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[awesome_lilly]

Sleep is a little harder to come by when you're hundreds of years from your adopted home. Still, even after the disaster that was Dean's dream, Lilly is still trying to find ways to send a message.

All she needs to do is find someone who might have dreamed of Milliways.

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[awesome_lilly]

The Dreaming always adds a strange, subtle twist to reality, heightening the colors, changing the familiar, but this... this just feels wrong.

Lilly blinks, looking around at a city she doesn't quite recognize, wondering who could see Milliways and this funhouse mirror of New York at the same time.

[watchmakers_son]

A single footstep, directly behind her.

"...he that sat on him had a bow. And a crown was given unto him. And he went forth conquering, and to conquer."

A distant voice, thoughtful, nearly monotonous.

"And when he had opened the second seal I heard the second beast say, 'Come and see.'"

Heat, now. Behind Lilly, Sylar lifts a hand and drags his fingers along one of the buildings: lines of bubbling metal raise behind the touch and spread wide.

"And there went out another horse that was red. And power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth -- and that..."

He's starting to laugh. "They should kill one another."

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly whirls round, staring at Sylar with wide eyes. Skyscrapers sizzle into molten puddles under his fingers.

"... Ted? What- what are you doing?"

His laughter sounds off somehow, and like the mutable skyline it scratches at her senses.

"Who should kill each other?"

[watchmakers_son]

He presses a palm flat against one building and cranes his neck back. For a moment, he seems to have forgotten everything else as he watches the stars, transfixed; then a yellow-red light swallows his hand and cracks the stone of the skyscraper.

"So much of how they perceive it is built around what they want to see," he murmurs in conversational tones. "Like nature. Like any of us.

"Wouldn't you agree, Claire?"

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly's not watching the stars anywhere near as closely as she's watching him. The Dreaming may not be reality as she knows it, but it's far from harmless.

"Uh... yeah, I guess."

She's not Claire. She's not sure it matters.

[watchmakers_son]

Sylar finally glances her way.

The smile he's wearing can't in any way be construed as kind.

"You've learned," he says approvingly. The lines of the road beneath him stretch, then contract, like the beat of a heart, as the colors continue intensifying around them. "I see your father taught you well."

He turns away from the building, stepping closer to Lilly.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly doesn't step back, but it's a near thing.

"My father taught me well enough," she says, chin lifted.

Jake Kane knew how to lie, how to bluff, how to make a deal. Lilly benefited from his example even when she was his example.

[watchmakers_son]

"Mm."

Another step.

"Then if you think about it," he continues -- and when he lifts his foot, it exposes blistered pavement that glows dully --

"It's a favor." Sylar spreads his hands, head cocked. His palms are beginning to glow, too. "A gift. For someone as extraordinary as you. Not even you'll survive it here. It will all return to ash, and there..."

He glances over his shoulder. The landscape's changed, as sudden and matter-of-fact as any dream: half of it remains New York, the other half flattened out to a bright yellow stretch of sun-baked grass.

"He'll turn you into an experiment." He starts chuckling again, a strangely knowing quality to it. "But there shall be no more death. That itself will pass away.

"You'll always be living." And just as sudden, his head snaps back around toward her. "The part that really matters."

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly can tell, generally, when she's in over her head. Even so, there's something compelling about Ted's dream. Maybe it's the way the pavement glows red around the edges.

"I'm not Claire."

She doesn't know if telling him that is a good idea, or... not.

"I'm not particularly extraordinary, either. But-"

Lilly smiles a little.

"I do keep living. In a way. Even when other things turn to ash. What about you, Ted? What will you be? Alive, or ashes?"

[watchmakers_son]

"Ashes."

He smiles, lowering his hands.

"But he's been reborn out of them, into me. Just like you will."

There's something, though, that's starting to flicker like a skipped beat, or stuttering film, when he looks at her. It's enough for the smile to fade slightly.

[awesome_lilly]

Lilly notes that, but again, good or bad? She has no idea.

"Thanks, but I'm already living out my own second chance."

She shrugs, deliberately nonchalant.

"Sorry if I'm just a little too busy to be part of yours."

[watchmakers_son]

She isn't --

The flicker, this time, is a tangible ripple through the entire landscape: it starts at Lilly and flashes out, knocking everything six inches to the right before it snaps back into place.

The smile's completely gone. Sylar takes another step; he's not blinking.

Vaguely, like one would talk to an inanimate object, "You're not fitting properly."

[awesome_lilly]

"Wow."

Lilly tilts her head, refusing to step back. (No matter how much she might want to.)

"Creepy. You sound just like my mom."

[watchmakers_son]

Still frowning, Sylar waves a casual hand.

The telekinesis lifts Lilly off of her feet and shoves her backward against one of the buildings, pinned to it like an insect. The lines of the facade seem to warp inward as they bend to meet her.

"The wrong piece. The wrong part. You don't have anything." It dawns on him. "You aren't anything. DeadNeptuneCaliforniaEarth2005."

[awesome_lilly]

...ow. On multiple levels, even.

Lilly catches her breath, stares back at him, still defiant.

"I'm more than you think, Ted. And I'm not any part of this, wrong or otherwise, if I don't want to be."

He's got her stuck to a building, but she's not stuck here, not in the Dreaming. She doesn't blink this time, but it only takes a second and she's disappeared again.

[watchmakers_son]

Immediately, the building smooths out, the discord extracted from the surrounding noise and tossed away.

Sylar blinks, his frown deepening. A muscle in his jaw tightens. He turns away, searching --




"Ow."

-- and half a second later, as he rolls over and accidentally pulls at his stitches, snaps awake in his room in Milliways.

Hissing in pain, Sylar shuts his eyes again and presses a hand to his stomach, as if to will the ache away. Once it begins to ebb, he cautiously shifts over onto his back, opening his eyes to watch the ceiling.

That was...somewhat unexpected. And -- his examination of the ceiling changes to a glare -- rather frustrating, as well.

Not long afterwards, he drifts back to sleep.

New York, without Lilly Kane, continues to burn.