So... I wanted to know if I could work with Claire and Sylar right after the carnival. Makes things more difficult, but apparently, it works once I get them to talk... ;)
Title: Holding the Dice
Author: sorion
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Sylar/Claire
Rating: PG
AN: Not beta-ed. If you find a mistake, please tell me, so that appropriate disciplinary steps may be taken. (No, I did not read too many Star Trek Kirk/Spock fics. Stop asking. There is no such thing as "too many Star Trek Kirk/Spock fics".)
Not sure how many parts will follow, but even if I did get them to talk, getting them further will take some time...
Summary: The carnival is down. Now the real world deals your hand. Take it or leave it.
Holding the Dice
"Oh, boy," Peter muttered while he watched from afar as his niece pieced herself together again in front of the assembled press.
"You can say that again," Gabriel agreed.
Peter turned to him. "You don't care that she just..." He waved in the general direction of the hubbub.
"It was inevitable." Gabriel shrugged. "We couldn't have hidden forever, I guess."
"There are going to be witch hunts again."
Gabriel sighed. "In some form or other, yes, probably." He paused. "But we are connected. We just... mustn't turn against each other again." He smiled sardonically.
Peter snorted. "Piece of cake, huh?"
Gabriel grinned. "Absolutely." He tilted his head towards Claire. "It was always about that for her. We – our kind – we can live normal lives. But normal can't mean being something we're not."
Peter looked at him for a long time. Then suddenly, he smiled. "You know... and don't tell her that," he quickly added the second part. "I guess..." He straightened some more, seriously looking at Gabriel. "You were right with what you told her. You do understand her."
"You shouldn't tell her that either."
Peter chuckled, then frowned. "Noah really should get her out of there."
Gabriel followed his line of sight to where Claire was now being swarmed by reporters. "Why is he just standing there?" he asked.
Just when Gabriel said that, Noah was leaping into action, pushing his way through the reporters, loudly demanding something that Gabriel and Peter couldn't make out the exact words of.
"We have to..." Peter started, but then his phone rang.
"I can't do anything, remember?" Gabriel reminded him, softly, not going into detail about what both Noah and Claire would do were they to see him.
Peter pulled a face and answered the call. "Hello?" The time he had spent in their nightmare was slowly catching up with him when he heard Gabriel's soft reminder. He began to realise that he'd seen all those people only yesterday, maybe a day or two before that. It had not been years. Nobody had spent years with Gabriel, had watched him struggle, had watched both of them struggle.
Oh, man. How was he going to explain? Instinctively, he put a hand on Gabriel's arm and held it in silent support, patting him twice.
"Mom?"
Gabriel tilted his head to the side. "Angela?" he asked quietly.
Peter nodded and held up a hand. "What?" His eyes flew to the crowd and he frowned, listening. "How am I supposed to distract them and get Claire away at the same time?"
Gabriel's dark eyes lit up in alarm. "Is something going to happen?" When his friend didn't answer right away, Gabriel pulled at his arm. "Peter," he hissed, urgently.
Peter shook his head, motioned him to wait again. He listened, and his eyes flickered to Gabriel. "Are you sure?" He sighed, then nodded decisively and closed his phone again.
"What?"
Peter licked his lips. "I'm supposed to distract the press. You have to fly her out."
"Are you nuts?" Gabriel blurted out. "Why don't you fly her out?"
"Mom said one of them will recognise me."
Gabriel shook his head, frantically. "So somebody else has to take her out of there. She won't go with me, Peter, you know that!"
Peter grabbed both of Gabriel's shoulders and stared at him. "We have to make her." He nodded at him, hopefully. "Okay?"
"Shouldn't... we wait for Emma?" He was grasping straws, now, and he knew it.
Peter smiled. "The ambulance took her to the hospital with some other people. Her fingers might need stitches." He jerked his head towards Claire again, making his bangs fall in his face which gave him an even more boyish look than he usually had, and set off at a light jog.
Gabriel rolled his eyes and huffed. "This is going to be a right mess," he grumbled but hurried after Peter anyway.
The upside of the crowd mingling around Claire and Noah (who was not very successfully trying to convince the press to leave his daughter alone) was that neither noticed the two men coming to their aid.
