New York is a hustling, bustling dream. It sets a comfortable buzz deep in Claire's body, a relaxation that feels almost alien.

Like I'm a medium, she thinks nonsensically. Because for all it's activity, it feels haunted, as if she's crossed over at last into the land of the dead. She is so focused on picking out familiar faces—faces she's never seen before, but god they look so familiar—that she pays no attention to the one riding with her in the taxi.

Sylar watches her closely. Her eyes seem more animated. What exactly she finds so interesting, he has no idea, though his eyes once or twice dart to the window to try and catch a glimpse of something that seems to please her.

Once, she sees a tall, nondescript man wearing horn-rimmed glasses, and her lids flicker shut for a second in pleasure. It should hurt, she thinks, but it doesn't. It feels wonderful.

Midway to their stop, the driver looks into the rearview mirror and flinches at the sight of his occupant's face—the tall, dark man is staring at the petite blonde with such naked ferocity, he seems on the verge of biting into her. The driver squares his shoulders, faces forward—does not look back again.

[] [] []

A young man, Joshua, walks briskly down the sidewalk, hands in his pockets. He passes the bakery, and as the scents of pastries fill his nostrils, he catches the eye of a woman across the street. She's standing by a cab, gazing at him with a strange, dreamy smile. Lifting her arm, she waves.

He glances behind him before turning back. Taking his hand from his pocket, he pushes his bangs out of his face and returns the gesture, a bemused but agreeable lopsided smile on his lips. He has no way of knowing he bears an uncanny resemblance to a dead man.

Her companion steps out of the cab, having just paid the driver. This man dressed in black sees her waving, follows her gaze, and, with a frown, reaches out to grasp the hand she lifted in greeting. Joshua drops his arm to his side as the pretty woman turns and allows herself to be led away by this imposing figure. He stares at her retreating form for a long moment before someone shoulders past him rudely on the sidewalk, and he continues on his way.

[] [] []

"You live here?" Claire asks in mild surprise.

"Sure," Sylar answers, shoving his keys in the lock. "I bought the building years ago. What were you expecting? A solid gold mansion with a statue of myself out front? Not that I didn't consider it, but my god, the taxes—it just wasn't worth it."

She remains silent, staring at the building, and he looks at her sharply as he turns the knob. Lowering his voice, he asks:

"Or did you mean, how can I live in a place where I once killed a man?"

She meets his eyes, raising her brows at his frankness.

"Well, to be fair, there aren't that many places you haven't killed someone," she points out, drawing a chuckle from him. He opens the door.

"After you."

"I get it, though," says Claire, stepping in. "I really do . . ."

"What's that?" He shuts the door behind them, watching Claire spin slowly, taking in the room.

"It's haunted," she says simply, stopping to face him. "Right?"

He squints at her.

"You mean by Mendez?" Claire must be tired, he thinks. Jet lag, maybe? "Sorry, no ghosts, Claire. No psychic painters rattling chains and cursing my name at midnight."

"No, just . . . the past, in general," she clarifies.

"I hadn't thought about it," he says. He scoops Claire's bag off the floor where she dropped it, and walking to put it away, he says, "You know, that's always been your problem, Claire. Soooo fixated on the past . . . If you'd turn around and look at the future, you'd see it's quite a view. For you and me, especially."

"Because it's so unlimited?"

"Exactly."

"Don't you think that makes it a little desolate?"

"No."

"I mean, the more you explore it, the more people around you just drop like flies."

"Who needs a crowd? Me, I like a good, open space."

Claire's mouth thins at his coolness, and she quirks an eyebrow, peeking around a corner.

"Hence the room filled with clocks?"

"Everybody needs a hobby," Sylar says with a smirk, but he flushes ever so slightly. Walking around her, he kicks the doorstop and allows the door to swing shut on the room in which he fiddles with timepieces. They make him feel exposed, somehow.

"Who were you waving at?" he asks, half out of genuine curiosity and half because he wants to turn the scrutiny away from himself.

"Hm? Oh-Peter." She says it so nonchalantly.

There's a pause.

"Petrelli?"

"Hadn't seen him in ages."

He looks at her long and hard. Then:

"I can only assume you're screwing with me." He hopes.

"From a distance, it was Peter," she insists smoothly. "Up close, who knows? Hmm . . . I guess there's a lesson in that, isn't there? Something about getting too close, probably . . ."

He doesn't answer. This is one train of thought he doesn't care to ride. Also, he believes she's being ridiculous on purpose, trying to muddle him.

She trails off with a sigh and places her hands on her hips.

