Sylar's nerves are stretched taut, a rubber band at its breaking point. The last thing Claire said to him—What if I'm not?—has dogged him all the way to Texas, throbbing inside his skull like a migraine. He goes over his response and wonders if he really meant it. He thinks he did. Which is what makes it stick him so, he supposes. She can walk out; that's her decision. But allowing it, just sitting by twiddling his thumbs while her tracks turn cold and disappear, is passive to the point of . . . reasonability.

It's just not his style.

He could puppet her around the house, and their relationship could be like a Ming Dynasty vase: exquisite in form, yet hauntingly hollow within. It might not be so bad, considering the state of things now. Gabriel said she was never going to love him. But since when did Gabriel know anything?

No, he can't do that. He can't make her hate him again. Hate is worse than indifference.

Or is it? Shit.

They say the opposite of love is—he begins, and then he scoffs at his own triteness, remembering that they are bastards, the lot of them. Anyway . . . clichés can't help him now.

His hand slips into his pocket at least once every five minutes, where his thumb caresses the edge of his phone. If she's there, he can breathe easy for another hour or so, during which time he can replay her voice in his mind and analyze her words, her tone. If she's not, he may be sick. He decides not to call. For now. His thumb isn't so sure.

He wishes the Burnt Toast Diner was still standing cozily in Midland. He wishes he had reminded Claire that he did something good there once, took a vital young woman's senseless doom and turned it into a bloody teardrop. Even now he can see that look on the waitress's face, as if she were being born again. He gave her life. He did. The Bogeyman.

Of course, in the retelling, he would have omitted the part about intending to kill her . . . and about heading directly to a certain high school homecoming afterward. The finer details aren't important.

He realizes all at once that he's recalling the final few hours when he hadn't even met Claire Bennet. When she was nothing but a target, and the idea that she might be carrying his demon-spawn seventy-odd years later would have drawn a careless scoff from him.

She was nothing to him once; she could have stayed nothing. It's not her fault he latched on like a parasite intent on sucking the life out of her.

In the vast recesses of his memory, she runs away into the darkness of the auditorium, legs pumping beneath the tassels of her cheerleading uniform, and this time, he lets her go.

Maybe.

Probably.

Almost certainly.

[] [] []

All right, so maybe he didn't need to come here, exactly. Maybe he could have gotten the information elsewhere, maybe with relative ease. Maybe he just wants to drown Robert Rutherford in his own lake.

I'll have to keep an eye on that, he thinks, rapping out a folksy rhythm on the front door.

To his intrigue, it's the mysterious Sharon who answers. He can hear her approach, hard heels clacking over the floor, and notes that Rutherford took his advice and had the carpet removed. Quickly, he rearranges himself, taking a gamble.

"Oh—Robert!" There is bemusement in her cherry-red smile and lines of surprise on her forehead as she sweeps her chestnut hair back. When she lowers her brows, the lines don't disappear entirely.

Graying at the temples, too, he notes. Rutherford's gone quite the other way this time. Claire Bear must have traumatized him something fierce. That's my girl. He hopes.

"What's with the knocking?" Sharon asks, stepping back to admit her lover. "Did you lose your key? It wasn't locked."

Her Texan drawl is heavier than Claire's. Locked becomes two syllables. Lah-ocked. Rutherford probably finds it charming. Sylar remembers to inject his own voice with the proper affect.

"It ought to be," he says in Rutherford's voice, rolling through the front door like a Trojan horse powered by malicious excitement. His tone is laden with loving concern when he admonishes, "You leave your doors unlocked in this day and age, you're just asking for trouble. All the way out here . . . nobody would even hear you scream."

Sharon smiles, and her eyes crinkle at the corners. They're pretty eyes, the emerald hue obviously enhanced with contact lenses. They're trusting eyes. Sylar finds this satisfying, because to trust is to be a fool, and he always knew Rutherford's mistress would be an idiot. Not that he isn't grateful to her, to a certain extent.

Craning up toward him mischievously, she grins as she replies, "Nobody ever does."

He snorts in her face before he can stop himself. They bump chins before she draws back sharply, alarmed and displeased. She has to be at least a foot taller than Claire; his eyes flit down to check the height of her heels, but she's wearing sandal flats, her toenails painted candy-apple red.

"What's so funny?" she demands. When she's annoyed, the slight rasp in her voice becomes more apparent, vestige from an unwise youth spent putting away one cigarette after another.

