He sat in a rundown bar on Persephone nursing a hard drink, his eyes silently daring anyone to approach him. By all appearance, he was young man, approximately 30 years old with a shock of dark brown hair hanging over one eye. His eyes however, betrayed him. They belied an age and wisdom far older than his appearance would suggest.
His eyes had seen many things and what they saw still haunted him to this day. Wars and famines, death, disease, and the brutality of mankind, he had seen all these things and more. There were days he prayed he could forget, but every day he woke up with those memories fresh in his mind.
A strange symbol hung on a chain around his neck, one that could easily be mistaken for a Chinese character but was actually from a much older civilization. Like many others, it was a civilization that had been lost when the ships left Earth-that-was.
The man lightly fingered the pendant.
Godsend.
That's what the symbol meant. There was a time when he thought that's what he was.
Time meant nothing to him. He lost track of his age sometime around 177 years. It seemed rather pointless to him to celebrate the passing of the years. After all, when everyone you knew and loved has long since died, there's no one to celebrate with. Family and friends were gone, some dead from the Chanti virus that swept the globe, others from old age. Most from the epic battle between good and evil. The so-called final showdown between moral righteousness and depravity.
He was still unsure which side won. After all these years, he really couldn't tell the difference. Nothing had changed in the universe. Evil still had a powerful control over the lives of individuals. Good was still fighting for freedom.
Claire.
The name came unbidden to his mind, the memory of her death still fresh and painful. He remembered what it felt like to hold her in his arms and watch helplessly as her life slipped slowly and painfully away. He thought she would live forever, that her cells would constantly regenerate and her blood would act as a perpetual fountain of youth. But it didn't happen like that. Her blood, the same blood used by the Company to develop a vaccine against the virus, was ultimately her downfall and the thing that killed her. The virus mutated against her DNA and it ravaged her body and mind. Her cells couldn't regenerate fast enough to combat it and in the end, the Chanti virus destroyed her. He wasn't even sure if she recognized him when she finally passed on, joining the millions who died before her.
So much for Adam's vision of a new world. That bastard betrayed them all. He had believed in what Adam said. He had believed in Adam's "vision" of a new world. He was so young and naive when he met Adam. He sincerely thought that Adam wanted to bring down the Company, not realizing that what Adam really wanted was to be elevated as a god among men.
He felt like a fool when Adam joined sides with Sylar in the vain belief that Sylar could be controlled. Then he watched in grim satisfaction as Sylar cut open Adam's skull to see how his powers worked.
Tick tock, like a clock. He still dreamt of the screams. He relished them. The screams fueled his hatred of everything Adam stood for. The Company, domination, subjugation of the masses to the will of the so-called gods. He laughed when Adam finally got what he deserved.
He laughed when Sylar killed him. That power hungry, evil, psychopathic sociopath. The only one who could kill him. The only one of them still alive.
It was ironic that they were the only two left. They were the immortal men, powerful and strong.
He was unsure where Sylar was in the universe. Every century or so, they had a run-in. A battle of epic proportions that left them both sated.
Sylar never killed him, even though he once gave him an opportunity. Likewise, he never killed Sylar, although could have more than once. Neither would admit it but they both needed each other, a worthy adversary and nemesis. To kill the other would mean an end to everything they had fought for over the centuries. So they continued their fight. Century after century. He was the Light. Sylar was the Dark. Until the end of time, it would be so.
The man stared down at his drink, wishing his body would allow him a moment of drunkeness. That was one of the many downsides to immortality. Constant cellular regeneration meant his liver filtered the alcohol out of his blood at an astonishing rate. So while he could drink enough to make a normal man unconscious, he couldn't even get that pleasant buzz to last longer than a few moments. So he continued to drink, praying that someday his body would give out and he would drink himself into oblivion. Drink enough to forget his past. The Company. His ship. But he didn't forget. He remembered.