Chapter 12: Everything, In Time

Apparently whatever this vessel was, whatever its purpose was, it only required a skeleton crew to operate. Sylar was fairly certain that they had killed everything else living on the ship.

The control room, at least that's what he assumed the room with all the machinery and blinking lights was, seemed abandoned. Claire scanned the area, finding nothing, her fingers brushed machinery and consoles, but it meant as little to her as it did to him.

"Tell me you found something to empathise with Derek about." Claire asked him pointedly, staring edgily at the alien monitors and indecipherable glyphs that he assumed were some sort of computer language, because they were different to the ones carved throughout the ships interior.

Sylar shot her another look, that he hoped hadn't revealed himself, but it didn't seem to matter, she was still staring wordlessly out at the stars through another viewer, but there was no trace of Earth in any direction.

Claire rolled her eyes as she turned back to glare at him. "I'm assuming that teleporting us back to Earth might be out of the question?"she asked, apparently her memory was as sharp as ever, he'd almost hoped she'd forgotten about his little time bending episode back in the caves beneath the Earth, what seemed like a lifetime ago to him now, several in fact; and all the possible implications of him having that ability that would inevitably go with it.

As it was, he had found something to empathise with Captain Derek about… her. Though he'd be damned if at this point in time, with this Claire he'd tell her that. But she was right, he wasn't entirely sure about the limits of his newest ability, but given as it had a habit of failing on him, he wasn't too keen to try a long distance jump across the vastness and vacuum of space.

"Derek and I seemed to reach an understanding." Sylar acknowledged finally.

"Have you tried using it?"

"Once or twice." He admitted, not elaborating on the fact that he'd very actively used the ability to talk to machines, to forge 'Ethan's' college credentials and slot himself into her life with a half credible back story complete with birth certificate. Not to mention the ATM's he'd conveniently convinced to unload fistfuls of cash into his eager hands, or the myriad of other uses he'd found for it in his travels. It would only irritate her he decided, still wondering how; or even if he should broach that particular subject.

"Do you think you can understand this thing enough to fly it?" She asked quirking an eyebrow at him, as she finally looked up into his face. "Because I'm fairly certain we shot the driver."

"I don't think Derek could," he began and her expression flickered, but it was too fast for him to register what had gone through her head at that moment. "But my natural ability gives me a knack for this type of thing."

Claire turned away from him, returning her gaze to the view port. "I'll take that as a maybe."

He frowned; coming to stand behind her and share the view, the urge to reach up and touch her shoulders, to ghost his hands down them, was almost too much. The memory of being buried between her legs, skin to skin, enjoying the feel of her as she came apart around him, was still so fresh, even after so much time. The way her hands attempted to draw him closer still, whilst her mouth kissed him into oblivion. It was somewhat sobering to realise he might never have that again; no matter how much he wanted it; because he couldn't lie to this Claire, couldn't fool her with a pretty face and false words.

Sylar sighed, if his recent trips had taught him anything, it was that there was no time like the present. "I have a confession to make."

She stilled, or rather seemed to become so still he wasn't entirely certain she was still breathing. "I'm not a priest."

"Funny, I've always thought of you more as a goddess anyway." He commented and was surprised to see the way her lips curled up at the corners a fraction.

"I failed you." He sighed again, "Just like you said I would, when it came right down to it, I froze. My ability failed, and you paid the price."

"You came after me." Claire shrugged, "And really there was no permanent damage done." She spared him a glance he could almost mistake it for fondness, if it wasn't for the sharp glint of steel in her eyes.

"You were carved up into pieces Claire, and god knows what else before they got to that. Or what they intended to do with those pieces when you reached whatever stinking, Roach infested, cesspool of a planet spawned those bastards." He reached out to stroke her face, only to have his hand deflected by hers with a hard slap and a shrewd look on her face.

"Lucky for me then, that you found some balls." She was watching him intently and he let his hand fall away, not sure what to make of her expression.

"My confession?" He tried to get back on track. Claire rolled her eyes.

"If you feel the need," she placed a hand on her hip, waiting, "why not."

"I didn't come after you straight away." Sylar admitted, watching her face for any sign of emotion, or intent. Only there was nothing but faint amusement.

"I'm sorry Sylar, but you're not exactly telling me anything new here; or unexpected." She stared hard at him.

"You don't understand." He pressed his finger and thumb against his closed eyelids, suddenly regretting starting this conversation. It wasn't going to end well, but he couldn't seem to stop himself.

