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[watchmaker]

Name: Ruthi
DW username: ruthnor
E-Mail: sarlefay@gmail.com
IM: to be ruthless @ AIM
Plurk: ruthnor

Other Characters: eleven | likeseggos

Character Name: Sylar
Series: Heroes
Timeline: End of S4
Canon Resource Link: sylar on the heroes wiki
Character History:
Until very recently, as far as Gabriel Gray knew, he was born in Brooklyn, New York to an overbearing mother and a watchmaker who abandoned the two of them. He considered his life very mundane, and spent his childhood wishing someone would come tell him his parents weren't his real parents, that he was meant for more than the life he'd been given. He took up the family trade as a watchmaker, in hopes that his father might somehow find out and be proud of him, but that didn't happen. He was very skilled at his craft, but still unsatisfied with the path his life had taken.

Everything changed when he was contacted by Chandra Suresh, a gifted geneticist who had developed a theory regarding the next stage of human evolution, and a possible method of discovering those who had reached that peak. Chandra believed that Gabriel was one of those people, and ran a series of tests on him. Seeming to find nothing, he turned Gabriel away, telling him he'd made a mistake. Gabriel was devastated at the thought of living a normal life again, especially after the possibility for more was dangled under his nose. He knew he had a power-- intuitive aptitude, the ability to analyze anything from simple mechanical systems to things much more complex and see how they worked. He took matters into his own hands, and met up with another person with a much more obvious power, telekinesis. However, Brian Davis had no use for his ability. He wanted to get rid of it, to be normal. This horrified Gabriel. Deciding he was undeserving, he killed Brian Davis, took his power for his own, and went back to Dr. Suresh claiming that he had just discovered it. The doctor apologized for his mistake and welcomed Gabriel with open arms back into the project. Together, they could find other potentials, explain to them what they were, and help them control their gifts.
However, before he took the alias Sylar and set foot down the path of killing others for his own gain, he took a step back.

Overwhelmed with the guilt of what he'd done to Brian Davis, he attempted to hang himself, only to have the rope break and to find himself in the arms of a girl named Elle. After his first kill, he realized that with his power came an insatiable thirst to know everything. He wanted to stop, before he became addicted and lost complete control of himself. However, Elle lied to him, introduced him to more people with abilities when he specifically told her that he needed to stay away from them, and sent him past the point of no return.

Gabriel started killing all the people he was supposed to be helping with Chandra, under the name he gave himself the night he killed Brian Davis: Sylar. When Chandra noticed, he attempted to break contact with him. Sylar retaliated by killing him. Chandra ensured that the list of evolved humans he had wouldn't fall into Sylar's hands, but that didn't stop him from using the information he still had from before.

Using the names he still had, he went after and killed people for their powers all over the United States. He was regarded as a dangerous serial killer, and was hunted by the FBI. Eventually he was caught by a mysterious company, and drugged and experimented on almost to the point of death. He managed to escape, and went right back to his murderous ways.


After stealing powers of precognition, he feared that he might be the cause of a giant explosion and kill a ton of innocent people. He didn't understand it-- why would he kill all these people if there was no reason for it? He visited his mother in hopes that she would tell him give it up, that it was okay for him to be normal. Instead, all she did was goad him on into thinking that he could accomplish great things, even becoming the president. He tried to show her his powers, proof that he was special after all, and it terrified her. Calling him damned, she tried to attack him with a pair of scissors, only to be impaled by her own weapon as he struggled against her.

In that moment, Sylar decided it didn't matter. He would take the power he saw himself having that destroyed the city. He would embrace his destiny. But when he went to Kirby Plaza and faced off with Peter Petrelli, he realized that he wasn't the bomb. The other man had absorbed the same ability from the same person, and seemed to be unable to control the power. Sylar was impaled on the sword of Hiro Nakamura, and escaped the scene barely alive, disappearing into a manhole.

Sylar awoke in a shack in the Mexican jungle, still recuperating from his near-fatal wound and under the care of another Company agent. He also found himself infected with a virus that suppressed all his powers. Angry at losing everything that made him special, he lashed out by killing his caretaker and setting off on a journey to regain his abilities.

Eventually he ran into two twins looking for the same man he was-- Mohinder Suresh, his ex-mentor's son, who was carrying on the project of his late father. Sylar manipulated the twins into taking him with them, gaining the trust of one and killing the other when he attempted to stand in his way. They reached Suresh, he absconded the cure from him, and regained his abilities.
Sylar then decided to track down a target that had previously escaped his grasp-- Claire Bennet, a cheerleader with the ability to regenerate. Gaining her powers (though not killing her-- he couldn't kill her, even if he'd wanted to. There was something different about her), he used the files her father, a Company agent, kept in their house as his brand new shopping list.

Arriving to the Company, he managed to kill the director and that was as far as he got. He was knocked unconscious by the man's daughter, and imprisoned by the Company once more. While imprisoned, he was visited by Angela Petrelli, and told that he was actually her son. She'd given him up for adoption and regretted it. She accepted him, and forgave him for the things he'd done.

