"It happened around 15 weeks, every single time," Claire remembers in a reflective tone. Her hand snakes down to stroke her lower abdomen, and because it cups as if to accommodate a bump that isn't there, he knows she's remembering the other ones. The lost ones. "Right when I was starting to show."
As if her body had spent months eyeing the multiplying mass of cells warily, grudgingly, and at this presumptuous expansion decided, Nuh-uh, this has gone far enough. Then came the cramps, the little butterfly wings that elongated into daggers.
"So until then, everything was . . ?"
"Fine," she confirms. Smiles wistfully. "We turned one of the guest bedrooms into a nursery. When we lost the first one, all that stuff went into storage, and then Rob brought it back out again the second time. We were dumb like that. Third time, I just said don't bother. I think he was relieved."
Sylar is sitting on the couch beside her, elbow up on the backrest and one leg folded before him so he can face her. Reaching out, he nudges his fingertips beneath hers to graze the skin of her stomach.
"You can't feel it," she tells him. "At this point, it's barely even there."
"But it is there." And now so is she—for a long, long time.
If he can stay awake.
Funny that he said If I have to—not If I can.
Because as the days trickle by, he becomes increasingly concerned that he can't. Oh, it's not that he couldn't survive it. Sylar is fairly certain he could go years without eating and never succumb to starvation; that he could swear off all sources of H2O and weather the effects like a pro.
But he'd still be hungry. Thirsty.
Therein lies his problem. His body is quite capable of carrying on without sleep for several months without yielding to exhaustion. It just doesn't want to. It's the same problem he has with his pain faculties: there's no real point to it anymore, but banging his shin still hurts like a mad bastard.
Which, as a matter of fact, is one of the lovely ways his dilemma asserts itself: pain.
One morning, following a triumphantly sleepless series of nights, he walks smack into the bathroom door. Bounces his face off of it like a basketball and staggers backward, dazed.
"Mmph! Shit!" he curses, and then snaps at Claire for leaving the door open at such a, well, hazardous angle.
"Um, sorry," she apologizes from the couch with maximum sarcasm, eyebrow raised. "I was so busy vomiting my guts up I clean forgot to roll out the red carpet for you once I was done."
He doesn't reply, and he looks rather pitiful standing there with one hand clutching his nose, his eyes watering beneath his tensed brow. Claire remembers what he's doing for her and instantly wishes she'd been nicer.
"Come here . . . I'm sorry," she reiterates with more sincerity. She goes to him and reaches up to tug his hand away. "Let me see. Does it really hurt?"
No, Claire Bear. It feels fucking fabulous. I think I'll do it again, see if I can get my nose to come out the back of my head this time.
"It's fine," he mutters grumpily, pushing her hand down.
And thank god it's fine, he thinks as he turns into the bathroom, leaving Claire simultaneously remorseful and offended. Speaking strictly in terms of vanity, the last thing in the world he needs is for his nose to swell up even bigger.
Back in high school—Oh, there were some good times, he reflects with a roll of his eyes—it was typical for some jock to throw the annual Halloween party. Gabriel never got an invite, because he was, well . . . you know . . . Gabriel. So he was understandably bemused one following Monday when several of his so-called peers thumped him in the back or ruffled his immaculately parted hair and commented on his appearance at the party. It came out later from one of his clients (he sometimes wrote essays for money, ten bucks a page, dear god please don't let Mom find out she'll garrote me with a rosary) that John Michels had gone as Gabriel Gray. The costume consisted of a sweater vest over a button-down, slacks, a fair amount of hair cream, and to tie it all together, a pair of Groucho Marx glasses with the moustache removed. It was a wild success.
Gabriel stayed pissed off for months.
Sylar is pissed off now, just thinking about it. And he hasn't thought about it in decades. Why would he? Why is he now? It occurs to him that he's been generally pissed off for the last couple of days—at Claire, at himself, even at people who have been out of his life so long he can't quite remember their faces. Like Michels. And for no real reason, just . . .
God, he's tired.