"So, where the hell am I supposed to sleep, anyway?"

"Oh . . ." Actually, that's a good question. Sylar rubs his chin pensively. Fancy that, but he didn't take the time to map out an elaborate plan when Claire called him up declaring quits. "Well-the bedroom is upstairs."

"And you're dreaming. Where do I sleep?"

He glares at her.

"You could sleep on the balcony if I didn't think you'd heave yourself over the side-which is probably what I'll wind up doing, now that I think about it," he says menacingly. "Just-just take the bed. I'll find somewhere else to sleep. The couch, I suppose."

Claire isn't satisfied.

"I don't know if I want to sleep in your room."

"I'll make sure and take out all the corpses I've got shoved up under the mattress, Claire Bear, I promise you," he says with a roll of his eyes.

"I'll take the couch." She seems firm on that, so he doesn't argue.

"Fine," he agrees. "You'll fit better than I would, anyway." His legs would drape over the end.

Claire retrieves her bag and heads upstairs without further discourse. Sylar follows her, feeling like a bit of a tag-a-long.

"So this is my room, uh?" she says, taking it in. She likes it, oddly enough. The wall is brick, with several hanging clocks, all perfectly synchronized, along with a generous smattering of bookshelves. Each one is packed to the brim. "Good lord, you haven't read all these, have you?"

"Most of them. Feel free-just don't dog-ear the pages, please. I hate that."

"Yeah, that's the worst." She tosses her bag down at the end of the small, cream-colored couch. Strolling over to a shelf, she notices an interesting title and plucks the book out by it's spine. "Sex and Your Sanity," she reads aloud, then looks at him questioningly, something like a smirk barely suppressed on her lips.

Sylar blinks, momentarily at a loss. He forgot that one.

"It's . . ." Suddenly, he doesn't know what to do with his hands, so he jams them into his back pockets. ". . . an eclectic collection."

"Clearly." She flips the book over and reads the back of it leisurely, or pretends to, anyway. In her peripheral vision, his squirming is positively delightful. "You read this one?"

Sighing, he strides over and takes it from her.

"I've read all of them," he tells her.

"A minute ago you said most of them."

"I didn't want to seem unbalanced," he says, giving her a dark look as he looms over her to press it back into the shelf.

Claire tilts her head, bites her lip mockingly.

"As if anyone could ever mistake you for somebody unbalanced," she says. He rewards her sarcasm with a thin smile, and she crosses to the center of the room, dropping onto the couch. Sylar drums his fingers on the shelf for a second, then joins her, sprawling his arm along the back of the couch, behind her head.

"So, what do we do now?" Claire asks.

"Hmph—I don't know," he answers. "I forgot to plan any activities."

There's a moment of mutual silence, and then, with a quiet laugh, Claire remarks:

"I guess if we get really bored, you can always pin me up against the wall."

Slowly, Sylar turns to examine her profile, a very What . . . the . . . hell? expression on his face. It hits Claire a second later, and she blanches.

"I meant—like old times," she hastens to explain, flustered, fists clenched in her lap. "Like telekinesis. It was a joke . . . Came out wrong."

He holds it in for a good ten seconds, fidgeting slightly in his seat, but the laugh finally rips out of him in a loud snort. He doubles over, whacking her in the back of the head with his arm.

"Ow!"

He's laughing so hard he can't even apologize.

"You know what I meant!" she snaps, becoming more incensed the longer he guffaws. "Quit being so goddamn juvenile!"

And crooking her leg back—that cheerleader's flexibility handy as always—she brings her foot up and shoves it into the back of the shoulder, throwing all her weight into it. He slides off the cushion and hits the floor hard on his left knee.

"Mm," he grunts, grimacing. His good humor expires at once.

"Get off my bed," Claire orders belatedly.

"It's my-!" He breaks off, whipping around to face her. "That hurt, you know."

"Oh, well, forgive me." Big, brain-stealing baby. She stretches out on the couch so he can't return to it. "At least you actually feel pain. At least you know when something hurts."

"Still whining about that, are you?" he asks dryly, getting to his feet. "Must be godawful, going through life in that state. No headaches, toothaches-no birth pangs, in your case . . ."

Claire winces at this last, but he doesn't catch it.

"No capping off a midnight bathroom trip with the wonderful experience of ramming your toes into the nightstand." He shakes his head. "I've never pitied anyone so much in my life."

"It made me human," she insists.

"Human is overrated," he replies flippantly.

Claire props herself up on her elbows, staring at him. Her lip curls somewhat.