Just before they reached the steadily growing group of people, Peter turned to Gabriel. "You wait at the sidelines. The moment you get your chance, grab her and take her to my apartment."
"That's your big plan?"
Peter half-shrugged. "You know me. I'm not big with plans. Just... wait here." With that, he pushed his way through.
"Enough!" Noah's voice rang through the crowd. "No more questions for now!"
Peter struggled closer, could just make out Claire's momentarily relieved eyes at seeing him, when the first reaction came from the reporters, just as his mother had predicted.
"Mister Petrelli! Mister Petrelli! Are you an eye witness? What is your connection to these people?" asked one reporter, quickly followed by others who either recognised the Petrelli brother as well or just assumed that the first one must have gotten it right.
Peter tried to channel every ounce of journalist-manipulating Petrelli blood he had in him, turned towards the person who had addressed him first and held up a finger. "Just one moment, please," he said in a clear and (so he hoped) firm voice. "I will answer your questions in a moment."
To his utmost surprise, the journalists actually complied, so he leaned closer to Claire and whispered: "Mom called. We need to get you out of here, now."
For a moment, she looked indignant. "But I'm done with hiding!" she hissed back under her breath. "That's what this was all about."
"I know," Peter conceded immediately. "The situation will escalate. You need to trust me and get out."
Noah, who had been leaning close as well, snorted. "And how do you suppose we should do that?" He demonstratively eyed the crowd surrounding them.
This was the tricky part. Peter bit his lip. "I will distract them," he said, leaned even closer and lowered his voice more. Only for Claire but not Noah to hear, he whispered: "Gabriel will take you out."
Claire frowned for a moment, until her eyes – as if they had been pulled by an invisible force that at the same time made sure that for the briefest of seconds nobody was in her line of sight – fell on a dark figure standing a short way away, widened and darted back to Peter.
Before she could panic, Peter gently but firmly took a hold of both her arms. "You don't know everything that happened today. Trust me. You know you can."
Claire's shock was quickly replaced by anger. "If you think..."
"Please, Claire." He didn't wait for an answer, turned to face the journalists and with an unseen flicker of his fingers made a pole of one of the carnival attractions fall over loudly behind the crowd, making everyone swivel around and some of them scream.
Claire had just about the time to realise that this was supposed to be the distraction, when within the blink of an eye, two strong arms slung around her middle and lifted her up into the air.
Despite Peter's assurance and despite her previous anger, she couldn't stop the panic seeping into every pore at the speed of light, making her tense and instinctively try and push against the chest she was pressed to.
The arms holding her tightened. "Easy. I'm not letting you fall."
Claire breathed harshly and much too quickly and tried to force the fear down. There wasn't anything the man could do to her, she told herself. The last time she had seen him, only a day earlier, he had tried to talk to her, for Christ's sake! She would just wait for the right moment and...
"You letting me fall is the least of my worries," she gritted out.
"I know," the infuriatingly calm voice replied.
Claire refused to look at him and instead looked down to see where they were. To her surprise, they were still hovering over the carnival, but high enough that it was unlikely for the people to see them.
"Why are we still here? I thought you were supposed to get away?" She spat the words out as if it physically hurt to keep them in.
"Just making sure Peter can deal with the situation."
Claire blinked. There was something different in Sylar's voice. Something... She tilted her head and looked at his face, after all. Not that she could make out all that much in the dark and way above the lights from the ground.
Suddenly, Sylar chuckled and sent all kinds of icy shivers over Claire's back.
"They're eating out of his hand," he noted, satisfied. "I guess there's some Petrelli in there, after all."
They rose higher.
"Hold on," he told her, and – if grudgingly and not really tightly – she did.
"Where are we going?" she wanted to know after a moment.
"Peter's apartment," Sylar answered, going in that general direction fast and finally hovering somewhere in the area, scanning the houses below.
"You know where that is?" she asked, surprised. Peter had said that she didn't know what had happened that day, but it couldn't have been all that much, could it? Did he make some kind of deal with Sylar?
"Yes," was all he said. He didn't think that telling her that it was Nathan's memory and not his own would go over that well.
He landed on the fire escape right by one of Peter's windows and held his hands up and away from her when she immediately pushed out of his hold, scowling at him. He quickly twisted his fingers, and the window snapped open.
She climbed in, but not without keeping her eyes on him much more than where she was going, making her stumble briefly.