"Nothing. Sorry, I didn't mean to . . ." He looks her up and down to reassure her and caps it off with a tiny kiss on her cheekbone.

"So how come you're home so early?" she questions as he strides around her, sticking his hands in his pockets and trying to examine the room without being overly conspicuous about it.

"Oh . . . why not?" he returns absently. The furniture has been rearranged. That armchair is probably there to cover the stain from the blood that seeped through the carpet. He wonders how Rutherford explained Claire's departure to Sharon, whether she even cared enough to ask . . ."Does a man need a reason to rush home to his favorite girl?"

Behind him, Sharon giggles and tells him to "hush up, you."

All photographs bearing Claire's image are gone from the mantel. Some of the frames are still there—they must have been expensive—restocked with new images of the new woman, finally welcome in the house. Where did it go, that picture of Claire laughing all in white?

Bizarre, Rutherford said. He wooed Claire Bennet with his looks and his money and his promises, he made three miscarriages with her, one for every decade he had her, and then he decided she was . . . bizarre. And after she smiled in white, after she looked at him like that.

How dare you, Sylar ponders darkly. I love that bitch.

Which is not exactly a term of endearment one should bestow upon the potential mother of one's child, but he's quite certain she never looks at him like that. If she did, he wouldn't be so terrified of calling her.

How could Rutherford trade in bizarre for commonplace with such flippancy? How could he cast off something as precious and elusive as Claire Bennet's love, when other men-?

Sharon chooses this exact moment to approach him from behind, wrapping her arms around him and running her palms over Rutherford's stomach, still relatively toned for his age. Her middle finger slips between the buttons and finds his navel, rimming it delicately.

Cloaked in something like wrath but more akin to desperation, his features rippling, he grabs her arms hard, clenching his teeth as he refrains from asking her to kindly remove her goddamned grubby little gold-digging fingers from his person before he rips the manicured nails out by the roots. As he begins to push her hands back, a sudden flare of light catches his eye. He pauses, and his lips part.

"What's this?" he asks hoarsely, turning, her left hand still caught up in his as he stares at the ring—diamond, ringed with tiny emeralds to match her eyes.

Sharon's eyebrows shoot up, once again intensifying the lines on her forehead. Her eyes sparkle, nearly as bright as the precious stone sitting on the third finger of her hand.

"Oh, that's not gonna work, mister," she replies teasingly, threading her fingers through his. "What, you think you're the first guy who ever got engaged and then tried to fake amnesia?"

She kisses the tip of his nose. He blinks, the line of the engagement ring hard between his fingers. Sharon draws back and, staring up at him, misreads his expression. Her smile disappears slowly, though her eyes still sparkle. Rising up on her toes, she retracts her hand and wraps her arms around his neck, bringing herself as close as physically possible to her fiancée.

"I love you," she professes, and again, breathing it into his ear, "I love you so much."

A tingle rolls up his neck, behind his ears, around to his temples, but she's not lying. She's not. If anything, he tingles from the pure truth in her words.

And then he snaps.

[] [] []

"I don't know. I just—shit. I don't know."

Claire is talking to herself—which, she tells herself, is completely normal as long as she is not answering—as she stalks back and forth through the sitting room, into the bedroom, back into the sitting room once more. Her ponytail is askew, loose strands tumbling into her eyes, and she's chewing on her thumbnail. It's a habit she's seen him resort to in times of anxiety or concentration, and she has no doubt that their child would be both a nail-biter and thumb-sucker extraordinaire.

We'd have to buy that stuff, she thinks. That bitter stuff, you rub it on the baby's thumb to keep it out of its mouth, and that way its teeth don't come in all crooked, so on down the line you save money on braces and—

God, what a dumb thought at a time like this.

Nevertheless, she imagines tugging gently on the baby's . . . on a baby's wrist, pulling its tiny, wrinkled little thumb out of the wet cavity of its mouth, drying it off on the blanket. She can almost feel the velvet softness of an infant's skin, smell the baby powder scent of it, and it pierces her heart.

It's a memory of Lyle's first daughter, she realizes. Before she distanced herself from the remaining Bennets, somehow guilt-ridden over the age on her little brother's visage, she held Ashley Bennet in her arms and smiled down into her round, pink face. She had never felt such a combination of envy and exhilaration.

"Well—" Claire scoffs, shaking the memory away. "That was a normal kid."

