Disclaimer: I do not own Heroes and am in no way affiliated with them. I derive no profit from this story.

Author's Note:This is my first shot at a Heroes fan fic, so it might be a little OOC. This fic is set after Season 3. It may be considered to be AU. Also, a warning: this fic mentions suicide.

I hope you like it!!

Her eighteenth birthday…

Normally, a person turning eighteen would be excited, happy that they are finally free from their parents' rule, and ignoring the fact that they now hold many more responsibilities. They would be celebrating with their friends, staying out late at night and probably sneaking back into their house early in the morning. Yeah, that's what most eighteen-year-olds do.

Claire, however, spent the first half of her eighteenth birthday in her room, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Eighteen years old, and she still looked like the sixteen-year-old cheerleader she had been before she discovered her ability. Eighteen years old, and doomed to remain in the body of a sixteen-year-old. To most, it would seem like paradise, but to her, it was hell.

"Happy birthday, Claire."

She started slightly. She'd recognize that voice anywhere. It was the one that haunted her dreams, chased her through her high school during homecoming. It was the one that she hated and feared. It was the last one she wanted to hear.

"Sylar," she said, turning around to face the serial killer. "Come to try to kill me on my birthday? Go ahead and try."

Sylar gave a low chuckle, his long legs allowing him to cross the room in a couple of strides. He came to a stop by her bed where she sat.

"I merely came to wish you a happy birthday, but if you wish to fight, by all means, start one. After all, you are the birthday girl."

Claire said nothing. The mattress beside her dipped down as he sat down beside her.

"I remember my eighteenth birthday," he commented nonchalantly. "It was an… interesting day to say the least." Claire let out a scoffing laugh.

"What'd you do? Go torture a small animal? Was it the beginning of your homicidal ways?"

Sylar shook his head.

"No. I got kicked out of my house. After all, I was an adult now. It was time to learn to live my own life." He reached out, brushing a few loose golden locks behind her ear. Claire shuddered under his touch, turning away from him and drawing her legs up to her chest. Sylar let his hand sit on her shoulder.

"Go be with your family, Claire. Enjoy this day. After all, it's not every day you turn eighteen."

The weight on the mattress shifted as he stood.

"I left you a gift, by the way. I hope you find it… inoffensive."

And then, he was gone.

Claire stood, taking the serial killer's advice and getting ready. Before she left her room, a flash of color on her desk caught her eye. She turned and looked, discovering the bouquet of silk flowers in a glass vase that was sitting on her desk. Reaching in the middle, she plucked the greeting card out. The handwriting was scrawled, but neat.

'Immortal flowers for the immortal cheerleader.

Happy birthday.'

A sarcastic chuckle escaped her. How fitting.

* * *

On her twenty-first birthday, he gave her a bottle of wine… Merlot, her favorite. By now, she had her own apartment in San Francisco and a college degree in biology. She took the bottle and placed it in the wine rack he'd given to her for her twentieth.

When she turned thirty, it was a necklace. The chain was simple, silver and made of a box design. From it hung a double helix, a token of her new choice of study- genetics and biotechnology.

At forty, he snuck into her apartment in St. Louis. When she came home, she found it filled with black balloons bearing the phrase, "Over the Hill" in white letters. On her kitchen table sat a black coffee mug with yellow letters reading, "40? No, 39 and holding on for dear life." In her fridge was a small cake with matching black icing. A single candle in the shape of the number 40 sat on top of it, and in white icing was the message, "Happy Birthday, Claire."

Fifty was an interesting year. For one, she hadn't quite found a new place to settle down. On her birthday, she was still traveling across the country, searching for a new place to live as she also attempted to change her identity once again. So, on her fiftieth birthday, she received a set of books on international affairs and public policy, a new course of study she was contemplating. The next day, she settled down in Washington, DC, and later that year became a student at Georgetown, using the books to help her in her studies.

On sixty, he gave her a shoulder to cry on. Peter had just died days before, and his funeral was, ironically enough, on her birthday. So, he stood with her in the back of the crowd, trying to remain inconspicuous. When they walked up to the casket, he placed a single rose on top of it. Setting his hand on the small of her back, he gently led the sobbing girl away from her dead uncle's resting place, his black coat keeping away the bitter chill of the New York winter. In his haste to get up to the funeral, he hadn't gotten a chance to get her any material gift, useful or otherwise, so he settled for making sure she got back to her apartment safely and keeping her company until she fell asleep. For the next several years, his birthday gift to her was him watching over her, making sure she didn't do anything stupid.

Seventy saw him saving her life. Foolish little girl, he had thought as he carried her still healing body back to her apartment in Pisa. Who decides to jump off the Leaning Tower of Pisa? Though she'd managed to knock herself unconscious from the fall, her body still healed itself, bones mending and skin regrowing. Silently, he cursed the girl's stupidity. Did she honestly think that this would work? Didn't she realize that no matter what she did, she was essentially immortal?

Perhaps it was time for him to show her once and for all that she wasn't alone.

* * *

As he walked through the small house in the middle of nowhere, Montana, Sylar couldn't keep the amused smirk off his face. All these years she said she hated him, and yet she'd kept everything he'd given her over the years, even the bottle of wine. He would've thought she'd drank that long before now. Of course, what was the use in having alcohol when you had a regenerating liver? It wasn't like either of them could get drunk.

When he came to the bedroom door, he hesitated. Should he go through with this? Would she attack him? How would she react?

"I already know you're out there," a voice came. His dark eyes shot up from where he'd been gazing at the door knob. Reaching forward, his long fingers clasped the knob, and with a deft flick of his wrist, he opened the door and walked in.