He either didn't notice or didn't mention it and merely turned on the lights of the... apartment. He looked around. Somehow, he didn't seem to remember that the emptiness was pretty much glaring at a person the moment they entered.
"Jesus, Peter," he murmured and sighed, walking around and turning to all sides. "What is it with paranormals isolating themselves?" he demanded, more to himself than anything.
Claire angrily wanted to blurt out that he didn't know what he was talking about, but then remembered the last time she had accused him of that... She took a deep breath instead and stalked over to a chair and plopped into it, silently admitting that being isolated probably was something Sylar knew well, what with him killing everyone in sight.
"What the hell were you doing at the carnival, anyway?" Since she felt she had to say something...
"Peter brought me," Sylar answered, still looking around distractedly. "He had a premonition about me saving his friend Emma." He turned to look at Claire. "She's the one who was forced to lure people there with her cello," he explained. "So that's what I did. And before you accuse me of something that I actually didn't do for a change," he added quickly, "Doyle was the one who controlled her, and he's alive and well."
Claire tried to process that and failed. She wasn't even sure which part made the least sense... She shook her head. "You... Peter. What? What are you even talking about?" Her anger came back by the second.
Sylar studied her for an uncomfortable moment, before he turned away, took off his coat and threw it over the back of a chair. "I'll tell you what you want to know, but I'm going to raid the kitchen first. Excuse me." Which was where he headed.
Claire jumped out of her chair and darted after him. "Hey! You can't just walk off!" She grabbed him by the arm just as he entered the kitchen and pulled him around. "I think this time you owe me some answers!"
"Yes..." he agreed. "And I did say that you were going to get them, didn't I?" He stuck his head in the fridge.
Claire remained standing open-mouthed. "So first you go emo and now... What's this supposed to be? You're channelling the Swedish chef?"
She was frozen in place at the genuine and loud laugh that answered her statement.
He peeked around the fridge door, smiling a smile that was even creepier than his most menacing stare, simply because it looked horribly out of place. "You hold the muppet chicken, and I convince it to lay an egg." He made a step back and pushed the door closed. "That would be a step up from what's in here. If he couldn't heal, he'd probably die of malnourishment. At least there's salad."
He went on inspecting cupboards.
Claire, still looking frazzled in her dusty jacket, hair out of place and dirty face, stared at his back, incredulously. "I don't believe this," she mouthed inaudibly.
"Just stop it!" she finally yelled, which made him turn around to face her.
He held up a placating hand. "Claire, like I said, I will explain..."
"No! You will start explaining, now!" She threw up her hands, helplessly. "What the hell happened? What the hell happened that Peter blindly trusts you?" The pitch of her voice rose continuously, until it finally broke at the end of the sentence. "Jesus Christ, you murdered his brother! My father! You killed countless others! Sure, so maybe you tried to change or whatever, and we all know how well that turned out, don't we, but that doesn't change a single thing! Not one! I can't even..." She either ran out of air or out of words, she didn't know for sure which.
Sylar just looked at her calmly. "Alright. I'll explain."
Claire returned the look wildly, now suddenly interrupted in her thought process and unsure what to do with the emotions that unfortunately weren't equally interrupted. She blindly reached for a kitchen chair and sat down.
Sylar rubbed his face. "Uh..." This could be fun; he had no idea where to begin and not make it sound... well, insane. "Do you remember when we last spoke?"
Claire sent him an 'are you fucking serious?' look. "That was yesterday."
Sylar blinked and avoided her gaze for a moment. "This'll take some getting used to..." he mumbled more to himself than her. Yesterday didn't quite cut it for him, not even close.
"After our... talk..."
Claire snorted, narrowing his eyes at him, letting him know exactly what she thought of his wording.
Sylar just chuckled. The years in between veiled most of what had happened, made it a distant memory, a muddy moat of solitude parting his lives before and after. His imagination provided an alligator or two paddling around in it, a rusty and dilapidated old drawbridge having been his only way to get past it. And Peter... was less a knight in shining armour and more an eleven year old Harry Potter getting them both out by... accepting Gabriel as his friend. Or something. But his imagination might actually have been running a tad wild, there.
And now he was out of the prison and through the moat and arrived in a new world that knew nothing of his personal demons, aka castles and alligators. But moats aside, he did remember their talk.