The hot water feels good, though. Actually a little too good. Feels like a nice rain in the midst of a particularly sweltering summer . . . His eyelids are getting heavy. He cuts the hot water off, and the icy water shocks his consciousness into overdrive for a moment. Ten minutes later, it takes him a few irritated strokes to realize he's shaving with the wrong edge of his razor.
Only eight more months to go.
Well, technically it won't be necessary to be awake full-time until a little before 15 weeks, since Claire said that was invariably when her body rejected the fetus. But he wants to get this figured out now, so that when the crucial time comes, he'll be able to sail through without fear of failure.
He promised. He told her promises didn't mean anything, and then he promised, and now he knows he was wrong. Promises mean everything.
Weeks go by, and he's sucking down coffee like it's actually going to do something for him. Realistically, he knows it isn't. But there's a part of him that accepts it as a sort of psychological crutch. He feels more alert when he's sipping the strong, black liquid, when he's inhaling the steam and the earthy scent. It's not a cure, but as a temporary placebo, it's serviceable.
Conversely, Claire has been taken with an overwhelming craving for tea. Not just any tea, no, she wants good old sweet tea, Texas style, just like Mother used to make. Sylar remembers Sandra's tea. It was astoundingly saccharine; he half expected his teeth to rot right out of his head while he sat there and sweet talked her and scratched her dog behind the ears and inadvertently convinced her he was some sort of creepy sex predator with a pom pom fetish. Woops.
He sits by, chin in his hand, coffee before him, and watches with weary interest as Claire shovels ungodly amounts of sugar into the crystal pitcher. Must be a family recipe.
"You're really going to drink that," he states.
"I am," she agrees, stirring it all up with a long, wooden spoon.
"Good lord."
Claire laughs.
"That would put you in a diabetic coma if you weren't immortal," he insists.
"You're not from the South," says Claire. "If you were a Southerner, you'd be salivating right now. You never sat on the porch on a summer evening, sipping a big, tall glass of sweet tea, with the ice cubes clunking around in the glass, and everything smelling like honeysuckle . . ."
She sounds so nostalgic, and suddenly he's filled with envy. He can just see her, in the midst of her happy-crappy little childhood, skipping around picking purple clover and playing fetch with the dog and hopping up on the porch swing to have a glass of tea with Ma and Pa Devoted. She was probably spooning homemade ice cream into her mouth while he was sitting in Big Jim's, naively convinced that losing his favorite Hot Wheels car was the worst thing that was going to happen to him that day. Hysterical.
She wasn't even born then, voices his inner reason, but he ignores it. That's not the point.
Of course, she could just as well be referring to the time she spent married in Texas. But that hardly puts a salve on the jealousy. She still hasn't said I love you. She's pregnant with their child; you'd think she'd say it on principle. Or she'd get all hormonal and emotional, and it would just pop out accidentally, and she'd regret it later, but too damn bad, she already said it. No takesies backsies.
"We never had a porch," he says, before he gets too worked up. Worked up, that's a laugh. "Unless you count the fire escape." Which he doesn't, since fitting a swing out there would be pretty problematic.
"Well, there you go." And then she's dumping ice cubes into her glass, where the hot tea decimates them at once. She shoves the glass toward him. "Taste."
"Ah—no. Thank you."
"Come on. You might be surprised."
"I'm sure I'd be absolutely flabbergasted, but no."
"Please . . ?"
Huffing, he takes a reluctant sip. It's syrupy in his mouth. Sandra's kind offering of misplaced gratitude all over again. She seemed like the kind of mother who might make homemade ice cream. Virginia wasn't big on ice cream. Ice cream was bad. Everything was bad to some degree or another. Except Gabriel. Gabriel was so damned wonderful nothing was ever good enough. Gabriel was worth every penny.
"It tastes like someone liquefied a pecan pie," Sylar appraises unkindly, handing the glass back to her. To kill the taste, he drinks more coffee. More and more and more . . .