Although initially reluctant to believe it, eventually he came to accept her words as truth. He wanted to be the hero that she expected him to be, and expressed this in small acts of kindness-- apologizing to Claire Bennet, saving the life of Peter.
When Sylar encounters her husband, Arthur Petrelli, he tells him that Angela had been lying all along. She feared him, didn't love him, and tried to drown him when he was first born. Believing this, Sylar switched his allegiances and started working for his new father.

One of the things that Arthur did for him was show him that he could access other people's powers by using empathy. He did this by locking Sylar in a room with Elle-- the same girl who'd tricked him when he was most vulnerable, the daughter of the director of the Company who he'd killed and stole the ability of. She attacks him with her power-- electricity-- mercilessly, and asks for him to kill her. After forgiving her and helping her forgive herself, he begins to exhibit lightning as well. They go on a mission from Arthur to get Claire together, and begin to realize that they have feelings for each other.


After a confrontation in the Bennet home, Sylar realizes that Angela and Arthur had been lying to him, and that Elle was willing to play along with the lie is enough of a betrayal on her part to cause him to kill her. He goes back to his old ways, stating that people are unable to change. Killing a woman with the ability to detect lies, he kills Arthur after discovering that he was lying to him and then goes to find Angela to do the same. You know, with Claire Bennet, Noah Bennet, and Meredith Gordon also around so he can recreate Saw.

When he's finally able to talk to Angela and ask her about all the lies she told him, she admits that she was using him, but that his parents are still not the people he was raised thinking they were.

And then begins his soul-searching father-seeking period. He first hunts down his biological father, Martin Gray, in Baltimore. Only surprise, he's not his biological father at all. He's actually his uncle, and his real father is in New Jersey somewhere. So Sylar flounces on over to Trenton, where the SWAT team from Building 26 had already forced his real father to run away and abandon his home. Sylar, not too happy about this, kills the SWAT team except for one person, who he takes next door to torture information out of. The neighbors aren't too happy about this either when they come home. One of the neighbor's just so happens to save Sylar's life and have the ability to microwave things. He considers it a huge accomplishment for him to leave and not kill Luke Nukem, but that isn't enough for Luke. Luke offers his mother's car and the location of Sylar's real dad in exchange for taking him along and letting him escape his horrible teenage life. Sylar agrees because he's a pretty cool dude. And really needs that car.

Meeting his real-real father ends up being pretty anti-climactic. Samson Gray has the same ability as Sylar, only he continued using it for evil his entire life and ended up being a bitter old man who can't even remember what most of his abilities are. He also doesn't remember why he sold Gabriel for money. Instead of the big face-off Sylar wanted to have as revenge for Samson killing his mother, he decided the cruelest fate would to leave him alive, wasting away from lung cancer.

He did take one thing away from his father, though. Samson convinced him that he needed to take on the "big prey", which he did by forging a shady alliance with Danko, senior agent of the Department of Homeland Security and leader of the team of soldiers hunting down evolved humans. With his assistance, Sylar managed to steal the ability of a shapeshifter and fake his own death. After stealing shapeshifting, he had difficulty controlling it which led to a major identity crisis. He reenacted Psycho in his apartment. But he snapped out of it after he saved Micah's life due to a random moment of kindness in his heart and Micah helped him realize he could use his power to do anything.

Anything including becoming the president. So he stole senator Nathan Petrelli's DNA via toothbrush and planned to use him to meet the president, shake his hand, and then … take over the world. While doing this, he trapped Claire Bennet in a hotel room to whisper sweet nothings in her ear and ask for her hand in marriage. It didn't work out.

After throwing her out of the room, he got to have an epic battle with Nathan and Peter. They didn't really approve of the whole identity stealing thing. Sylar killed Nathan, and since Angela couldn't live with this, she devised an evil plan. Matt Parkman erased all of Sylar's memories of beg himself, leaving him only with the Nathan's memories that he'd absorbed via clairsentience. For all intents and purposes, Sylar was "dead" and Nathan Petrelli was in his place.

And this went on for a few months, until "Nathan" began to realize that something was very wrong. Powers he didn't remember having started manifesting, and his memories started to feel like they belonged to someone else. When he unintentionally used clairsentience to remember a time that Nathan accidentally killed an old girlfriend, "Nathan" felt compelled to tell her mother what happened. Her mother responded by having him assassinated and buried in the woods.

He digs his way out, this time as Sylar with amnesia. The police pick him up, and eventually recognize him as that Gabriel Gray guy who killed his own mother. He runs away and joins the circus. Yes, literally. The Sullivan Bros. Carnival takes him in as one of their own. Samuel Sullivan assures him that he's safe, since the rest of the carnival crew also has abilities. Even though Sylar has no idea who he actually is, Samuel does, and attempts to restore his memories by making a Jamaican man with the ability to … restore memories in a house of mirrors. Seeing all the murders he's committed, Sylar is disgusted and full of disbelief.

Not too long after that, his identity crisis crops up again and he wakes up in Nathan's body. He responds to this by freaking out and flying to Peter's apartment. When they go to Nathan's office to see what's up, they find out Angela lied and said Nathan's disappearance was simply because he was on vacation. The Haitian shows up to help the Hardy Boys solve their mystery, saying that the ~truth~ is in one of the storage facilities from Building 26. When they go, they find the real Nathan's dead body. And then they go to Texas to find Matt Parkman, who is currently in a coma.