"I used my ability, I time travelled. I was…." He trailed off not sure exactly what he'd been thinking in those moments. "I was afraid I guess; a coward. When they took you I'd just frozen and I couldn't control my ability."

"Sylar this isn't the time for this confession... or whatever it is." Claire waved her hands as though it really was just some mild annoyance, "Every moment we spend dancing around the issue that you chose to use your power to travel back in time and seduce an eighteen year old girl instead of undoing all this mess; leaves us drifting further into space." Claire spared him a sharp look as her words hit him and his mouth fell open in surprise.

"I…" he trailed off. "You knew?"

Claire rolled her eyes and socked him soundly in the jaw.

"You're forgiven for being a coward and a man... 'Ethan'." He grasped his cheek, waiting as the pain rescinded and the dislocated bone reconnected.

"Claire?" He tried to understand how she could have known, how the hell she could have known for the better part of 700 years and not let him in on that fact, was almost impossible to believe. How she could not have attempted to get revenge upon him for it was almost unbelievable.

She raised her index finger and pressed it to his lips, "You aren't that smart Sylar." She smirked at him, "And you never were all that subtle."

He frowned. "I was careful." His eyes widened as her smug smile only increased and seemed to lighten up her eyes with long overdue amusement. "Why are you not breaking me in half?" he managed thoroughly confused.

"Because it was a long time ago; from my perspective at least. And at the time; strangely enough, it was what I needed." Her lips thinned and her eyes dropped fractionally to his lips. "Ethan, was what I needed. When I realised it had been a lie... well it wasn't exactly the biggest lie I had to deal with that year was it now." She explained shrewdly.

"Ethan never existed. There was only me!" He snapped, angry now that in her mind she seemed to have separated the two. In his anger he foolishly grabbed her by the throat. He had a second to consider the idiocy of it before the searing pain in his crotch doubled him over and he collapsed to the floor curling up almost foetal, until her healing power kicked in and he felt his balls repair. Spluttering and with slightly more aggression than was probably wise he launched himself at her, managing to pin her to the metal bulkhead with superior strength, mental abilities and the sheer fact that she didn't seem too bothered by his sudden assault this time.

"What is it you want Sylar?" she snapped clearly exasperated. "The entire world is quite literally falling apart, our best guess has it at about .01% of the population have been left alive, and I use alive loosely to describe anyone that's still breathing." She leant closer, bringing their lips inches from each others, he itched to incline his head that extra fraction, but phantom pain lingered in his fully healed balls, reminding him of the consequence.

"You had the power to undo all of it, only you didn't. You don't give a shit about the world, about the human race. And I swear to God if you give me some drivel now about how I'm the one thing you do give a shit about, I'll find away to permanently detach your balls from your body!"

He didn't dignify her verbal attack with a response, he simply crashed his lips against hers, pressing her newly reformed and still naked body against the metal bulkhead hard enough to rattle her teeth. Those same teeth bit down hard against his lips and blood welled in his mouth, he winced but utterly refused to remove his mouth from hers. She groaned as his knee slid between her legs and he hoisted her further up against the wall until he could press his groin against her hip. She was letting him kiss him, there was no other explanation for it, and he moaned deeply unable to believe his luck. Then her hand wrapped around his throat and pushed him away enough that he was forced to stare bewildered at her.

"I must have been some lay to have you hard for me 700 years later." He dropped her like she'd burnt him and backed away from her like the poisonous snake she was. Her laugh tore through him and he felt electricity burst from his hands uncontrolled.

"I saved you!" he snarled, unable to believe he'd risked what was left of his pathetic existence for her. There had been, and still was, every chance he'd end up in a hundred pieces floating in a jar next to her.

"And I'm sure it was a selfless act Gabriel." Her smirk darkened and he grew harder just at the thought of it... at the memory of that warm, soft, mouth, he was sick, she was sick, this whole fucked up thing between them was beyond sick, they were both toxic to each other.

She continued undeterred by his reaction, "Just as I'm sure that it had nothing to do with getting in my pants again after all this time." Sarcasm dripped from her words like acid and he felt the burn.

Sylar was tired of this; of feeling like he needed to apologise for his goddamn obsession with this little bitch. "I hate to burst your bubble Claire." He snarled, "But it's all fresh to me. I haven't had to wait for a damn thing!" that wiped the smug look off her face, okay so it wasn't necessarily true, but she didn't need to know that.

"No." He continued. "I think it's you that's been waiting for me for 700 years." Sylar shoved her hard in the chest and she smoothly sidestepped him so that he ended up slamming his fists into the bulkhead with frustration. "Why else would you keep it your dirty little secret? You'd have used it against me before now, hell you could have done away with me a hundred times for it. If you wanted too that is." He accused.