"So, you don't consider yourself human, then? What are you, some kind of god?" She laughs bitterly. "Should I kneel before you, Oh Great One? Hm? Savior?"

He wouldn't mind if she knelt before him. Smirking, he almost says it, but he catches himself even as his lips part, remembering that this entire skirmish began over one silly little double entendre.

"Not quite," he says instead. "As you pointed out—I do feel pain."

Claire thinks about that, and the hard smile on her face spreads into one of pleased malice. Secretly, he finds it stunning. Until she speaks.

"So on your own terms," she postulates, "that makes me better than you."

A muscle in Sylar's jaw twitches almost imperceptibly, and maybe it's the lighting, but she thinks he even pales ever so slightly. For the first time since this mad little episode in her life began, Claire feels as if she's managed to one-up him. Now that she's stuck the knife in, she can't resist twisting it a little.

"I mean, I'm just saying." She shrugs, ever so languidly. "If you can't be the most special, there's hardly a point in being special at all. Don't you think?"

He presses a knuckle against his mouth. She wonders if he's trying to stop himself from seeing if he can make her feel pain again.

"No offense," she tacks on for the express purpose of offending him.

He lowers his hand, places both on his hips. There's a vaguely sour but somehow knowing smile on his lips.

"So that's what you want, is it?" he asks, voice husky with what Claire can only assume is the resurfacing of that century-old inferiority complex he prefers to keep buried.

She squints at him. "Sorry?"

"This whole thing, this whole . . . adventure—" He makes a lovely trigger motion toward his head. "—amounts to nothing more than your misguided attempt to express yourself." He nearly snorts. "Those teenage hormones, they never quit, do they? Oh, god . . ."

"What the hell are you talking about?" She was so certain she was gaining the upper hand, and now this. It's disconcerting.

"You want to hurt something, don't you?" he asks, eyes suddenly piercing. "You want to externalize all that unrequited-love-spurned-and-jilted-wife tragic crap bubbling away in your sad little heart, is that it? Get it all out?"

She feels the heat rising in her cheeks. He sees it, sees how they go pink.

Oh, lord, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, he thinks. Replace fury with idiocy.

"But you can't feel pain," he continues. "So you called me up, thought you'd give me a little taste of it, screw my day all to hell. You knew I'd come. You wanted me to come. You wanted me to go out of my head the way you were going out of yours. And now, what? You're going to try to hurt my feelings?"

Claire is glaring at him now, but it doesn't deter him. In fact, he's just picking up steam as he goes, and he's starting to get that old, manic gleam in his dark eyes.

"It's a little pathetic, Claire," he tells her, tipping his head as if to soften the statement. "Let's work this out, you want to? I say we have a good, old-fashioned therapy session."

And he turns and strides out of the room, down the staircase. Claire remains in her half-sitting stance on the couch, angry and bewildered. The latter sentiment increases tenfold when he returns and flips some small black object toward her. It spins through the air and, as she flinches, stops right before her face.

A short, black-handled kitchen knife hovers in the air. It's shiny-clean, stainless steel. The blade is smooth and un-serrated. Sharp.

Claire quirks an eyebrow.

"Is this your idea of therapy, Doctor?" she asks derisively. "Equip the suicidals with sharp objects?" Nevertheless, she reaches out and strokes the handle with her fingertips. "How goddamn ground-breaking of you. I smell a Nobel prize in the works."

He faces her squarely.

"Cut me."

She freezes when he says it, looks up at him as if to gauge his insanity—which, to be fair, is off the charts on a good day.

"Beg pardon?"

"It'll make you feel better," he says simply, then tips her a wink, adding, "Trust me, I've been there. This is what you need, and this way we can get it all out in the open without any more sad little verbal jabs."

"Cut you." It isn't a question.

"Into ribbons." He raises his eyebrows almost innocently and politely adds, "If that's what you want."

"You're demented." She lies back again and shuts her eyes, thoroughly ignoring the blade hovering over her chest.

"Oh, do you need help getting started?"

Sylar doesn't appreciate it when someone—anyone, even Claire, and he grants Claire heaps of leeway—implies that he's lacking in some way. Right now, he feels like showing her exactly how special he is. So he does something he hasn't done in quite some time, something he once vowed he was finished with entirely.

"How about now?"

Claire sucks in a slow, ragged breath. Opens her eyes.

"You despicable son of a bitch," she hisses.

"What's the matter, honey—aren't you glad to see me?" says Robert Rutherford's voice, lips, face.

Nostrils flaring, Claire wraps her fingers around the knife.