Epilouge

I've got to hand it to you

You've played by all the same rules

It takes the truth to fool me

And now you've made me angry

I can't decide whether you should live or die

Oh, you'll probably go to heaven

Please don't hang your head and cry

No wonder why

My heart feels dead inside

It's cold and hard and petrified

Lock the doors and close the blinds

We're going for a ride

"I can't Decide" –Scissor Sisters

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Sylar casually leaned on the doorframe of the little suburban home- neatly kept with a white picket fence and impossibly lush green lawn and pressed the doorbell with anticipation. He found the Westminster chime to be predictably tacky, but effective at alerting the occupant to his presence. The heavily beveled stained glass door sparkled as the owner opened the heavy oak door with a friendly smile- until she recognized her guest. She tried to slam the door in his face, but he stopped it easily with a small twitch of his finger and he raised his eyebrow mockingly at her weak effort. He waited a long time for this and he wasn't going to leave until he got what he came for. He was a patient man, but he was equally persistent.

"No," Carter gasped in shock as she looked from his face to the name imprinted on the gold bracelet that dangled from the wrist of the arm he was leaning on, "it can't be."

"But it is." He confirmed in a low voice.

She shook her head as if she were trying to wake from a bad dream. "But I saw you! I watched you die and I saw your body."

He shrugged lightly, unimpressed by her assertion. "So did a lot of people."

"So you weren't dead?" She squeaked. "But how…"

"I was…mostly. But you understand that looks are deceiving and sometimes we all have to do what we must to get by." He growled as he gave her a slight shove into the house and quietly closed the door behind him. "You sell me out, I die and come back to life, it all balances out and I'm here to make sure that happens."

She went pale as a sheet when he forced her to sit down in the kitchen with his telekinesis while he poured himself a glass of wine that she was going to have for dinner. "That was a long time ago Sylar." she reminded him in a frightened tone.

He looked around the house blandly, noting the average suburban architecture. "Is there a statute of limitations on such things?" He took a sip of his wine and frowned at his glass. "I guess I can add terrible taste in wine to your list of crimes."

"I have guests coming over for dinner." She said quickly. "They'll be here any minute."

Sylar cocked his head slightly and gave her a chilling grin. "Now you're just being sloppy. I know when you are lying, remember?" He quickly downed the rest of his wine with a wince and added, "Nice try, though."

"So just get it over with, then. You're here to kill me, right? Fine. Get what you came for and go." She demanded, her eyes watering.

He leaned on the counter across from her and peered deep into her very soul with his piercing eyes. "In time, but let's get one thing straight," he suggested, "from here on out we do things as I see fit. You had your turn and you played your hand. Now I get to play mine and I have all night." He gave her a faltering grin that made her heart stop. "Thanks to you, I don't sleep much anymore anyway."

"What I did was wrong." She confessed. "I was starving and scared, and you only tried to help me, I know that now. Please, I know you suffered as a slave- I know that trader did things to you." Sylar's eyes went wide at the mention of it, but she saw her chance. "He raped me too. I'm sorry you were treated that way, that I was responsible for you being there, but we all suffered. At least you went to a farm where you were treated well. Your owner was good to you, mine wasn't."

"And then you killed her." He calmly retorted. "You see, this isn't just about me. I don't think you understand the gravity of what you've done."

"I didn't kill her!" She denied, tears falling from her eyes. "She could have saved herself and I gave her every opportunity to, but she chose to die to protect you!"

"And everyone else she could." He added, pushing himself away from the counter with a sneer. "As I said, it's not just about me."

"What do you want from me?" She cried, desperately struggling against his invisible restraints.

He watched her futile attempt with a blank expression until she wore herself out and quietly sobbed, exhausted and helpless, her hair hanging in wet strings in front of her face. "I want you to know what it feels like." He slowly annunciated, narrowing his eyes in anger and disgust. "I want you to understand the magnitude of your actions in turning on your own kind and destroying one of the few people I respected. I want you to feel the weight of the deaths of all those that fought for you while you sold them out one by one." He leaned in close to her and she began crying harder in terror, but it didn't deter him. "And I want you to face your death as I had to- with fear, uncertainty and always wondering which breath will actually be your last."