"I went to Matt Parkman," he said after a short pause. "I wanted him to take away all of my powers."
"What?" Claire shrieked, the word out before she could think about it.
Sylar looked at her, accusingly. "What are you so surprised about? It was your idea!" he protested.
"But that was..." Claire spluttered. "More metaphorical. You know. The thing that isn't to take literally?" She raised an eyebrow. "More like an invitation to not let the powers consume you but do something about it?" She wanted to add an insult, but then remembered what had happened the day before when she called him a psychopath. She could go without kissing the guy for quite some time, no problem...
Sylar rolled his eyes and continued opening cupboards, finding one with a packet of spaghetti in it. "Anyway," he said, looking for a pot, next. "I asked him to block them or something, which didn't work." He added water to the pot. "You hungry?"
"No!"
"Suit yourself." He didn't turn to look at her and turned on the heat. "When his attempts failed," he continued, "he put me in a coma, locked in my worst nightmare." His voice was detached, clinical. He added salt to the water and looked for something to make a sauce.
Claire didn't interrupt the silence for the longest time and let him work. She watched the eerie and unfamiliar view of Sylar being... normal. Cooking food, telling a weird story.
She had her own nightmares, she didn't want to be reminded of the possibility of ever having to live them.
But her curiosity eventually got the better of her. "Nightmare?"
Sylar put both his hands on the counter and slumped his shoulders with his back to her. "I was in New York."
Claire kept her quiet. She knew Sylar as the hunter, the predator. She had also seen him... contemplative, even confused. Never like this. It was... certainly satisfying, but also curiously frightening in an entirely different way.
Sylar sighed. "The city was empty."
Claire's breath hitched, and she was sure that the temperature in the room must have dropped. She didn't have to ask for more information, not after their latest talk about not wanting to be alone and needing a friend and all that.
She could still see him draw their comparing chart – her on the left side and him on the right – and her imagination pictured him adding another similarity. A shared nightmare.
Great. Just great. Another thing she could have gone without him knowing.
"Can't say you didn't deserve it," she mumbled quietly, knowing quite well that he heard.
Sylar chuckled. "Agreed." He shook himself and got the salad he had found out of the fridge.
"Then you obviously left the dream again," Claire noted.
"Yeah..." He rinsed the salad. "Like I said, Peter had a premonition about me saving Emma, so he... took Parkman's telepathy and came in after me." He peeked over his shoulder to see her reaction and snickered.
Claire propped her head on her hand and rubbed her face. "He went into your head," she said, deadpan.
"Came in three hours after me."
Three hours. Three hours in a nightmare. Claire was sure that she could have managed that.
"It took him a while to believe that it had been three years for me."
Claire gasped and she could feel the drop of temperature again, only this time, it made her stand up from her seat. She felt trapped, constricted, lost, alone, cold. So cold.
"Whoa, Claire. Take it easy." He turned to face her and held up both hands, careful not to move a single step closer.
Claire's eyes darted to him wildly, mostly unseeing and couldn't focus on the man for a heartbeat or two.
She wanted to smash something, wanted to... hurt, to feel. Instead, she took a deep breath and looked her nemesis square in the eyes. She wanted to dig into those dark depths; wanted to see how in God's name he could still stand here after having been frozen in place for years, strangled by searing loneliness that was more than just a mere dream for both of them – it was a choking possibility, looming in their future.
Sylar smiled. He knew that she wanted to hear that he was okay, that he had survived his nightmare... even though she didn't want him to be okay or alive in the first place. So he just finished his story.
"Granted, Peter wasn't really much for company at first," he smiled, crookedly. "But eventually, things changed." He smirked. "Only took us five more years to get out, give or take; it got kinda hazy after a while…"
Two tears fell from Claire's eyes like heavy raindrops, before she so much as noticed the burning sting. She rushed around her chair, making it scrape on the floor loudly and hurried out of the room, mumbling a choked, "excuse me," before disappearing into the bathroom.
The moment the door was closed behind her, she broke down, sobbing, gasping for breath.
She didn't know for how long she was cowering on the floor, her breathing unwilling to even out, the mere retelling of loneliness clawing at her heart in a way that didn't feel at all as if her ability would be able to heal the damage it did.