That evening, Claire wants to go somewhere where they can get a slice of pecan pie. He almost suggests the Chocolate Chipped Mug but catches himself in time. Although, now that he considers it, it has the potential to be quite funny, providing Frank remembers the two of them well enough.
Short story condensed, they don't go to the Chocolate Chipped Mug.
It's at Margo's, a lovely little eatery with comfort food leanings, that Claire gets her dessert. He orders peach pie a la mode, but sits in the booth picking at it. Even peach pie annoys him today. Elle , trying to pass herself off as an amateur baker . . .
"It's not working, is it?"
Claire's voice is quiet. He looks up to see that she's put her fork down and is staring at him with soft, apprehensive eyes.
"Hm?"
"You look like you're about to fall over," she tells him honestly.
He forces a small chuckle, rubbing at his forehead.
"I just need to get used to it," he counters. "The first month was a rough patch, but I think I'm staring to adjust, so . . . " He sits back abruptly, determined to change the subject. "You're okay, right? I mean, I know Dr. Gillen said everything was coming along smoothly with the baby, but how are you?"
"Um . . ' Claire shrugs. "Fine. You know. I mean, I never had a stomach virus growing up, so morning sickness is an experience, all right, but it's nothing I can't handle. Mood swings every now and then, they . . . suck. Start thinking about stupid stuff . . ."
"Like what?"
"Well, come on." She retrieves her fork and begins polishing off the rest of her pie. "You and me haven't aged in over half a century. We've got a lot to think about, and most of it's bound to be stupid. That's just how life works."
"I guess." He supposes she's right, in a way. Before he committed himself to a near nine-month state of wakefulness, the little struggles and hiccups in life seemed important, but looking back . . . Well, maybe they were stupid, but stupid wasn't so bad. He could sleep when things were merely stupid.
Speaking of stupid, his big slip-up occurs when they're leaving. Stepping out onto the sidewalk, the air feels unexpectedly crisp, and Sylar realizes he's left his jacket in the booth. With a complete absence of forethought, he toes the door back open and sticks his arm in. At his instinctive beck, the jacket slides around the table and zips through the air into his waiting grasp. He tugs it on, heaving a weary sigh, and blinks at Claire's expression of horror.
"Wh-?" he begins, and then it hits him.
Turning, he finds ten pairs of eyes staring blatantly through the windowpane. Ten people who just witnessed his idiotically open display of telekinesis and are now sitting dumbfounded.
Claire fits her hand into his. He looks down at her. Her lips tremble indecisively for an instant. Then:
"One minute," she says firmly.
"What?" His brow furrows.
"That's all you need to take away." Her eyes dart to the ten who have begun to murmur amongst themselves. "One minute—two at the most."
He stares at her, stunned, half certain some misunderstanding has passed between them.
"You want me to-?" he begins, but she interrupts, pushing him toward the door.
"Hurry!" she pleas. "Or it'll be more."
So he returns to Margo's. Claire stands outside, turning her back as the cheery, checked curtains fall over the window, shielding the scene within.
It feels good. He won't deny that. Once he shuts the curtains, he kills the lights for good measure. He's sick of lights, and the sudden darkness is soft and blissful on his pupils. And he rather enjoys the scent of fear in the air, the way it intensifies when he immobilizes them. One by one, he steals their memories, just that little space of time Claire calculated. They deserve it, really, for looking so well-rested.
When he meets Claire on the street once more, he fully expects her to be cold toward him, disgusted both at her own request and his willingness to fulfill it. And she is silent as they abscond, partners in crime.
"I suppose they won't miss a couple minutes out of their lives," he remarks finally. She'll call him callous now, ask him why he had to do something so goddamned silly in the first place, otherwise she never would have even considered stooping to his level.
"Thank you," she says. Glancing down sharply, he sees that her entire face is awash in gratitude. For an instant, he fancies there's another emotion present, as well. Stepping closer as they reach the curb, he holds her gaze, determined to coax it out of her. Why not? He's feeling a bit more on his game after the fun in Margo's. If he can rip 120 seconds of somebody's life away, surely he can pull three little words out of this woman.
