Forever is a Lonely Word

Disclaimer: I don't own Heroes! For shame!

Chapter Two

She didn't cry. She didn't deserve the relief of tears, even if she could have managed them. When she arrived back at the dorm that night and saw Gretchen's red cheeks glistening with tears, her eyes wary and upset, Claire froze in the doorway, mute.

"Claire," Gretchen said, rising from the bed to console her. She wrapped her arms around her and Claire thought she might have fallen through the floor otherwise. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry . . . "

Even then Claire knew instinctively that she was the reason he was dead. At that point it was too much to even process what had happened earlier that night—who had happened, that is—the only concrete thought in her head was I killed him, I killed him. He's dead and I've killed him.

"How did it happen," Claire asked in a small voice.

Gretchen pulled away, thinning her lower lip with the effort to say it out loud. "Someone broke into his apartment to rob him. Whoever it was . . . they slit his throat."

It was all the confirmation Claire needed. Sylar was back.

She wished she were a weak enough person to faint at the news, but instead she would remain painfully conscious, denied any hope of escape. It occurred to her that it would be like this forever. That she would always feel this irreparable pain in her chest, this strain in her heart, and no amount of rapid regeneration was going to fix it.

So instead of falling apart she drew away from Gretchen, feeling her fists clench at her sides.

"Claire, where were you?"

Of course Gretchen wouldn't let it go.

"At a hotel," she said numbly. "That's where we—where we planned to do it. For the first time." Her throat was thick with shame, humiliation, and a self-hatred that would no doubt persist throughout all her immortal life. She couldn't even look Gretchen in the face. She was too dirty, too tainted.

And she knew that if Sylar would stoop so low as to murder the only boy she had ever loved, he wouldn't hesitate to kill Gretchen just as brutally.

"I have to leave," Claire decided at once, already diving under the bed for her suitcase.

"What?" Gretchen exclaimed. "Claire, you can't—where are you going?"

"Away from here. It's not safe."

"I'll come with you—"

"No!" Claire yelped, because that was the absolute last thing she needed right now. Gretchen took a step back, shrinking away. Claire sighed and said, "That's why I need to leave. You're in danger. Everyone is, as long as I'm here."

"I don't care—Claire—don't you understand? I love you—"

"Don't say that," Claire begged, rounding on Gretchen. "Please. Just—don't say that to me, ever again." She zipped up the haphazard contents of her bag and looked at her near-sobbing roommate. "I want you to live, Gretchen. And to do that, you're just going to have to erase me, alright? If something happened to you—"

"Then it's my fault. My choice."

Claire shook her head. "I'm sorry, Gretchen."

She headed for the door, and in one last attempt Gretchen demanded, "What if something happens to you?"

Claire laughed, hysterical. "Nothing can happen to me. He knows that, he knows I can't die, so he's breaking me instead."

"He? Who is he?" When Claire didn't answer Gretchen rushed up and put a hand on the door as if to stop her. "Claire, just tell me what's happening. Tell me what you're going to do."

She was going to hunt him down. Kill him. Even if it took eternity.

"Gretchen. You have to let me go."

By February she was in New York, living in a tiny, disgusting little apartment and working in a pizza parlor. With Rebel's help she'd procured a new identity, an untraceable cell phone number, a hole she could hide in for as long as it took to hunt him down.

The longer she stayed, though, the more unclear it became—who was hunting who?

Claire intentionally made no friends, no ties with anyone she came in contact with. She knew any ties she made were ties that Sylar could break, and somehow she knew he was watching her. The proof came a week after she moved to New York: she was lying on her bed when she leaned over and saw him, staring at her with a feral look in her eyes.

"It's better that way, you know. They'll only die. All of them."

She opened her mouth—to do what, scream?—but he was already gone, before she could make a complete fool of herself.

It occurred to her after this incident that she lacked a plan. Hunting Sylar down was simple enough. He was haunting her like a shadow, so she knew moving to New York was not an attempt to find him so much as it was an attempt to get him away from people she cared about. He would always be when step behind her, torturing her like this.

That didn't help her with finding a way to kill him.

Sometimes he pretended to be customers at the parlor. She was always on her guard, but no matter how alert she was she could never tell when it was him, not until he decided to let her know.

The first time he came as a frail old woman. He probably got some pathetic kick out of shocking her with the contrast of it. The woman padded in slowly, sat down in one of the booths by the window, and ordered a single piece of cheese pizza.

When Claire rollerbladed over to hand her the check, she said, "Oh, dear, me. I seemed to have forgotten my wallet, Claire."

For a second she thought nothing of it. She was wearing a nametag, after all. Sure, it was weird to be addressed by her first name by a stranger, but—

But the nametag read "Jenny."

"Get out," Claire said under her breath.

"Excuse me?"

The question was so forlornly posed that for a moment she hesitated, wondering if this meant she was really losing it, mistaking an innocent old woman for a serial killer. She took a step back, deciding that either way the situation horrified her. But she was through with taking chances.

"Leave me alone," she said as firmly as she could manage. There was nothing she could do here in this stupid pizza parlor, no way to hurt him, to punish him, except to say again, "Please, just leave me alone."

A perverse smile stretched across the bottom of the old woman's face. "There will come a time," she said, leaning forward, "when you will beg for me to stay."

"I'd rather die," said Claire vehemently.

"We both know you're better than that."

Then, just as suddenly as the night before, the old woman vanished, leaving Claire with an unpaid pizza bill and a heart full of hate.

After the first two months of living alone the dreams started. It was unbearable, as Eric's death had finally caught up with her, so painfully that it seemed to happen over and over again, every time she fell asleep. She'd see his face, the terror in his eyes; she'd hear him screaming her name as a last desperate plea; then everything was red, red with his blood spilling all over the tiles in his apartment.