She wanted… no. She needed herself to want Sylar locked in a nightmare like that. She knew with every part of her mind that he deserved it a dozen times over, and that three years of solitude weren't nearly enough. Unfortunately for her, she couldn't make herself want that. Not for anyone. Particularly not for someone who was as afraid of being alone as she was.
She also didn't want to be glad for Peter to break the dream, the loneliness, the prison. She didn't.
… Then why was she anyway?
A choked laugh finally escaped her when her mental chalkboard now had the terms adopted, abandoned, immortal, nightmare as well as the newly added Peter listed on the left, all of which were marked with a flourishly scribbled check on the right.
She granted herself another minute to calm her breathing, unwilling to show Sylar just how much his little speech had affected her. She didn't really believe that he didn't know anyway, but that didn't mean she wanted to give him the satisfaction and look as rattled as she was.
She took off her dusty black coat, surprised to find that her shirt was actually still coral pink and not too dirty apart from some specks of blood… She sniffed and washed and rubbed her face, traces of tears and dirt disappearing. Then she pulled her hair into a fresh pony tail and left the bathroom.
Hopefully, their shared, personal hero would get there sooner rather than later. She didn't know what to do with that weird guy in the kitchen, whom she wasn't sure she knew anymore. She was in a constant state between complete shellshock and ingrained alert, both pulling at two very different sides of her.
She cooled her expression into something as neutral as she could manage and entered the kitchen again. Damn. The bastard had somehow whipped up a tomato sauce and it smelled delicious.
She cleared her throat, letting him know that she was back and sat down. "Sorry about that. Long day," she mumbled.
"I bet," came the noncommittal answer, and a small bowl with salad and a plate with pasta were telekinetically placed in front of her with cutlery, while Sylar sat down across from her with his own.
She scowled at him. "I told you I wasn't hungry," she lied, hoping that her traitorous stomach wouldn't grumble just then.
Sylar just looked at her, smirking. "That was a lie before, and it didn't get any truer since then…" His expression softened at her accusing as well as conflicted stare. "Just eat it. Like you said… it was a long day."
With that, he started eating and made sure he kept his eyes firmly on his food, not pressuring her with looks or more words. His lips might have twitched a bit when Claire moved to eat her late dinner.
"So…" he said after a while. "What happened during your long day?"
Claire snorted, twisting spaghetti with her fork. "My day wasn't quite as long as yours."
This made him almost choke on his own mouthful, since he was trying to laugh and swallow at the same time. He managed both without spraying the table with his food, eventually, however.
"Sorry," he said, covering his still grinning mouth, and went to get napkins (just in case) and two glasses of water that he had forgotten earlier.
She looked at him very oddly when he sat back down. "How am supposed to deal with…" she waved his hand at him, "… you being all… normal?" She emphasised normal as if it was the furthest from normal she could imagine.
"Beats me. How do you think I feel? I mean, dealing with my ability was certainly the most prominent change for me, but after the last eight years, the world feels strangely… populated."
Claire snorted. "It is that," she said, sarcastically.
Sylar grinned. "Luckily for you, you don't have to deal with me. We're just waiting for Peter."
"So you guys are friends now?" she asked, not sounding quite as incredulous as she felt. She sounded… miffed.
Sylar shrugged uncomfortably. "He's all I have," he answered truthfully. "And he trusts me." A slight smile grew on his face, as if he couldn't really believe it. Couldn't believe that anyone would trust him, and couldn't believe that he had managed to become someone trustworthy.
Breathing came so much easier without the lethal urges pulling at his leash, and Peter had been there to witness the change. "Trusts me with you, I might add…"
Claire's jaw set. "I noticed," she forced out.
Sylar looked up. "Claire… don't think that you mean little to him because of that. That's not how it is."
Claire just nodded, unwilling to answer anything to that. She had a hard enough time to take it all in.
"So!" Sylar apparently changed the topic. "You were saying about your day."
Claire raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't actually saying anything," she pointed out. When Sylar merely shovelled another forkful of pasta into his mouth, she sighed. "Well, for one, I got buried alive with my dad in a trailer," she said, mock-cheerfully. "Tracy had to swim us out."
Sylar chuckled. "Sounds like fun."