"I'm sorry." She gasped between ragged breaths. "I didn't want her to die and I didn't want you to suffer like you did. I wanted to help you, I swear."

He stood up and leaned against the counter, crossing his arms with a skeptical frown. "By storming Maria's house, then ordering the agents to drag me down to the basement and letting them have free reign after I'd been shot? Torturing anyone who might know the slightest thing about me? How exactly was any of that meant to help me?"

"I was going to give you the information you wanted!" She wailed. "I didn't want to kill you, I wanted to help the rebellion, but I couldn't exactly come out and say that, could I?"

Sylar looked down at her and pondered her declaration. Either she wasn't lying, or she had convinced herself that it was the truth. "And why would you do that?" He prompted mildly.

"Because I'm one of you." She sighed, emotionally spent and resigned to the fact that he would probably never believe her. "I tried to help Damian when he was captured. I tried to get them to stop torturing him, but you can't change the system, it's been in place for too long and works too well." She sadly shook her head and weakly smiled. "I talked to him about a month ago. He forgave me even if you never will."

"Good for him." Sylar commended mockingly. "But unfortunately for you, I'm not him. I don't forgive as easily, and as you see, I don't forget either."

"I never read this in your file." She challenged. "You always killed your victims quickly, you didn't play with them for your own sick satisfaction."

He gave her a relaxed smile as he rummaged in the refrigerator and settled on some sliced cheese. He chewed thoughtfully before answering, "When you're being shot at with S2, you have to move fast- no time to stop and smell the roses, really." He lamented. "But for that, you have to go back to the older files, the Company stuff you probably didn't have access to. Too bad, you might have liked the Walker case." He slowly strolled around the kitchen, nibbling on his cheese and reminiscing. "It was some of my early work, and in retrospect a little hasty, but I was still learning the craft. Fast forward to the Jessup case and that was a work of art." He paused to glance at the block of knives on the counter. "Sharp objects make great projectiles, although I've found that ordinary objects like paint brushes will do. It's kind of my specialty."

"I've seen some of the old files." She confessed. "I watched the experiments they did on you."

"Learn anything?" He asked dispassionately. He wasn't surprised that the tapes still existed and he didn't care that she watched it, she probably had worse in mind for him if she was ever able to actually catch him, but that wasn't going to happen now so he had no reason to react.

She looked up at him and saw him as something very different. He wasn't simply a thrill killer, for one brief moment she understood his motivation given what he'd experienced. In some skewed way, it only seemed a natural reaction. "I learned why you became what you did." She replied in a soft and small voice. "You weren't always this way. You were a normal man- scared, confused, and pushed beyond your limits."

He paused in his tracks as though he weren't expecting her to make such an honest observation even if it did seem as though she were trying to placate him. "Maybe," he admitted quietly, "but that was then and we all know we can't change the past."

"It wouldn't have mattered." She laughed. "They would have found you eventually, they always do. You couldn't have hidden your extraordinary ability for long, no one else is like you, can do what you do."

"You'd be surprised what I can do, necessity sometimes dictates discretion. But it would be closer to the truth to say that there aren't many like me."

She seemed surprised. "You mean there are more?"

Sylar scoffed at her apparent lack of logic. "If I exist, there in all likelihood are more. I know of at least one."

"Mills." She sighed. "Pasternack or Burke, whatever his name actually is. I knew it! He was with you when you raided the Virginia facility and it was him in North Dakota. He looked so familiar, but I couldn't prove it." She seemed bitter about the whole experience, which brought a small smile to Sylar's face. She was so close to getting her man, she might have actually foiled the entire plan. "I knew his conveniently showing up and bagging you was too good to be true."

"I let him." He confessed with a wicked grin. "Even with his abilities, he couldn't have caught me without my consent." At least he thought it improbable, but he never really could count Peter out entirely if he was properly motivated.