He turned to meet her eyes, pleased to find the emerald sheen was sparking with suppressed rage, that wasn't entirely able to hide the flush of colour to her cheeks. "But instead," he reasoned, taking the tiger by the tail, understanding as only he could what had happened. "Instead you wait, teasing me, knowing that one day I'll come to you, as a handsome young man and tell you a sob story about losing the woman I loved. And you'll realise when I abandon you, who I was. Only you don't prevent it, don't change history in any way, you let it play out. Waiting for the moment I'll run to you, broken."

Claire was staring so hard that he could almost imagine she could see into his head, that all his deep dark secrets were revealed. Her hands drew together and she clapped slowly, deliberately and sarcastically back at him. "Bravo, I guess you just have me all figured out."

"Not quite. Give it time." He gazed around at the metal control room with its unreadable language, and then out once more into the blackness. "Looks like we have a while."

"Why didn't you stop all this?" she asked him quietly, but he wasn't fooled, there was steel in her voice. He didn't dare look into her eyes when her voice was like that, not like he had that night in the restaurant, lifetimes ago. But he understood, he did after all have a knack for understanding, and Claire was a particularly enjoyable puzzle.

"Ah." He voiced. "So that's it. You waited 700 years, to find out why I chose to come back and fuck you, and fuck over the whole God damn world in the process?" He chuckled darkly, but not in the least bit amused.

"Succinct and vulgar. But yes." She smirked. "You see, you forgot one very important fact when you left me in Ethan's bed... which I'm sure you already know, was just another sick and twisted thing you've done to me, in our whole history of sick and twisted things." Her eyes were hard and he felt as though she was eviscerating him mentally.

"Matt Parkman can draw the future." She finished a little smugly.

Sylar had no response to that. He hadn't known that. Since when did mind readers develop the ability to paint the future? They weren't even related abilities... but she was staring soundly at him, and he had no reason to assume she'd lie, not now.

"He showed you drawings?" Sylar pressed curious now, this was something he'd missed, something he'd never picked up on in over 600 hundred years. The notion that maybe, just maybe, Claire had always known what was coming.

"He showed me, me." She snarled. "And wherever I was, you were. Me and my fucking shadow, for all eternity." Her rage blistered him and he flinched, was that what he seemed to her? Some worthless, hopeless stalker?

"Right up until the last drawing, of me floating in a vat, dismembered, with you beating your fists against it." His eyes widened, well that answered the question as to why she hadn't been a gibbering mad woman about being treated like a slab of meat by aliens. She'd been waiting for it to happen for the better part of 700 years.

"Hypocrite." He snarled back at her, not willing to be out done. Not after she'd dared to hold the fact that he hadn't tried to stop the war, to save the God damn world, against him. "Only you could be mad at me for not changing the world, when you had exactly the same chance to do so!"

"I knew nothing!" She spat. "Only that I would live to see the worst of humanity, the worst of myself." Her finger rose and jabbed sharply into his chest. "I had no real power to effect change. A few disjointed drawings spanning hundreds of years are nothing to go on." Her jabs became painful and he grasped her hand, surprised when she didn't instantly react. "I waited, because I need to understand you, understand what you did. I needed you to save me from that vat. If I'd have simply killed you for what you'd done..." she trailed off looking faintly ill. "I may be prone to self harm, but I'm not suicidal."

Her last question stole the fight from him. "Care to let me in on the inner workings of a mad man's mind?" she pressed, pulling her hand free of his with ease. "After all, you're right, I have waited 665 years for the answer."

Sylar sighed, he supposed it wasn't an unreasonable question, one he'd considered for a split second himself. He smirked, only Claire could puzzle over something that he'd figured out in the space of a few short seconds, for centuries. She herself had forced him to go against his own judgement, his own certainties after that god forsaken conversation in the restaurant, and look where it had gotten them. Right back where they started.

So he spelled it out for her now. "There was never any chance Claire. Not for the Earth, not for humanity. The whole human race will die, because that is their fate."

Claire stared at him wordlessly. She already knew the truth, had confessed it in a restaurant to a man she thought she knew; but she just needed him to be the bad guy one last time and tell her the complete, brutal truth.

"We can't help them Claire. We never could. Because they are mortal, the Earth shining and great as it is, is still mortal."

"You could have tried!" She raged her hands fisting at her sides no doubt in restraint from tearing into him.