Sylar's ~essence~ has been in Matt's mind tormenting him all this time, and magically … flies back into his own body when Sylar touches Matt. Even though "Nathan" tries to fight off his Sylar-ness, Sylar wins and also manages to ruin the Petrelli's Thanksgiving. With nowhere else to go, he heads back to the Carnival.

Samuel tries to manipulate him into staying again, this time by getting Lydia the empath to make out with him. He steals Lydia's power via his own empathic power-sucking ability, because her version of empathy allows her to see ~what people need~. When he tries to kill Samuel and fails miserably, he uses the power to attempt to solve his serial killer impotence. It points him in the direction of Claire Bennet.

When he finds Claire at her college, he locks her in an empty classroom and goes over with her their many similarities — they both were adopted, they're both immortal, wow look at all those similarities — and how despite this, they became dramatically different people. He basically expects her to hold the key to his becoming a better person from some amazing insight. This doesn't exactly work out for him, seeing how Claire is 1000% done with his shit. She stabs him in the eye after he kisses her and runs away.

But it's okay, because somehow, out of all that, Sylar got that Claire uses her power to put up walls around her, and decides that the way to better himself is to get rid of his powers. So, to do this, he visits his telepathic cop friend Matt Parkman, hoping that Matt will put some sort of mental block in his head to prevent him from using his powers. Because Sylar has burned his bridges with literally every character on the show, Matt hates his guts and, in his own opinion, does the world a favor by putting Sylar in some sort of perpetual unconscious/asleep state and then BRICKS HIM INTO THE WALL OF HIS BASEMENT LIKE THIS IS THE FUCKING CASK OF AMONTILLADO.

Peter has a vision of Sylar helping him to save the world or something, so he tries to find him and makes it to Matt's house … where Matt also puts him in a sleep coma and bricks him in his wall. Anyway, they're in the same shared dreamscape and slowly but surely come around to each other and deal with a lot of their issues towards each other in what feels like years to the two of them, but is barely half a day in reality. It gets a little homoerotic, ngl. I guess that's what happens when you're the only two dudes on earth for years in your dreamscape. Eventually, because they came around to each other, they're able to break down the literal wall in their dream and wake up, bust out of Matt's basement, and save the world from Samuel and his fucked up carnival bullshit.

And that's how the series ends (not counting Reborn, get out). Sylar is trying his hardest to be a better person and not put up walls thanks to his powers. But, given that he's tried the redemption path before and it ended catastrophically, time will only tell how well he actually keeps up with it or if this is analogous to that guy who tries to quit smoking every other month and never actually succeeds.

Abilities/Special Powers: Sylar's intuitive aptitude is what allows him to acquire powers. This is usually shown by him cutting open a superpower human's head and … gently molesting it with his hands, but he can take someone's power via empathy as well. Too bad he sort of sucks at that, being emotionally stunted and all. But just because it's unlikely doesn't mean it isn't possible!

The powers he has right now are: telekinesis, rapid cellular regeneration, alchemy, clairsentience, sound manipulation, electric manipulation, lie detection, imprinting, shapeshifting, disintegration, flight, and … empathy?? Why does the heroes wiki list empathy??? Whatever you say, heroes wiki.


Third-Person Sample:
Sometimes Sylar would get too absorbed in looking at his device, going through the community, and he'd have to stop himself. He'd catch a casual mention of powers from someone in a post, and it would excite him. A tiny little nagging voice in his head would say: "You could have that. You need that."

But did he? He didn't need anything. He already had so many powers. And how often did he use most of them? They sat unused, like a collection of themed salt shakers hidden in a hoarder's house. Because that's what he was, essentially, and he was aware of it. He was a hoarder of abilities. People died so he could have their abilities and never use them. He killed them. And that blood didn't just wash off.

He was trying to be a better person, though. He really was. Ever since what had happened back home, with Peter ... he was convinced he could change. Sure, it was harder without his version of Peter around, without someone to constantly defer to for approval, but that didn't mean it was impossible. If he did get out of Wonderland and saw Peter again, he didn't want him to be disappointed. Or think that he had given up. That was the last thing Sylar wanted. To lose the approval of the one person in the world who actually sort of cared about him. So he had to try. For Peter.

So each time someone on the network talked about their amazing pyrokinesis or whatever the hell it may be, he'd put the phone down, he decided. Maybe do something with his hands. Fix clocks. He could still do that. He was still good at it. He'd try as hard as he could for long as he could. There wasn't really any other choice.



First-Person Sample:
I'm still not entirely convinced this whole thing isn't a dream. I've had a lot of experience with bad dreams. Getting trapped in dreams. Have you ever been trapped in a dream where you can't wake up? It's literal hell. And I'm an expert. But since we're all trapped here together, I guess I'll just have to learn to live with it. Something I'm also an expert in.

Do you ever think you can overcome your true nature? Or is "true nature" even real?