, leaning over the edge of the couch, and closed his eyes, sliding a hand up to his mouth to keep himself from retching. It didn't work, though, and thankfully for John's carpeting, the laced tea that had been in his stomach had apparently been absorbed by his body. He ran the back of his hand over his mouth when he finished, regardless.

"Samuel."

Lydia stayed by the sofa while his body tried to expel what wasn't there anymore, one hand straying to his back to brush lightly there. She'd been prepared to move quickly to clean up any mess, but given the dry retching she stayed where she was, her own recent need to try and get every bit of things out of her making her more than a little sympathetic.

Her hand slid away, falling helplessly to her lap at the name, shame prickling through her like the beginnings of a wildfire. What could she say, really?

"Yes."

"I'm sorry," he muttered, flopping back down on the couch. He screwed his eyes shut tightly, trying to fight the roll of his stomach and the press of memory, but it did him little good. He curled his fingers into fists against the cushions and grit his teeth. "I tried. It -- he made me watch."

Lydia flinched a little at the memory of all the things he--Samuel--had said, the words shaped by the tenor of a voice she'd come to love more than she thought possible, which made them all the more cruel. Swallowing, she pushed that back.

"It wasn't you. You don't have anything to apologize for," she said softly. "I should have...realized sooner." Her skin crawled a bit remembering all the things that had gone on, been said and done, before she had. "I'm sorry I didn't."

"It's not your fault. He had everything. My memories ... " His face. His mannerisms. Everything had been right there, waiting for him in the corners of his mind and in muscle memory. Samuel was nothing if not a good actor and he had all but given him the finishing touches to make the act flawless. If he'd been stronger, he could have fought him off, but mind control -- and apparently now possession -- had never been one of his strong suits. Still, though, that was no excuse. It was still his fault.

She didn't want to argue or start a cycle of "it's my fault" "no it's mine." That was the last thing either of them needed right now. But neither did he need to feel himself going through the guilt, not after what he'd already been through.

"I had my ability. It should have been enough..." Especially as intimate as they'd been. She felt sick again thinking about it, a shudder running over her skin. Not just once, but twice, and she hadn't picked up on it either time, when seeing into souls was what she did. She looked away for a moment, then back up at him. "It's over now."

He shifted on the couch, raising his head to look at her, an argument on his lips about how even that could have been manipulated, regardless of the fact that she hadn't wanted to get into one, but it died before he managed to get it out, the front door opening again catching his attention. He twisted in that direction more sharply than he'd meant to and immediately regretted it. He just barely caught sight of Peter before another wave of nausea and dizziness forced him to set his head back down and close his eyes.

Silence followed for a moment, and then Peter offered, "Hey."

Lydia glanced up and followed Sylar's glance to Peter, giving him a look and a nod of greeting, unable to quite muster up a smile, but glad that he'd made it and hadn't fucked off somewhere or run away or gotten lost or eaten or...any number of possibilities were running through her head a little hysterically even as she was trying to keep it under control unless they should happen to transmit over to Sylar.

"You didn't have any trouble finding us?"

He didn't answer right away, too busy juggling their bags, half in an effort to set them down without dropping the lot and half just trying to stay upright under their weight now that he was grounded. When he'd managed both, he stretched a bit, sighed, and shook his head. "Not really, no."

He fidgeted for a moment, a part of him tempted to gather his things and find a room to retreat to, and then asked, "How's he doing?"

Lydia sent Sylar a slightly worried glance, a war going on inside her between reaching out to smooth fingers over his forehead and retreating within herself.

"Not great, physically, but he's himself." Sylar could speak up if he wanted to dispute either statement, but it seemed a fair assumption, and probably true for most of them, though Sylar was, admittedly, the only one who'd been poisoned.

"You get him something to eat?"

"Can't. Feel sick," Sylar murmured into the couch cushions. He didn't know if vampires could actually be sick -- he half-doubted it, given all the dry heaving he'd done in spite of having both Peter's blood and vervain in his system -- but he didn't really want to find out. The idea of throwing up blood didn't exactly seem appealing.

Lydia wasn't going to point out just how very sick vampires actually could get, or that throwing up blood was horrendously disgusting and she never ever wanted to do that again. Twice in the same number of days was enough.

"I think we should wait until his stomach settles," she said, making a bit of a face at the memory. "I mean, the blood might help him heal, but if it was what he needed, he'd be craving it." At least that was how she'd figured their bodies worked from what things had seemed since she was turned.

Peter nodded, more than willing to take her word for it for as little as he knew about vampire physiology, and shifted from foot to foot idly, looking between the two of them, at a loss for what to say or do now. The crisis was over; all they had left now was the aftermath.

Taking a deep breath, he glanced towards the stairs and bent down to pick up his suitcase. "I'm gonna go upstairs and try and get some sleep." He doubted he'd actually manage it considering all he'd been through, but it beat lingering there in awkward silence. "I figure you guys can use some time alone."

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

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