Claire was really glad that she was terribly hungry, or she probably couldn't have eaten after thinking about that. "And I don't even know if that was worse or better than the part where I had to look at my father's memories." She angrily twisted her fork in the spaghetti, unsure of whom or what exactly she was angry at.
Sylar's chewing slowed, but eventually, he swallowed anyway. "You went to the mirror maze?" he asked, a really unpleasant memory tugging at his brain. A memory that wasn't exactly his, per se, but he remembered it anyway.
Claire looked at him suspiciously. "You went in there? What for?"
Sylar nervously licked his lips. "It wasn't exactly… me me." He looked up at her from a downturned face.
Her eyes narrowed. "Nathan."
"Well, yes and no." He rubbed his forehead, trying to remember. "I… think someone shot him. Nathan, I mean. And he died." His eyes gained a distant look. "Then, thanks to, well, you, he woke up in the forest somewhere but couldn't remember anything." He shook his head, slowly. "Anything at all."
"Just how often was that man killed?" Claire blurted out.
Sylar huffed. "You should ask Peter sometime…" He shook his head. "Or maybe not… Anyway." He cleared his throat. "He found his way to the carnival and they wanted to give him back his memory that way." He sipped his water before he continued. "But since it was this brain," he tapped his temple, "guess what memories those were…"
Claire blanched. "Oh, God."
"Yeah. Those." He blinked as he tried to force his brain to remember. "I think… it was also kind of… me without a memory. I remember hearing watches. Knowing that they were off…" He shook his head. "Whoever it was, he was completely innocent."
Claire still twisted her fork, but more slowly. She imagined a little boy Sylar undoubtedly would have to have been at some point, and thought about how he would react to knowing what he would do in his future… She bit her lips and stopped the thought before it could go any further.
"Watches?" she asked instead. As good a question as any.
Sylar was startled back into the here and now, although it took him a few seconds. "Oh. I… used to restore timepieces." He shrugged. "Or, I guess, I could still do that. I did during the nightmare."
Claire blinked. Then blinked some more. Sylar fixing watches was another weird image. Why didn't crazy serial killers do things that would make them easier to spot? Like torture puppies or grow poisonous plants in their back yard or hook up stray kids to lightning rods? Did he have to cook pasta and fix watches?
"I'm sure it passes the time," she finally says. "It sounds… very interesting, actually."
For a brief moment, Sylar's eyes lit up. "It is."
Claire caught the moment, anyway, but averted her eyes as soon as they made contact.
Sylar cleared his throat. "I'm not going to pry… but since you're not sure which part of your day was worse, I'm guessing the memories you saw weren't exactly pleasant, either."
"No," Claire answered curtly, very obviously unwilling to give more information on the subject. She knew all too well that Sylar would probably cheer at Noah's numerous lies and deceptions.
"But it didn't matter, anyway," she said, firmly, instead.
Sylar nodded slowly and his lip twitched in a tiny, sardonic smile. "Daddy's girl."
Claire threw her fork loudly onto the table. "You know, it's none of your damn business, Sylar! So, yeah, he did some bad stuff, but he's still my dad, and he…"
"Claire," Sylar interrupted, holding up a hand, his expression full of pain. "I'm not… accusing you of anything. I'm envious, really. I never had anyone as forgiving as you, and I never had anyone I deemed worthy of as much forgiveness as you give your father. And I never understood why you would…" He sighed, softly, returning to his meal. "Now I have Peter, and I do understand, Claire."
Claire watched him eat for bit, then ate for a few minutes herself, before she had to ask. "How did you get this way?" She shook her head. "Not this way, obviously. I mean you. Sylar. Whatever. You know."
She rolled her eyes. This was silly. He was Sylar, after all. But apparently Sylar was someone who never had anyone, and then he must have lost it or something. She wasn't even really sure why she asked, but something in the tone of his voice didn't sound like it had always been the way she had known him. Or maybe she was losing it, slowly, too. Not an entirely impossible scenario.
But for her, quiet and loneliness went hand in hand and were equally unbearable.
Sylar kept his eyes firmly on his food. "I don't think you want to hear that."
Claire snorted. Figured. Of course he would keep the most gruelling parts to himself. Wouldn't want anyone to know just how twisted he truly was. Her imagination tried to fill in the blanks of what would have to be even worse than what she already knew, and it wasn't exactly pleasant.