Claire was sitting on her bed, holding the vase with the flowers he'd given her a hundred years ago. Her green eyes flicked up to him.

"One hundred and eighteen years," she commented, standing and setting the vase on her dresser. "I've been alive for one hundred and eighteen years."

He said nothing, instead raising a single dark eyebrow as a gesture for her to continue.

"I'm the oldest person in the world."

"Not quite," he countered. "I've still got you beat by… sixteen years, I believe."

"I'm stuck in the body of a sixteen-year-old."

"Better than being stuck in the body of a thirty-four-year-old. At least you're still in the prime of life."

"At least you don't get carded every time you decide you need a drink." As he took a seat on her bed, Sylar couldn't help but to smirk at her words.

"You know, most women would be happy to get carded, especially at your age."

It was a backhanded compliment, and he knew it. But that was their conversation. That had always been their conversations. Insults, empty death threats and name calling… if they'd improved on anything in the past hundred years, then that was it.

"I've noticed a lack of dead people with their skull caps missing," Claire began, walking out of the bedroom into the small kitchen. Sylar stood and followed, not sure of what to make that comment. Claire leaned back against her counter, facing him. "Run out of people to kill?"

"No, more like the hunger left… for the most part." As he took a seat at her kitchen table, he lifted his dark eyes to hers. "So, what suicide attempt am I going to have to save you from this year? You've already tried jumping off a tall building, getting hit by a train, electrocution and drowning."

"I was thinking death by poison," Claire commented flippantly, as if it were no different than talking about vacation plans. "Sounds like an interesting way to go."

"You know that's not going to work. Your body will just metabolize it, just like it does alcohol and any other drug you've thrown at it." There was a pregnant pause as the two immortals looked at each other, one amused and the other numb. "Face it, Claire. You can't die."

"Well, neither can you," she spat, turning around and yanking the faucet of the sink on. The water hit the dishes violently, splashing up on her blue t-shirt. Sylar shrugged as she bent down, getting the dish detergent from under the sink.

"I never said I wanted to. Besides, I'm not the one trying to come up with a new way to kill myself every year. That's all you."

Claire turned the water off and set to cleaning the dishes that had been sitting in her sink for the past two days. When she spoke next, her voice was barely audible.

"What do you want, Sylar? What's your purpose here?"

"To wish you a happy birthday. Technically speaking, I'm the only one who can do that now. After all, we're the only two left."

Claire knew what he was getting at. She'd outlived all her relatives. Nathan was dead, killed and then impersonated for half a year by the man sitting in her kitchen. Her parents had died too, as had Lyle. She'd watched from a distance as all the other people she knew slowly grew old and died. Peter was the last she could remember, dying back in 2051.

Her hands clenched the glass she was holding a bit too tightly, and it shattered, cutting her hands. Claire removed the shards of glass and threw them in the trash as the cuts healed themselves. Sylar cocked an eyebrow, but said nothing. Finally, Claire spoke again.

"I think you've served your purpose. Now get out."

"If that's what you want." He stood and began to walk to the door. As he reached it, he stopped and turned, leaning against the wall. "You can't keep doing this to yourself, you know. These suicide attempts… they've got to stop. They're not good for your well being." Pushing himself from the wall, he walked back towards the kitchen. "You've convinced yourself that you're completely alone in the world, but you're not."

Claire barked out a laugh, throwing her head back some.

"Right. Sure. And who exactly is the other person in the world who is with me?" she asked sarcastically. Sylar didn't answer, having never been a fan of stating the obvious. Claire turned to him, her eyes dark. "If you think I'm going to spend the rest of eternity with you, then you're wrong. I'd rather be alone forever than spend it with a psychopath like you."

Though the comment stung, Sylar didn't let it show. Instead, he turned and walked back to the front door of the small cabin.

"As you wish," he said. Giving the immortal cheerleader one last look, he shook his head and walked out, the door closing behind him with what sounded like finality.

* * *

Claire never saw Sylar again. Once every ten years, she would attempt to find him, but eventually gave up. She'd never find him unless he wanted to be found. Wherever he was, though, she hoped he was at least somewhat happy, perhaps going around and killing people like the old days.

Though many things changed over the coming years, one thing remained the same. Every year on her birthday, she received a gift. True, she received some gifts from various friends she made over the years. The gifts she received from him, though, were always anonymous. They always showed up at her house or apartment after she'd been out. And they were always relevant to something she was doing in her life at that point.

Two hundred and eighteen found her sitting in a bar somewhere in North Carolina. It was relatively empty, perhaps because it was a weeknight, and people had work the next day. Claire picked up the beer she'd been nursing for the past hour, drinking it not for the buzz that she couldn't get, but more for the flavor. The bartender walked down to where she was sitting and leaned against the counter.

"So, what's got a lovely young lady like yourself here on a night like this?" he asked. Claire sighed, setting her beer down on the counter.

"Just… needed a drink," she answered. The bartender gestured to her necklace.

"That's a nice piece of jewelry you got there. A double helix as the charm." He looked up at her. "You into genetics or something like that?"

"Yeah, something like that." She reached up and fingered the charm some, a nostalgic smile crossing her face.

"Someone special gave it to you, didn't they?"

"A friend gave it to me several years back, when I first started college. It was a birthday present." The bartender nodded.

"You seen this friend recently?"

Claire shook her head, golden locks flying around her.

"No, I haven't seen him in a long time."

It was hard to keep the loneliness out of her voice. She hadn't expected him to keep his promise that day in Montana. But he had, and now, she was regretting what she'd said.

"How long's it been?"

Dropping her head, Claire shut her eyes as a couple tears leaked from them. She roughly wiped them away and held the double helix charm in her hand.

"Feels like it's been a hundred years."