"...By the end of the Last World War, you're totally alone, Claire. Even your descendants are wiped out completely..." Sylar sounds like someone trying to appeal to her good senses. The way her father sometimes sounds when he's lying to her about something.

"Why are you telling me this?" Claire asks, not understanding this crazy man one bit. He made his presence first known by rendering her motionless right when Claire was about to watch a movie, practically ruining her whole night, and now he thinks he has the right to keep her here and talk to her?

"Because in the future, I'm all you have."

What the...?

"We fall in love, Claire. I take all that pain and suffering you feel and turn it into hope and passion. That's the final painting in a series of seven." He looks almost as astonished as she feels. The difference is that her astonishment is tinged with disgust and a whole lot of horror.

"What's the first? Me trying to kill you? Or you brainwashing me?" she taunts. "Because we both know that would never happen. I could never fall in love with you, even if you were the last man on Earth."

Claire doesn't really expect the words to sting, so the ensuing expression of disappointment on the ex-serial killer's face leaves her confused. The clench of his jaw that follows is no surprise, however, and Claire finds herself fearing for her loved ones' lives. Sylar can't hurt her, but he can hurt them.

"I've acquired a new ability, Claire. I can show you—"

"Oh, I bet," she snaps derisively, not being able to help herself. How dare he? After everything he's done to me! her mind screams. "But I don't care. I've had enough of this. Get the fuck out of my apartment, Sylar," she says in a voice she hopes sounds confident and threatening.

"Manners, Claire." Sylar's voice is deceptively soft. "Noah would be quite disappointed to hear you speaking like that."

"Don't you dare bring up my father. Or any of my relatives. You killed my father—you killed Nathan! Pretended to be him for months. You psychotic piece of—"

"I've killed so many people, Claire. Hundreds. But none that I've regretted so much as Nathan. He was a good man; under that deceitful politician's exterior, he really loved his family. You know, he loved you—"

Claire's hand connects with his face before she can stop herself. The sound of the slap echoes loudly in the otherwise quiet room, and Claire has barely a fraction of a second to start regretting her action before Sylar is upon her, white teeth bared and gleaming, long fingers tight around her neck.

"You can't...hurt me," she half gasps, half laughs, her hands sinking into the black material of his shirt as she tries to push him away. Sylar's chest is hard and unyielding beneath her palms, and she wishes she could scream in rage at her own weakness. While still as indestructible as ever, Claire can sometimes feel regular human pain nowadays, and the discomfort in her throat is beginning to make tears spring to her eyes. It usually happens pretty rarely. Sometimes when she's nervous or tired or in a very emotional state; right now it's happening because she can never anticipate this lunatic's next moves and he terrifies her. Just like she couldn't anticipate him finding her home in the first place. "You," she coughs," can never...hurt me...again," she manages, using up the last of her air, her neck tender and raw beneath his hands.

"Can't I?" Sylar whispers, his voice gravelly and heavy with deeper meaning. A meaning she can't quite decode just from looking into his dark brown eyes, but then the pressure lets off, and one hand leaves Claire's neck to trail down to her naked thigh where the material of her gown has ridden up during their struggle.

No, a part inside of her whimpers, and she's back to where they first started when she was fifteen, running through her high school, evading this bringer of death...Back to the living room table in her parents' house where Sylar had pinned her down and opened her skull, where he had touched her in ways no one else ever had, and no one ever would or could again...Claire was only sixteen. Ways so dreadful she still wakes up screaming in the middle of the night when the memories come back to haunt her dreams. But this...This isn't even fair game.

"It never was," he says, and she feels his soft lips against her cheek as they form the cruel words. Suddenly the nineteen year old is afraid for reasons she can't even fully understand yet.

A cold sweat starts to break out on the back of her neck as Claire is suddenly, painfully aware of their position on the cushions. Her legs cradling his hips not by choice, but by circumstance of how he lunged at her; her hands against his chest trying to push him away yet now that she's really focusing on them, her fingers are digging into the material and clutching it almost as if ready to rip it off; his eyes are like fire against her skin, so heated she wants to crawl out of herself and run away—Oh God, what is he doing to her?

There's a slight hitch in her breath when she feels him starting to harden against the cotton material of her panties. The growing bulge in his jeans betrays his true intentions, and Claire can't help the terrified whimper that slips out when he runs his hand from her knee to her upper thigh, giving one small, experimental thrust between her legs.