She'd always wake up in the middle of the night sobbing, her heart thudding like a drum, feeling pathetic as she tucked her knees into her chest. The bare walls of the dingy apartment seemed to be watching her, as if she had personified the very walls as Sylar's unrelenting presence in her life. Furiously she swiped at the tears, knowing it was paranoid, and in a twisted way, selfish to think that he was watching her every second, but if he was, she sure as hell didn't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. He'd already taken too much from her.

Until the nightmares started recurring every night, her grief and guilt over Eric had consumed her every motion and thought that wasn't already dedicated to finding ways to make Sylar suffer. But now that she was so determined not to fall asleep, she had time, endless, torturous lengths of time, to piece together the events of that night.

Of course she knew that if it hadn't been Eric, it had been Sylar. Sylar, who made everything seem so magical that night. Sylar, who had so gently laid her down and taken her innocence. Sylar, who had moaned her name and caressed her face after brutally murdering the only chance she'd ever had at true love.

And the worst part was, she'd known it. She'd felt the difference between him and Eric—she'd said it herself on the phone to Gretchen that night: It was like we were two completely different people. Her own words echoed in her head like the last nail in Eric's coffin, the act of betrayal that sent him to his grave.

The thought of it made her physically ill. Sometimes, if she couldn't distract herself properly, she would become trapped in the memory of it until she gagged, running for the bathroom so she could empty herself, rid herself of the evil of him.

It got to the point where she'd feel inexplicably nauseous all day and night. It was not a feeling she was accustomed to; invincibility had that perk. She wondered hopefully if it meant there was something wrong with her ability, but one quick test with a kitchen knife proved that everything was still in working order.

She felt so persistently ill that her manager started to comment, and then the customers.

"You're lookin' a little green there, miss," said a man in his thirties in a baseball cap.

Claire's eyes narrowed. "I'm just fine, thanks."

"Maybe if you got a bit more sleep at night—"

When she turned on her heels and walked away she heard him laughing at her reaction. It was so condescending her very fingers twitched with the urge to smack him across the face, as if she could even make him feel it, let alone leave a lasting mark.

For the rest of the shift he just sat there, mocking her by how casually he sipped his soda and ate his calzone. He read the paper, made conversation with the new mom carting around her baby, whistled something cheerful—acted like a human being. Her fury with him for being there like that was so unmanageable that she was visibly shaking. Unable to deal with it, she finally just told her manager she was ill and left her shift an hour early.

She didn't notice Sylar's disguise following her out. Probably because he didn't. Instead he seemed to appear from nowhere, walking at her side in an instant.

Again, the helplessness. There was nothing she could do to him, no way to hurt him, except to hate him with her whole being until she figured out a better way.

"You're so pathetic that you have to resort to these little disguises, huh?" she said scathingly, wishing he would flinch and knowing that he wouldn't. "Just can't stand looking in a mirror and seeing the monster that you are."

"Choice words for the girl who changed her name and cut off all ties with her previous life," Sylar replied in the stranger's voice, almost cheerfully smug.

"Because of you," she seethed. "Because of what you did."

"Claire, Claire, Claire," he sighed, as if she were a small child who needed his guidance. In one beat he morphed into his usual self and Claire felt a shiver of disgust run up her spine. "Don't you see? I'm only trying to lend a hand."

His sleeve brushed up against her uniform and she recoiled, nearly stepping out into the street. Not that it would have mattered.

"Why me?" she asked bitterly. "Why, of all people, are you following me—ruining everything—"

"You know exactly why. We're going to live forever, Claire, and in a hundred years, everyone you know and love will be dead. So I have to ask you: why bother?"

"What does it matter to you?" Claire demanded. "What does it matter if I was happy?"

"So I sped up your unhappiness a few years. What does it matter in the long run."

His nonchalance was chilling. His rationale was so twisted that she couldn't appropriately collect her thoughts. "I don't plan to live forever. I'm nowhere near as narcissistic as you," she shot back.

"Of course you are. You let Eric die, didn't you?"

"Don't—I didn't—how dare you," she cried. "You murdered Eric."

Sylar raised his cunning eyebrow. "Ah, but you knew exactly what you were doing, letting him into your life. Daddy warned you, didn't he, Claire-bear?"

If her heart weren't impenetrable she could have sworn it stopped in that moment. He noticed, of course. Maybe because he could hear her breath catch, or maybe because he saw the twitch on her lip, or caught the subtle change in her stride, but regardless, he knew just how to exploit her.

"You could have spared him. But you were selfish. You were reckless, keeping him in your life just so you could pretend to be normal," he said, enunciating the last word like it was a sour grape in his mouth. He shook his head. "A shame, really. You don't even care how special you are."

"I loved him," she whispered.

"You'll forgive me one day," said Sylar. "Thank me, even."

"Never," she vowed fiercely. "I'll be alone for the rest of my life, if that's what it takes. But I will never forgive you."

"Ah, but Claire, you won't be alone. We've made sure of that, haven't we?" With that, his leering eyes very deliberately trailed to her stomach. She followed his gaze, wondering what was so mystifying about her uniform, when her gut clenched with horror. In that moment he met her eyes and smiled.

"No," she gasped.

Her knees buckled and she faintly perceived that Sylar had, in fact, caught her in his arms. Immediately she regained awareness and struggled against his grasp, until he placed a hand on her forehead and somehow forced her into unconsciousness.

The last thing she saw was the blurry outline of Sylar's face staring back at her, burning into eyelids, staining her for eternity.

Thanks for the reviews, guys! I really appreciated it :). It's my first Heroes fic so please feel free to make any suggestions!