That wasn't a miniscule serial killer in the making, with the nuttiest father in existence cluelessly prodding its face with a bottle while its mother sits off to the side crocheting an infant-sized straight jacket with matching booties. You know. Just in case.

Claire returns to the bedroom, where the open suitcase rests atop the unmade bed. Tossed haphazardly in and around it are articles of clothing, some shoes, and a few grooming devices. From the bottom drawer of the dresser in the corner, she plucks yet another shirt and flings it across the others. Aside from the items she brought from Texas—items he himself shoved into this very suitcase before happily dragging her dead body down the front steps of her Texas home—she intends to pack only the bare minimum. It seems wrong to make off with the things he paid for, those items he bought with . . . love.

She cringes, one eye squeezing shut as if assaulted by a bright light.

And yet somehow it seems just as rude to leave them behind, because she knows that he did put some measure of affection into their purchase. One gesture in particular causes her pulse to flutter unpleasantly: a pair of diamond earrings he gave her no more than a few days after they began this misbegotten relationship. He thought they'd go fabulously with the evening dress she'd picked out to replace the olive green one. He was right, but the box was small and cubical and black-velvet, and she felt a moment of acute horror as he extended it toward her, smiling in that satisfied yet somehow oblivious way that meant he was terribly proud of himself.

When her hand flinched backward instead of toward the box, he finally caught the look on her face, the O shape of her lips, and his subdued smirk faltered. He frowned down at the box as if inspecting it for flaws before snapping it open.

"It's—um—They're real," he informed her, waving them in front of her face as if he suspected women were merely an offshoot of some extinct species of diamond-sniffing gopher. "I thought, I don't know, the dress—"

"Oh, my god!" Claire laughed in a rush of giddy relief, snatching the present away from him and dropping her forehead against his chest, where she spent a few seconds chiding herself for jumping to such a silly conclusion. "Oh, my god . . . Earrings. Thank you."

"What did you think they were?" he asked, grinning bemusedly, trying to keep up.

"You do not even want to know. Trust me," she replied as she pulled away and tried them on before the mirror. He came up behind her, jaw rough against her hair, but his eyes kept drifting curiously from her reflection to the little box sitting on top of the dresser, as he tried to decipher what horrors she had imagined lay inside the little case. After a brief consideration, he knew. She saw the comprehension dawn on his face before he turned his eyes to search hers.

It was the night he first said I love you. The night she politely feigned deafness.

No . . . leaving his gifts behind would likely be a slap in the face, and maybe he's been slapped enough. By her, anyway. If nothing else, he'll probably get a kick out of twisting the jewelry from her earlobes the next time they meet. A guy needs something to look forward to.

"You psycho son of a bitch," Claire mutters, snatching the box from the dresser and tucking it into the inner lining of the case. "Why did you have to be so crazy?"

Why does he have to be so sincere?

[] [] []

Rutherford closes the door behind him and flicks the light switch. Nothing happens, so he flicks it again—up and down, up and down—a line of annoyance forming on his brow. Changing a light bulb in the living room requires a sixteen-foot ladder and the balance of a trained acrobat. Sometimes he laments the woodsy grandiosity of his home.

Sometimes he laments a lot of things.

At this point, he curses beneath his breath, sets his briefcase aside, turns into the unlit room, and nearly has a coronary.

He finds himself in the presence of the demon.

Oh, god damn it all to hell, he thinks, words racing in his head when the gears of his mind recover from their jolt. There was something wrong with her voice, I knew it, I did, why the hell did I come home?

Well, because he thought he was safe here, that's why. As long as he didn't go back to New York, as long as—

"I haven't—" he begins, but pauses to swallow the dry terror in his throat. He holds up a palm in supplication before continuing. "I haven't contacted her. I haven't even tried. I—I meant it, when I said I wouldn't. I was telling you the truth, okay? I'm not a liar—"

"Congratulations," interrupts Sylar. The demon is sitting on Rutherford's couch, very casual, his long thin legs stretched out, spiderlike, to prop his feet on the coffee table, smudging the surface with dirt from the outside path. In his hand is a white ceramic coffee cup with a chip on the rim.

Rutherford shakes his head.

"What?" he chokes out.

Sylar transfers his cup to his right hand and reaches his right down into his pocket. He comes out with a tiny object, glinting in the light from the high window, and holds it up before his face, examining it for Rutherford's benefit.