"You forget, Claire," he growls as his pelvis shoves against hers again, the hand on her neck tightening slightly. "I can hear you...And I can feel you."

"What are you talking about?" Claire breathes as his fingers sink into her hip.

She shudders as Sylar pushes once more and then stills against her aching center, his gaze devious and fixed on hers like an animal of prey, his pupils so dilated his eyes seem like two burning coals.

"You're aroused."

"And you're disgusting," Claire gasps. "You're just trying to freak me out. I wasn't even thinking about that!"

"No, you weren't," he says with a suggestive smirk. "But your body was." At her horrified expression, Sylar chuckles darkly and grabs her head between both hands before lowering his face to hers.

"Don't," she manages but the rest is swallowed by his mouth, and Sylar's wicked tongue is inside her mouth now, invasive, intrusive, forceful—and Claire is so very sick with herself for how his lips make her nerves tingle with pleasure, how her middle pools with warmth and need for this murderer.

How? He must be using his powers...I can't be feeling like this because of him, because of Sylar...This isn't happening...

The man in question sinks his teeth into her bottom lip, hard, and Claire cries out as he breaks the skin, tasting salt and copper in her mouth before he sucks it all away, drinking down her blood like a rare and fine wine as she heals. She can't help the moans that fly out from between her lips as Sylar pushes against her again and again, his breath hot and heavy on her neck.

Claire suddenly feels more helpless, more human than she's felt in years, the throbbing between her legs a pleasure and pain of its own kind...He gives a particularly harsh push and her mind clears for a moment as her insides clench with a forbidden, despicable desire. She tries as hard as she can to repress the sensations he's pushing on her.

This is Sylar we're talking about, her mind reasons as he pants against her neck. I can't lie to him. I have to somehow make him feel bad about what he's doing...And the only way to do that is with the truth, Claire realizes.

"Sylar." Her voice is small, and she's sure her cheeks must be embarrassingly red, but desperate times call for desperate measures, right? "Please don't do this. I...I'm a virgin."

"I know," he says with a grin. "And trust me, I haven't done a damn thing to you, Claire." He rubs his nose along her sensitive jawline, causing the coil in her womb to tighten further. "Not yet, anyway," he adds ominously.

"You haven't really changed one bit," she spits angrily. "You're still just one of the bad guys, no matter how hard you try and tell yourself otherwise. You may have fooled others...Peter's one example. But you can't fool me, Sylar. People like you never really change."

Sylar's eyes reduce to slits as he brings his face closer.

"I'm trying to change the big, bad, ugly future, Claire." His voice lowers. "You're going to help me willingly, or I'm going to make you help me. Either way, we're not going to let those wars happen."

"Even if it means I meet my one true love and have his children?" she asks sweetly, sarcastically. "And all those supposed grandchildren?" She fake laughs for good measure, tired of his mind games. "I can stop this war all on my own. Then you and me would never happen anyway."

Sylar smirks knowingly. It's a look Claire detests, especially on him.

No matter how attractive Sylar physically is, he'll always be a monster deep down inside, she reminds herself. A villain. Too bad about the 'tall, dark and handsome' part.

"I've come to find you so that doesn't happen." His voice snaps Claire out of thoughts she certainly hopes he wasn't listening in on. If he was, Sylar's face reveals nothing as he continues his ridiculous plea. "Together, we can stop these wars from ever happening. No one has to die. Together we can save the world." Sylar's gaze is smoldering now. "You're my destiny, Claire."

A shiver goes down her spine at his words, even as she mockingly rolls her eyes at him. "You're a lunatic."

Sylar's gaze narrows, and he stops caressing her thigh, instead sinking his fingers in painfully. She gasps in surprise.

"I am a lunatic. I'm sorry," he mutters, his words a stark contrast to his actions. Yet for the first time since she's met him, Claire thinks she can see some honesty shining in those dark eyes.

"What exactly do you want from me?"

The hand around her throat leaves to rest near her head, cradling it against his forearm. Sylar's grip on her leg relaxes, and he rubs the bruises he's caused, almost lovingly one might say. They're fading beneath his fingers before even having the chance to properly form, she's sure. It causes a strange, unpleasantly familiar feeling to grow in the pit of her stomach.

His next words are voiced in a distressed sort of way, almost as if he's too proud or too guilty to ask such a thing of the young woman beneath him.

"I need your help."

And with those four words, Sylar changes everything in Claire's carefully-guarded, fragile world.