"You know, Claire Bear, I—"
The yawn that blindsides him is immense, stretching his face to epic proportions. Claire giggles, and while he doesn't hate the sound, the moment is effectively broken.
Not that she seems to mind. In the cab, she slides against him. Puts her hand over his knee and runs her index finger back and forth.
Claire is somewhat amazed at how, well . . . horny she's been for the last few weeks. She didn't know pregnancy would do that to a woman, but when she confided in Dr. Gillen, the obstetrician laughed her rosy-cheeked laugh and told her it was typical. Claire doesn't want to tell Sylar she can't get enough of him these days—boosting his ego any higher might crack what's left of the ozone—but she figures he's probably caught on by now, anyway. One does, when one is jumped nearly every morning, night, and some afternoons. At this point, they've messed around in every room but the one where he works on his watches, and the only reason Claire hasn't made a play for that one is the fact that the damned table is so cluttered. She imagines if the watches—sorry, timepieces —were somehow swept off in a fit of passion, he'd spaz right the hell out. Odd little quirk, for a man so careless with human lives.
They wind up on the floor in the sitting room, a popular spot on occasion. Claire is feeling particularly ravenous, and she would like to believe this accounts for the full minute it takes her to realize he's gone uncharacteristically immobile. Flipping her hair back and pulling up from where she's been slowly-and quite tantalizingly, if she says so herself-kissing a path down his abdomen, she discovers he's checked out.
She straddling the man's thighs, and he's asleep.
"Hey . . !" But she says it quietly, and when she reaches out to tap his face, she ends up merely touching it, sliding her thumb over his skin. His lashes flutter slightly, but he doesn't wake, only turns into her touch.
Claire swallows. Finds a knot in her throat. Her eyes are burning. There's a deep, bitter well of disappointment in her chest, and it's not due to the interrupted intimacy.
She eases off him and tiptoes from the room. When she returns a few minutes later, she spreads a blanket over him. It makes her think of the baby blankets Sandra kept her whole life, the ones with little pastel bears and cowboys on them. She wonders what ever happened to them, and hopes that, somehow, they found their way back to the cradle.
[] [] []
He awakens to the sensation of the hard floor ramming up into his shoulder blades. Blinks groggily at the ceiling. Comprehends, and bolts upright.
"Ah, god, how long was I-?" He tries to stand, but his legs are all twisted up in a blanket. He blinks down at the soft blue fabric encircling his limbs. Kicking it away, he rises, aware that he's very nearly naked. How'd all this come about, then?
Mentally retracing his steps, he remembers that he and Claire went out for dessert, and there was that screw-up at the restaurant, and on the way back she started groping him and biting his earlobe in the cab, and when they got home she stopped, dropped, and made a little come-hither gesture and oh shit.
This demands all sorts of apologies.
He finds her downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table with a book. She looks up as he enters, still in the process of pulling on a black tee with the jeans he's donned. The smile on her lips looks fake and empty.
"Morning," she greets. Glancing at the clock over the doorway, she amends, "Well, evening, actually."
Ironically, it's this complacency on her part that slaughters all intention of apologizing.
"Claire—how long was I out?" he asks, voice low.
"Almost twenty-four hours," she replies with an impressed lift of her eyebrows. "Sorry about leaving you on the floor, but you were pretty much dead to the world. I even tripped over you once, in the middle of the night. You just snored and said something about snowglobes."
"Why . . ?" Sylar begins to pace the length of the table. "Why—why are you behaving as if nothing is wrong? This is completely . . ."
His chest seems to be constricting. Claire stares at him steadily over her book. It looks like Romeo and Juliet. He sort of wants to knock it out of her hands.
"God . . . damn it, Claire!" And suddenly, he cracks, color rising in his face. "Why would you just let me—when I'm—when we're—! I mean, you do understand that this is kind of difficult, right?"
He can't even be proud of himself for getting out that coherent sentence, because Claire lowers her eyes, and it looks like she might be gritting her teeth.
