Disclaimer: I do not own Heroes.

05 December, 2009

There it was in black. There was no denying, no going back. Claire needed answers, because it wasn't normal to find a perfect portrait of herself tattooed on her mortal enemy. She would even go as far as to say it was abnormal.

The blonde had actually been having a modicum of fun at the party only hours ago, and then the head of the sorority had smiled at Claire and said that it was sweet that her boyfriend had tattooed her face on his arm. That had brought the evening to a fairly quick halt. Claire had giggled lightly and stumbled over to Sylar, falling against him and pulling him down to her level so she could tell him it was time to leave.

She had marched him to the first all night café she could think of, slammed into a booth near the back and stared at the man across from her. After a long moment he lifted his arm from beneath the table. And there it was, in black, etched on his skin, her likeness.

How could she have missed it, Claire had undressed him, spent hours with him, in close contact, and she hadn't noticed. It wasn't exactly inconspicuous. It took up much of his inner forearm. The ink swirled across pale skin, sweeping into a detailed image of her face. It wasn't the sort of drawing that came from the memories of a few brief meetings. The detail belied a deeper knowledge of her.

"What the hell, Sylar," Claire finally broke the silence, hissing at him across the table.

His pulse beat against his throat, his jaw flexing, "I…"

Claire didn't let him finish she steamed forward, "You thought stalking wasn't creepy enough, that cutting my skull open wasn't enough, forcing me to be a marionette wasn't enough? Did you think, oh hey, I'll just tattoo Claire's face on my arm and max on the creep-factor!"

Sylar retracted his arm, folding it in his lap. "No, that's not what happened, Claire."

Claire slumped back in the booth, crossing her arms in front of her body and shaking her head slightly. "Then what, because from where I'm sitting there isn't a good explanation for that," her head inclined slightly in reference to the tattoo.

"After we last saw each other, the hotel, something happened," Sylar began.

"I know. They made you pretend to be Nathan, made you forget you."

Sylar shook his head in excitement, "No, it was more than that. Parkman suppressed me, and most of me slipped into his head. What was left in my body started to notice the breaks in the charade. I started using powers that Nathan didn't have, things didn't feel right."

"And," Claire asked grudgingly.

"I started remembering things, things I didn't understand," Sylar paused, editing the story to save Claire some pain, "I stepped on the wrong toes and I was shot. I woke up in a grave and I was me again, physically at least, but I didn't know who I was."

This was new. No one ever told her the details of what had happened. The honesty was nice, it made Claire relax just a little.

"I was arrested, they thought I was drunk, which I now know is impossible. One of the cops figured out who I was, that I had…killed my mother," Sylar was staring at the table, refusing to meet Claire's eyes. He had never told anyone who mattered what he had done.

"It was an accident, I read the file," Claire admitted.

His head jerked up, meeting her green eyes in shock.

"It wasn't your fault," she muttered.

"It was," Sylar swallowed. "She raised me, loved me, and I hurt her. It was my fault."

Claire reached across the table palm up. Sylar just stared at her, stared at her hand. She wiggled her fingers, "Come on," the eyes rolled. "I'm asking you to hold my hand, didn't think you pass that up."

The corners of his mouth twitched and his eyes lightened for micro-second. His hand slipped atop hers, hiding her hand from sight. Her digits seeped warmth into his skin, his composure returning with each moment.

"I escaped, and I ran, they chased me towards these lights. It was a carnival, a man beckoned me in, so I went," Sylar continued his story.

"A carnival," Claire breathed, "with people like us?"

Sylar nodded, "How did you know?"

Claire shook her head, leaning forward towards Sylar, "I was just there. Did you meet Samuel?" A nod was the only response, "Sylar, he had boxes from Primatech, he had someone following me at school."

Sylar's hand shifted, so he was cupping Claire's hand, an unconscious attempt to protect her. "Did he hurt you?"

"No," Claire denied, "he didn't want me to leave…Sylar, Samuel killed his brother. He's planning something big."

The panic in her voice reaffirmed the choice he had made in killing Samuel. The man had stepped over the line in approaching Claire. He squeezed her hand gently, "No, he's not." Claire looked ready to argue. "That's part of the story," he preempted her questions. "Samuel tried to help me remember, he wanted to use me, to make me kill for him. I fought it. I didn't want to be a killer. I never wanted to be a killer."

Claire blinked in surprise. It wasn't that she had believed he had grown up pulling the wings off of butterflies. It was just startling to hear the confession from his lips.

"I took Lydia's power and I made Samuel give me a tattoo, I needed answers and you were it," he breathed hopefully.

"I don't…" Claire paled, "Why me?"

Sylar shrugged, an oddly insecure move, "I've been having trouble being myself, I don't know where to go from here. All I do know is that I need you."

"Samuel let you go," Claire asked, trying to push the weight of Sylar's words away from her mind.

A small shake of the head, "No, I felt his intentions. I knew what he was planning. I killed him. I killed those who were blindly loyal to him."

Claire might have flinched on any other day when she hadn't been through half a dozen severe shocks already. "Why?"

"You," Sylar answered earnestly. "You were standing in his way. He was ready to kill you, Claire. I couldn't allow that, not after I realized you are the most important thing in this world or the next."

She sighed, "So you found me."

"Yes," Sylar agreed.

Claire sat in silence trying to settle what she had always known about Sylar with this new man in front of her. This man wasn't the power-hungry killer she had known. The man who had saved her from Canfield was only a shade compared to the Sylar who sat before her. That was the danger, Claire supposed, when you sat down and talked to a person things stopped being black and white. Her hatred faded with each moment in his company, it still flared in odd moments when his actions spoke solely of the killer. The blinders were off and they wouldn't go back on.

They ordered coffee and a slice of pie to share, sitting in near silence for hours. They exchanged the rare word but they were superficial.

"What do you think," Sylar asked.

The fork dragged along Claire's lips, "Nice. Do you like rhubarb?"

"The tartness is good."

Claire nodded and drank deeply from her coffee cup. It wasn't awkward precisely. There was more of a hesitancy to break the amicable cease-fire. Sylar and Claire were reflexively antagonistic with each other, one wrong word and the progress made would be quickly erased.

Silence was better, for the moment at least. Neither mentioned that their hands were still linked, or that Claire's bare feet had ended up on Sylar's lap, and if on occasion his free hand slipped down to stroke the tender skin of her ankle, they pretended nothing had happened.

To any outsider they looked like couple they had impersonated at the party: Loving, devoted, happy, and real. In this moment, they were real and they were slipping into bliss. Bliss made of calm and understanding, something both evolved humans desperately needed.

A/N: 5/25. Slowly but surely we are getting there. Thank you for the feedback, looking forward to hearing more, Happy Holidays.