"I did!" He snarled back spinning on her and delivering a sharp blow to her cheek that was already healing by the time she was socking him back.

"I tried for 50 Goddamn years Claire!" he threw back at her and she paused, hand hovering inches from his face, revealing his final failure to her, his final shame.

But she had been right, about so many things, but specifically that he hadn't done it for the Goddamn Earth, or for the human race, he did it because he wanted to throw it back in her face when she accused him of not.

Fleeing from her sleeping form that night, he'd jumped out and back into history with clear intent. But clearly Sylar the villain, was never meant to be the hero.

He couldn't save the world, couldn't save the human race, but there had been the chance that he could save her.

"Nothing I did changed anything, they still came, and no matter how the Earth prepared, how many got away or how many times and ways I interfered. The Earth still died, and so did its people. It's had its moment Claire." He sunk to the floor, pressing his back against the alien metal, to ground himself in his agony, sometimes perfect understanding was as much of a curse as immortality.

He watched as the truth hit her, the way her whole body sagged under the weight of it and she slumped down beside him. "I know." She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her head on them; it was a gesture that reminded him keenly of the girl she had been, the girl that for one fleeting moment in an infinitesimally small part of the Universe, had loved the man he might have been. "I tried too. I tried to avoid this God damn moment. Thought I could stop it." She snorted darkly. "Some fucking heroes we turned out to be."

"Well whatever we are, we are 'it' Claire." He slammed his head back into the bulked in anger, enjoying the feel of the impact that rattled his brain. "We could go back to Earth; gather up survivors, try and get them into the ship before we're blown out of the sky, or the ground collapses beneath their weight." He cracked open an eye to stare at her, but she was staring avidly at her own bare feet. He wished he had a shirt or a jacket to give her, something to cover her with as a gesture, but all he had was his moulded armour and it wouldn't do.

"But then what Claire?" he asked without really asking. "Where would we take them, where would they survive?" his head fell back against the bulkhead.

"And what about us Sylar?" she muttered, running her hands through her blonde, yellow goo encrusted hair, without even seeming to notice it. "How will we survive?"

He chuckled at the irony. "As I understand it, that's never been our problem. We always survive."

Claire raised her head to pin him with her piercing gaze, he almost wished that her eyes were shining, that tears could still leak from those beautiful emerald orbs. But this Claire had long ago lost even that simple ability and he wasn't sure she'd of cried even if she still could.

"So we what?" she crossed her arms across her chest. "We just float out into space, find a new home; a new place to not die?"

"We can come back Claire," he suggested quietly, he had after all had enough time to consider it. "Maybe one day, when the loss isn't so fresh, we could go back, see the Earth when it was young, find a place to stay through time; uninvolved." He offered. "Live out forever in some quiet corner of history."

The idea quirked the corners of her lips. "Maybe." She acknowledged, before sliding gracefully to her feet, he kept his gaze averted from the flesh she had no way of covering.

"But I'd like to find their home. Find their world." She glanced back at him with a smirk. "Then I'd like to tear it apart."

Sylar felt something spark in his chest, he wondered if that was what hope felt like? He stood and came up beside her, following her gaze as a gigantic ringed planet began to loom ever larger in the view port.

"Autopilot." he reasoned, unable to keep his own smirk from forming.

Claire turned to look up at him, "You once told me that you were a weapon." He nodded. "Prove it!" she challenged.

He stared down at her, lifting his hands to her face as he slid them along her jaw into her hair. When he lowered his head to press a savage kiss against her lips she didn't stop him; if anything she pulled the back of his head closer. Sylar jerked back roughly as the whole vessel reverberated, docking firmly with a large floating station that he hadn't even noticed appear in the viewer.

They would die, he was almost certain of it, but if they didn't...

There it was.

That indescribably small chance that they would survive; that maybe they could rain down vengeance on this God forsaken world.

It was his chance to die as a hero; because he sure as hell hadn't lived as one.

Sylar grasped the energy weapons strapped across his leg and handed one to Claire, it slid into her small, deceptively delicate hand, like it belonged there.

He smirked down at her, pressing a kiss to her equally curved lips.

"Who wants to live forever anyway?"

----*----

A/N: although this was originally intended to be the end I actually plan to extend this a few more Chapters because I think it can go further. Probably Chapter 17-18 will be the end. I'm away with work for a week or so, so updates will be a little slower than usual. Thanks again to all those that reviewed, if you like it ending at this vague/fill in on your own bit, then feel free to stop reading here. If you're curious to know what happens next stick with it.