"You have a thing for green eyes, don't you?" Sylar remarks. He waits for a response, and when there is none, flicks the engagement ring toward Rutherford, who pales when he fumbles it from the air.

There's a long moment of silence. Sylar sips his coffee. It's a pretty tasty brew, full and rich; he wonders if the brand is sold in New York. Wonders what else is in New York and what might be missing.

"What have you done?" This from Rutherford, in a rasp.

Sylar plays dumb. Done? his eyebrows emote. Who, me?

"Where-" Rutherford takes a step forward, his stance almost threatening, and then Sylar's head cocks, and he thinks better of it. Stops where he stands. "Where is she?"

"Claire?"

"Sharon, you-!" He holds the ring up pointlessly.

"Oh. I was thinking about Claire. This is her cup, you know." Sylar taps it with his fingernail. "Lot of memories here . . . She used to get up early to sit on the porch when you were away . . . warm her hands on the cup while she watched the sun come up over the trees. I'm surprised you kept it."

Sylar removes his feet from the coffee table, placing the cup there as he sits forward with his elbows on his knees.

"Do you still love her?" he asks curiously.

Rutherford knows the right answer to this one.

"No."

"You love Sharon now."

"Yes."

"And Sharon . . . loves you."

Rutherford swallows, taking some strength from Sylar's use of the present tense.

"It would appear so, yes," he responds, voice shaky but under control.

"Mm." Sylar stares at him, drumming his fingers together. With a sudden change of topic, he asks, "Where does Micah Sanders live? I need to speak with him."

"Micah—the hell—I—God damn it, where is she?" Rutherford sputters.

"Sharon?"

"Did you hurt her?"

Sylar shrugs, disinterested. It's not the response Rutherford is looking for.

"We talked," he answers at last. "I was curious, just how did you intend to marry her when, legally speaking, you're still married to your first wife? Sharon didn't seem to know much about it . . . So we talked about you, instead. How you met, when you met, when you began your affair. That first smile. All the pretty memories . . ."

He drains his coffee cup—Claire's, actually—and rises.

"Anyway, about Micah. We're old friends, you know, so-"

Understandably, Rutherford finds it difficult to follow that train of thought.

"No, Sharon—"

"Is upstairs," Sylar assures him in a tone of mild exasperation. "Lying down, I believe. She said she wasn't feeling well. Headache or something."

Rutherford braves the demon's displeasure. Starts for the staircase.

"Don't believe me?" Sylar raises a brow, then admits, "I guess I can't blame you. You hardly know me, after all."

Obligingly, he brings his arm up, elbow level with his shoulder, and sticks his hand up in the air. Rutherford flinches, expecting pain or immobilization, but the demon merely begins twitching his fingers back and forth, much as he might walk them idly across a tabletop.

From the direction of the ceiling, there comes first a muffled scream, followed by a series of thumping, sliding noises. Even Rutherford, whose ears have scarce been assaulted by any audible violence more terrible than a lover's spat, recognizes the sounds of a woman in the midst of a struggle.

"Don't hurt her!" Rutherford pleads, and Sylar merely rolls his eyes. "I'll tell you anything-Micah, the old man, he lives at . . . let me see-"

Sharon emerges from the master bedroom in a bizarre, nightmare walk, her legs urging her body forward even as her hands reach out to cling at the door frame. Her nails rake the paint on the wall, and now she approaches the staircase. With a shriek, she begins to traverse it, still attempting, valiantly but vainly, to resist. Her only reward for her efforts is the loss of half a fingernail against the railing.

When she cries out in pain-when the demon, seemingly devoid of mercy, continues to puppet her ever onward-Rutherford overcomes his own trepidation and runs to her. Halfway up the stairs, he catches her and pulls her against his chest.

"Stop!" he snaps over his shoulder at Sylar, who watches the display with dry displeasure, lip curling ever so slightly. Then, pushing Sharon back so he can examine her, Rutherford lowers his voice and says, "Are you hurt?"

His fiancee does not reply. She simply latches onto his arms, fingertip smearing scarlet into his white shirt.

"Sharon?" he encourages. "Talk to me, baby. Hey."

Cupping beneath her chin, he forces her head up and peers at her closely. The stark terror in her face cuts him, but even more striking . . .

Her eyes. Her eyes are odd. They lack something. Is it focus?

"What did you do?" he calls over his shoulder once more.

No, it's not focus. She's aware of her surroundings. It's as if she doesn't. . .