"Did you meet him at Maria's farm?" She asked curiously. "Luke told me about him. He must be Claire's uncle as well. Now it all makes sense." She shook her head. "It was right in front of me the whole time."

Sylar's eyes grew dark and he tilted his head in agitation. He knew that Luke was the one who gave up Maria's name but he also knew that it wasn't exactly voluntary, so he understood that the betrayal wasn't malicious. He wasn't even concerned about Peter's welfare because he could more than take care of himself should Carter come looking for him, but it was the mention of Claire's name that drew his ire. True Claire technically could have withstood anything Carter chose to do, but that wasn't the point. In the year since the end of the war, he hadn't spoken to her directly, but he got the impression that she was trying her best to move forward with her life as well as she could given all that she had experienced during her time on the battlefield and he felt strongly that it was her right to do so unimpeded. She worked hard for a sense of normalcy that he never seemed to be able to find and she deserved whatever small sliver of happiness she managed to carve for herself in her new life. Even though it was a foregone conclusion that Noah would not have hesitated to make her disappear under mysterious circumstances in the blink of an eye if he thought his daughter's life was in danger, he was going to make sure that the dubious agent never had the chance to darken her doorstep in the first place. He and Claire certainly had their differences, but he was not about to allow her to suffer in some deep, dark hole like he did in the name of scientific progress. It wasn't mercy on his part or any kind of admission of camaraderie, but it was prudent to remove any threat to all that they had fought for. "Was there anything else you wanted to know?" He asked in a chillingly cold tone. "Never let it be said that I'm not merciful."

The air between them buzzed with tension and anticipation. He was done toying with her and she knew it was all about to be over the moment he raised his hand. Her eyes filled with tears as she made her last desperate plea for leniency by appealing to his sense of logic. "You respected Maria enough to avenge her, that's why you came. But is this what she would have wanted?" She asked sincerely. "She was a pacifist. She tried not to cry when she watched you being tortured on the tape, she didn't want to see anyone hurt."

He paused and his eyes flickered with something that she couldn't define, but whatever it was he felt it keenly and it stunned him into indecision. "She watched it?" He whispered hoarsely, obviously upset. It was one thing for someone familiar with the system and jaded by it to see what had been done to him, but Maria would have been horrified by the brutality so casually on display.

Carter slowly nodded in affirmation, seizing on her chance when his impenetrable armor momentarily cracked. "And she saw all of your victims, including crime scene photos of her husband. And she still forgave you. Now you have the opportunity to follow her example. I'm begging your forgiveness, Sylar. Please," She quietly implored, "give me the forgiveness you got."

He looked down on her, torn between contempt and the knowledge that he had indeed been given a rare gift. Everything in him wanted to exact revenge, to allow him to in some small way atone for allowing her to fall into Carter's clutches because the guilt ate at him still. But it wasn't entirely the agent's fault that she wasn't alive, it was partially his own for not following his well honed instinct and as much as he wanted to lay it at the feet of Carter, he knew he was just as much to blame as she was. Yes she had sold him into the system, but how was that different from almost everyone else he had known who betrayed him? The war had shown him that even bitter enemies could be trusted friends given the right circumstances and at the very heart of it all lie the fact that knew unequivocally that Maria wouldn't have approved. It was against all that she wanted for him, but he couldn't live his life for anyone much less a dead woman. As he stood there facing the helpless and desperate woman, he had a decision to make. He could allow her to live or give in to his innate desires. He could travel the familiar road or he could forge a new path and create a new future for himself.

A sense of calm focus fell over him when he settled on a solution. He folded his arms across his chest and a smirk slowly graced his full lips as his deep eyes hardened with purpose….

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A/N: And so we have reached the end of this totally unplanned sequel…lol. I will leave it to you to decide for yourselves if he gave into his predatory nature or found it in himself to walk away, but I thank you all for reading along and appreciate those who left reviews- it helped shape the course of events and provided encouragement. Happy holidays!