Claire comes to realize- slowly, slowly- that she can't really die. Or be hurt. And it raises the question; will she live forever? Is there any way to get hurt? Falling didn't work, and it did hurt, but
She tries smoking.
The cigarettes are insanely expensive. And, once she touches the lighter to them, they smell. She's standing with the bad kids. The reject kids. The kids who'll drop out and move on. The kids with family problems, with money problems- none of them can jump off a building and live. But they're trying to anyway.
It's easy to see why they're addictive. And she's read the stats, she knows what they're supposed to do. But it will take time (something she has) and it will require her being sneaky with her new "habit" (it disgusts her, but the idea of living forever, of not being able to feel, to marry, to live a normal life- it scares her more)- and this is something she fails at.
When her dad is flushing them down the toilet, his eyes burning behind her glasses, she thinks that this is the worst- the absolute maddest - she's ever seen him (neither of them have seen anything yet).
For a while, it's forgotten.
Until she hears about Adam Monroe.
He could do the same things she could. He could heal and live forever. And she heard what he had decided to try to do with these. His plans about the Shanti virus- about how he had gotten Peter to help him. How his feelings of superiority, after having done so much to so many, could (and this was just her theory) have driven him crazy.
When she picks up the cigarette again, her hands are sure and she thinks, this is something I have to do. It's not as drastic as throwing myself off a building- it's not saving a life- but I won't be like him- I won't be crazed, wanting to kill everyone. I'll still be me, I'll still have done the good things instead of the bad.
Noah doesn't catch her, he doesn't say anything. He understands in a way, but he hopes she changes her mind. Hopes she realizes that she's better than that man, better than this. He hopes.
But, every now and then, she has nightmares. Of dirt crushing down on her and getting in her lungs. Of worms and bugs and spiders. Of screaming and no one would hear, no one would care. She wakes up crying in the middle of the night, thinking how she would prefer Sylar to that- how she would prefer anything to an end like that.
She grabs the package of cigarettes out of her bottom drawer.