"Help me out, here, Claire! Kick me in the head—stab me! You enjoy that, right? Do something, don't just let me lie there like . . ."
Trailing off, he pauses directly before her, palms against the table top.
"It's like you're this ticking time bomb," he admits, tone dropping. "I am trying very hard to keep this from blowing up in our faces."
"Well—don't." Claire slaps her book face down in front of her.
"Don't?" he throws back incredulously.
"I'm thinking maybe this isn't meant to be, after all," she declares, her voice hard. Pushing her chair back, she stands, striding past him. "Ever since we made this damn arrang—this damn deal, I feel like I barely know who I am anymore. And you—well, look at you. You've been shuffling around like a zombie, completely exhausted—"
"Which doesn't hurt me!" he reminds her, catching her shoulder to bring them face to face. He waves a hand. "Immortal, remember? I think we may have discussed it at some point?"
Stepping back a bit, he eyes her up and down, lingering over her still-flat stomach.
"And what do you mean, you don't know who you are? Since when do you have identity crises?"
Claire laughs sharply.
"Oh, I don't know, maybe since I shacked up with a serial killer," she suggests.
His nostrils flare.
"Is that all I am?" he demands. And then with a rueful grin, "Is that all you're ever going to let me be?"
She once accused him of having no regard for the lives she had carried and wasted inside of her. What does it take?
"You know, I meant it when I said I loved you," he tells her, "even though it was a goddamned ridiculous thing to say. I don't even know why I love you. It's not your personality, I can tell you that much."
Claire rolls her eyes and reaches up to nervously rearrange a tendril of hair.
"What do you want?" she asks. "You want me to say it back—is that it?"
"No," he answers with a bitter smirk. The truth, of course, is yes—but he doesn't want to feel the lie powering the words. "To be honest with you, Claire Bear, I'm beginning to doubt you're even capable."
With that, he backs off, treading upstairs to retrieve his jacket from the couch where he left it nearly a full day earlier. Claire is waiting at the foot of the staircase when he returns.
"Where are you going?" she asks.
"Out," he replies shortly. "I will not fall asleep again."
She shakes her head, and he notes the red-rimmed state of her eyes, knows that she was crying while he dreamt in the sitting room.
"Have you considered," she wonders, "that maybe it's just good ol' providence who doesn't want me to have a baby? You're the one who believes in fate and all that shit."
"So fate gets a big sadistic kick out of making Claire Bennet miscarry?" He scoffs in disdain. "You don't really believe that."
"It doesn't matter if I believe it. It's what's happening."
"It's not. Going. To happen."
Sylar leaves, slamming the door as if it has done him some grave personal wrong.
[] [] []
Night has fallen when he arrives home, following a shopping spree of sorts. Claire isn't downstairs, and he's glad. For a brief moment, he considers going up, anyway—he didn't shower after waking on the floor, and now he feels grimy—but he decides to tackle the issue at hand first. So he locks himself in his timepiece room, utilizes the Haitian's ability to tweak his healing ever so slightly, and proceeds to swallow a truly massive cocktail of various stimulants.
Minutes pass. He sits at his desk, fidgeting, foot tapping the floor. The mass ticking dies away slightly beneath a pounding rhythm behind his eardrums. He imagines it's the rapid heartbeat of a developing child in utero. To distract himself from this disturbing fantasy, he drums his fingers on the desk, then reaches for a watch and begins to pry it open with unsteady hands. Doesn't really help.
"It's your heartbeat, jackass," a dry, vaguely disgusted voice informs him. "You're stoned. Obviously."
Sylar flinches, and his grasp slips, sending the antique spinning like a quarter off the edge of the work table. It strikes the floor, and the face cracks audibly.
"Oh, beautiful!" snaps the voice. "Well . . ."
A tall figure stoops at Sylar's side, dark head bent while he touches the broken timepiece gingerly with the tip of one long finger, as if the object might cry out or cringe away in agony. When it does neither, Gabriel Gray looks up into the paling face of his counterpart.
"We can fix it, right?"