"What's happening?" she speaks at last, voice a husky whisper.

It's as if she doesn't recognize them.

"What's happening?" she repeats. "Help me. Help me, please."

Her eyes lack recognition. He is looking down into the face of the woman he loves, and he might as well be a stranger.

"What did you do?" Rutherford asks again, eyes on Sharon, voice quiet. "What did you do, you bastard, you monster, what-?"

And then he's shouting, even as he pulls the woman down the remaining stairs, half carrying her, ignoring the way the muscles in her thin form seize anew at his harsh, loud voice.

"You could have gotten his address anywhere—you could have looked it up in the goddamn phone book, you lunatic! That's how I found him! Why did you come here? Why did you fucking—"

"To hurt you." The words pop out of Sylar's mouth in a growl, an empty threat meant to motivate the man before him. And yet . . . there is an undeniable truth in the response.

Think about the earrings.

Oh, yes, think about the earrings in their little black box. Think about green-eyed Sharon with the ring on her finger.

"You already had the love of your life—you think you deserve two? God damn it, you didn't deserve the first one. Me, I've been here a hundred and eight years—I've known her eighty goddamn years—and she still doesn't-!"

It begins as a sneering accusation, winds up a wrathful lamentation issued through clenched teeth, and breaks off after he has already revealed far more than he intended.

And this is not the way to Claire's heart, not even in a roundabout, back-road sense, but maybe Claire Bennet has no heart. Maybe this man broke it forever. Maybe it's the one thing he can't fix.

Or maybe you're just. Not. Good enough. Think about What if I'm not?

It hurts. He came here because it hurts, and he wants to see someone else hurt just a little bit worse. Someone he hates, whom he can harm without one iota of remorse. Rutherford is a bothersome, loathsome insect, and now Sylar, stung and vengeful, has him on a pin.

As if to relish in this fact, he rips Sharon from Rutherford's clutch with a twist of his arm and sends her arcing into the wall over the mantle, where her feet send the cheery new photographs scraping across the stone top to fall and shatter against the floor.

Shutting his eyes briefly, he forces a measure of control back into his voice.

"Where does Micah Sanders live? Tell me now."

"Okay—I don't—I can't—god, just give me a second!" Rutherford stammers, mind nearly crashing to a halt as it grasps the idea that the demon has actually grown madder since they last met. It shouldn't be wholly surprising-Claire could drive a rational man insane, and this Sylar fellow clearly had a running head start in that direction to begin with. Now, in his desperate lunacy, he has reached even greater depths of fearsomeness. Unpredictability.

Evil.

"Think fast, Rutherford," Sylar suggests. Maintaining eye contact with the man, he thrusts his hand out toward Sharon. "Or I take her face with me as a present for Claire."

Sylar can just hear her now: Oh, you shouldn't have. The image, which ordinarily would make him laugh, now makes him feel as if he's being stabbed . . . or as if he'd like to stab someone.

Sharon screams as he tightens his fingers, clawing at her telekinetically.

"It's 823-" Rutherford begins desperately, memory working overtime. "No, it's 283-I-It's Oakley Drive! For God's sake, he lives on Oakley Drive in Odessa! In a little yellow house with rose bushes out front!"

Sylar looks over at him.

"Oakley Drive," he echoes.

"He's in the phone book!" Rutherford asserts for the second time, feeling pathetic and drained. "Please-please, don't hurt her any more than you already have."

Slowly, Sharon slides down the wall until she is seated on the mantle, legs swinging in the cool, empty fireplace. Sylar lets his hand drop.

"Now, was that really so difficult?" he says. Then, to twist the knife: "Try telling the jeweler why the wedding was canceled. He'll probably give you a refund just to get you out of the shop."

And he turns away, his threatening demeanor evaporating all at once now that he has his information, effectively breaking the spell. Rutherford immediately crosses the room and wraps his arms around Sharon's waist. Lifting her down from the mantle, he cradles her, speaking phrases meant to soothe her, to soothe himself, to convince himself that he can fix this. He can make her remember. Everything will be the way it was, the way it should be.

The engagement ring rests in the middle of the floor, tiny and dull without lights to make it sparkle. For the moment, it is quite forgotten.

Before Sylar takes his leave, he issues a final, flat statement in the woman's direction:

"I did you a favor," he says.

She merely looks on over Rutherford's shoulder, shaking, her eyes a set of lost, glassy marbles as the demon disappears out the door.