"Fine," she bit out. "Keep the monster to yourself, then."
His head shot up, his dark eyes catching hers, and she almost gasped at the intensity.
"I really don't think you want to know," he almost growled. "We're not talking about my monster, here."
Claire huffed. "What? You're gonna blame that one on my dad, too?"
Sylar took a deep breath, forcing down his anger. Forgiveness was a wonderful thing, but it also meant that Claire would never believe him anyway. He put his bowl in his plate and the fork with it and stood, carrying it to the sink. "You done?" he asked.
"No, actually, I'm not done!" Claire was now just as angry. "You think you can make some cryptic comments to drive a wedge between me and my dad? It's not gonna work!"
Sylar put his plate into the sink with a little more force than necessary, making the fork rattle. "That's not what I'm saying."
"Then what?"
Sylar swivelled around. "He made me, okay?" He stared her down, watching her flinch at his tone. "He made me, and then he let me run loose!"
"What are you talking about?" she demanded, her voice hoarse.
"I would have been dead," he stated and then paused. "After my first victim, I would have killed myself because I couldn't live with what I'd done. He and Elle saved me, manipulated me, poked me and pushed me and then shoved another Special at me to see if I would do it again," his voice broke and his eyes watered. "Only so that he could watch how exactly I… extract powers."
Claire shook her head.
"He watched, Claire, and then they let me go."
Claire wanted to say that he must be lying, wanted to yell it out. Then again… she might have forgiven her father, but she couldn't in all seriousness say that she trusted him. Particularly the company man he used to be. Or still was, for all she knew.
"Why the hell would he do that?" she asked, instead.
Sylar rubbed his eyes, angrily. "Which part?"
Claire bit her lip. Yes, she had to admit that she could see her father watching someone like Sylar kill to know how he did it. She knew that the company must have done things like that… on several occasions and in several different ways. Ways that she didn't want to think about.
"Why would he let you go? Why not bag and tag you?"
Sylar sighed and let himself slump back into his chair, defeated, shaking his head. "I have thought about that. I mean, I was right there. They could have caught me and brought me in, it wasn't like I would have been in a state to do much of anything, anymore." He took a deep breath. "The only answer I could come up with and that made sense was…" He stared into the middle distance.
"What?"
"You're not going to like this…"
"Cut the crap, Sylar!"
Sylar scratched at the table with a fingernail. "Would it hurt you terribly to call me Gabriel?" he asked, quietly.
"Answer the question." This would have to do for now. She didn't want to call the man anything, really, much less did she have a preference. Still… Gabriel insinuated…
"Oh, fine!" He huffed. "I think the company wanted me to acquire more abilities because that would make me a more interesting test subject."
He had been right. She didn't like it. She also had to admit that…
"It makes sense," she said.
Sylar crossed his arms, in a gesture somewhere between hugging himself and shielding himself from the past. "You know that the company really fucked you over when even the likes of you aren't surprised at something like this anymore."
Claire snorted. "Yeah, I guess."
They both remained silent for a long moment. Claire contemplated confirming Sylar's story with her father, later. Sure, Noah could lie, but she was fairly certain that he couldn't keep a straight face when she just threw something like this at him.
She blinked in surprise when she realised that even in her mind, she accused Noah of lying before Sylar.
"I'm sorry," she said, then decided that something was still missing. "I'm sorry, Gabriel."
Gabriel half-shrugged. "You didn't do anything."
Claire nodded, neither looking at the other, anymore.
"And we both know how little being sorry changes," he added. He didn't sound accusing, just sad, resigned.
Claire nodded again. "I guess."
"I'm sorry, anyway."
Something in Claire's stomach twisted. He was right. It didn't change anything, and it made her want to hit him until he found a way to change the things he had done. Until he made her feel better, made her get back what she had lost.
It didn't help that taking Noah out of the picture, years back, would have changed everything in the first place.
"Poetic justice, don't you think?" Claire said after a long pause.
Gabriel frowned at her. "What is?"
Claire smirked, darkly, the twist in her stomach still painful but somehow more bearable. "If what you told me is true, it's kind of fitting that you went after his daughter."
"Claire, no," Gabriel said immediately. "You didn't deserve what I did to you."
Her eyes darted to his. "But he did."
