May 2021

I sat curled up on the couch in the living room of our home. I'd been devastated since my miscarriage a week before.

I remembered the events of that day only in snatches of memory. I had just finished clearing away our breakfast dishes when I felt a sickening tug in my lower abdomen. An ambulance, paramedics, Sylar. So much blood. A solemn-faced doctor, telling me that my unborn baby was dead. Undue stress, he'd said, but unavoidable.

Sylar came into the room a few minutes after the doctor left. Rather than sit next to the bed, he stood over me as I refused to look at him.

"Claire," he said quietly, "please look at me." Odd, since he could have directed me to look at him with less effort than speaking the words.

"I've been told you can come home tomorrow," he tried. I finally looked up at him, my face tear-streaked and empty. He looked at me for a moment, tracing my features with his eyes.

"I know what you're thinking," he told me, his voice raw with emotion, "but this isn't my fault. The doctor said it was an accident." At his words, I sat up in bed a little straighter.

"How is this not your fault?" I asked bitterly. "How can you delude yourself into believing you're in any way blameless? I wouldn't be here if you hadn't killed my family and kept me in captivity for the last ten years. I wouldn't be here if you had allowed either of us to use some form of birth control. And the only reason the doctor called this an accident is because he doesn't know the kind of 'undue stress' I've been under for the last decade! Fighting you for control of my own body isn't exactly the sort of thing the doctor would know about, but I've been doing it for ten years, and I'd bet you it's got something to do with all this." My voice had become hard and angry; I hardly recognized it.

He didn't react. In fact, he was silent for a long time. I turned over on my side and faced the wall, letting my tears fall as quietly as they could.

"I am more sorry about this than you will ever know."

He left, and I didn't see him again until he came to take me home. He stayed out of my way, allowing me to sleep and cry and act of my own desires. Too bad my desires had all but evaporated. I can't begin to tell you how badly I wanted my child back.

A week after the miscarriage, I sat alone in our home, numbly awaiting my husband's return from grocery shopping. I couldn't care if we never ate again. Living hurt too much.

That last sentiment pierced through my dim consciousness. Living hurt, but maybe I didn't have to anymore. Before I could think too hard about this, I searched the kitchen for the biggest and sharpest knife in the drawer and drove it into the back of my head. With any luck, I hoped, the size of the knife would make up for the awkward angle of my reach, and I'd be done. I was right.

Until Sylar came home, that is. I awoke what seemed only minutes later to him crouching over me, the bloody knife lying on the carpet, and a searing pain in my head, accompanied by the itch of it healing. He was seething.

"You stupid girl," he growled, "What the hell were you thinking?" His grip on me was crushing.

"I should think my intentions were fairly obvious," I said coolly. I was just as angry as he was, but I was the cold to his burning rage.

He shook me hard. "You do not get to decide when you leave me. You are mine, whether you acknowledge that or not." He grabbed a fistful of my hair and assaulted my mouth with his, trying to prove that he really did own me. I exploded and started attacking him like an animal. I wanted to hurt him any way I could. It was only moments before I felt his control clamp down like a vice on my body.

"No, no, dearest." His voice was mocking, but there was an undercurrent of pain.

"I hate you," I hissed at him, tears starting in my eyes again. He watched my struggle for control as he composed his own features.

"I'll always be there, Claire. You will never be able to escape from me. And one day maybe you'll realize that you don't want to," he said seriously, his usual charm all but gone. And with that, he turned and left the house.

When he returned I was gone.

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Mel and Chuck