Gabriel just stared at her, dumfounded. "You know… huh," he said after a long while, shaking his head incredulously, "just because I'm turning over a new leaf here doesn't mean you have to suddenly prove that you have a dark side to you." He smirked, half-heartedly. "I already knew that, anyway."
Claire snorted a laugh that she couldn't quite contain. "I don't hear you arguing my point," she said, crossing her arms, now, too.
Gabriel's amused expression slowly faded. "I can't." He held her gaze for nearly a minute, the ticking of the kitchen clock resounding loudly. "I know you don't believe me…" he said, lowering his head and looking at the tabletop, "but I can't even begin to tell you about the pain I feel because of what I did. And if I… if I have to live with the guilt, I don't see why he shouldn't."
Claire couldn't argue with that. "He does feel guilty, I think," she mused. "But then he starts on how the things he did are in the past, only to turn around and do something again, anyway. How am I supposed to know what actually is in the past and what isn't?" She scowled at him, annoyed. "And why the hell am I telling you this?"
He chuckled and shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe because despite the things I did, I never lied to you."
Claire rolled her eyes. "I'd really like to say that you sawing open my skull," she paused for long enough to enjoy his painful expression at that, "hurt more than dad's lies and betrayals…" She didn't finish the sentence, and he gracefully didn't either.
Instead, he contemplatively tilted his head. "If it's any consolation at all… When the company did have me and experimented on me… the term 'excruciating pain' comes to mind."
Yes, that felt satisfying, Claire thought, but didn't say it out loud. Another thought crossed her mind, though. "Did you come after me to get back at him?"
"No. He pissed me off, and I knew that he was terrified of me going after you, which kind of was a bonus, I guess, but… No. I just wanted your power."
Claire half-shrugged. "I guess it's 'the power to have' and all that," she said, cynically. Her jaw set. "I know why my dad was so hell-bent on keeping our abilities a secret. There are bound to be others. Other institutions or governments or others like… Sylar." She peeked at him from a downturned face and noticed something that looked an awful lot like hope in his expression at her using his pseudonym in the third person. "Anyway. They might try to get to me too, eventually," she grudgingly admitted. "Or to you. Or to anyone else they deem interesting enough."
Gabriel nodded. "Most likely, yes. We will have to keep a careful watch on things, from now on. Take our destiny in our own hands." He tilted his head. "Starting with using what Peter and Noah can learn about the current situation."
Claire sighed as she realised that, at least for the time being, hiding would still be a part of her life. Peter would chew her ear off, she knew.
"But…" Gabriel added, "you were right too, we can't hide forever. It's evolution. There are going to be more of us, a lot more as time passes, I'm sure."
Claire cleared her throat. "And I guess you and I will still be around to see it," she said, deliberately nonchalantly, her eyes flickering to him, before they stared at the table again, as they had most of the discussion. They would more than likely be around. It was just a simple fact. But for how long would anyone else be around…? Would Peter make use of the possibility? Would someone else with her ability cross their path? Or would it be her and… the watchmaker… against the expiration of time itself?
Her eyes lost their focus. "Why do people think immortality is such a great thing?"
"I used to think so, too. I have… since had some doubts."
"Hence the nightmare," Claire concluded, and Gabriel nodded and took a shuddering breath.
"I've come to realise that eternity sounds less threatening when one is not alone and has a purpose. Not that either is all that easy to find, at least not for me."
Claire huffed. "Difficult enough for anyone, but, yeah, I guess it would be doubly so for you." And she couldn't help but think that he deserved the added difficulty, even if she couldn't make herself wish the nothing he had experienced on him.
They remained silent until the ticking that Claire couldn't help but hear ever since they had been talking about timepieces drove her out of her chair (before it could drive her crazy). She stood, took her plate, bowl and fork and moved to wash both their dishes.
Gabriel just blinked at her back.
"Tell me about the nightmare," Claire demanded, working mostly to keep her hands busy.
Gabriel leaned back in his chair. "What do you want me to say? The city was empty. No people, no animals, no TV, no music. Just books and clocks."
"No, I mean. With Peter. Tell me about Peter." Peter was safe. Peter made sense.
Had Claire not had her back turned, she would have seen the first genuine smile on his face that was ever directed at her.
.
TBC
