Taking a Turn Toward Eternity: Chapter 2
Chapter 2!
Warnings: Language, always language...
Sylar and Claire have a heart to heart...
Chapter 2
'Tea?' Where was she? Bizarro world? What's next? Would he knit her a sweater or two? This was ri-goddamn-diculous. Another ridiculous thing was Claire's own behavior in the past few minutes. Had her brain taken a fucking holiday? Touching Sylar? On her own nonetheless! No puppet powers to blame this on, she had touched him. Caressed his arm, if she was being completely honest with herself, and that was just plain unacceptable. This was the brain poker! The ability thief! The bio-dad/mom/childhood-best-friend murder! Yet here she was, checking out his ass as she followed him to the kitchen. Claire slapped her face into her palm, hard.
Yeah… this was soooo not good.
Sylar chuckled very, very quietly to himself as he heard what could only be the sound of a facepalm, followed by a muttered swear. He had thrown her a curve, he knew, she was incredibly easy to read. One of the things he had always admired about Claire was her backbone, her inability to give up. He knew she would follow him, just as he knew that fate had tossed him a slow easy pitch right down the center.
There were a couple reasons why interacting with Claire on a personal level was not exactly easy for him to accomplish, the first, her dad would shoot him, probably 50 or 60 times in rapid succession. Additionally Sylar had personal goals of his own that had nothing to do with Claire, which he was working on a semi-daily basis. Sylar was busy searching for spectacular abilities to empathize into his arsenal.
Two days after what Sylar personally referred to as F-day, he had high-tailed it to New Orleans. It had taken him 7 minutes and 21 seconds to empathize with that Sanders kid. Sylar had figured with their shared, "Oh my mom is dead," angst it would be pretty easy, but that giant 'issue' never reared its ugly and painful head. When he had arrived, Micah had not been surprised to see him in the least. He had been greeted with excited preteen ramblings, "Holy crap, Sylar! Did you see what Claire did? I can't believe it! I youtubed it like 400 times! Oh man, everything is gonna change all over again! Maybe we can really come into the open and stuff, ya know?"
Sylar had then been dragged swiftly into the house and interrogated by a 14-year-old. After giving the kid his personal run down of Claire's jump, he had been sucked into the world of video games by a clear expert, who introduced Sylar to the cathartic wonders of Super Smash Brothers. In all honesty the kid wasn't that bad, he worked hard on his ability, was damn smart and had a gaggle of little, ability toting friends, with whom Micah was fighting crime with, "X-Men Style" as the kid put it. Before he knew it, Sylar was spending the night on the couch and was wrangled into an epic video game tournament the next morning.
Sylar had spent the following weeks exclusively chasing down new abilities, which had been much easier once he had technological manipulation at his disposal. God bless the Internet. As the hunger plagued him, he had come to find that the acquisition and learning of a new power would ease the burn for a decent amount of time. He was currently coasting a wave of a significant power acquisition that he figured would last a couple of months at the least.
But the main reason it was hard to interact with Claire was because she wanted nothing to do with him.
Granted, he supposed she was justified, but Sylar was a firm believer in the old adage, "Time heals all wounds." He had figured with eternity on his side he would have to wait a couple decades or so until she would really talk to him. His original plan had been good, stupendous if he said so himself, using time as his ultimate weapon, until he became the only remnant of her old life that remained; her only touchstone in a cold, dark and lonely future.
Right now, he just wanted to start doing a victory dance. His entire timetable of seducing, wooing and generally having Claire as his own had been pushed forward quite a bit. The fact that she was still in the apartment and hadn't stormed out like a 4-year-old had been surprising, as that had been her reaction to his presence the other two times they had run into each other since F-Day.
During the alone years, before Peter, with her face stalking him from his own arm in an empty world, like some kind of cruel joke, he came to the conclusion that if he was going to ever truly have her, he would have to wait. She would have to come to him, this was the only way the relationship could ever be real, given it could take years, but Sylar wanted Claire, not some ruined version that he forced into submission. Claire's beauty was in her bravery and her spirit and those were two things Sylar would never take from his girl.
Often to pass the time in that empty world, he would troll through his mental files for images of her, adjusting and toying with the ways she would look or react to thousands of scenarios. Never did he consider that offering her a cup of tea would be a turning point of any type of relevance in their life together, but fate has a funny way of taking the path least expected.
As she walked into the kitchen he had already reached the counter and set the tea to boil. She stood on the other side of the kitchen's island and began dancing her fingers rapidly across the tabletop. This was weird, Domestic Type Sylar was something Claire never thought she would see. "So… never took you for a tea-drinker."
Sylar turned around to face her from the stove, "Tea is delicious, Claire, and very good for you. Tea sooths the nerves, helps maintain a health immune system and generally improves longevity," he smirked at her then, "I also have a minor obsession with certain aspects of British pop culture."
"Okay then," the incessant finger taping stopped for a moment. There were bigger fish to fry here than Sylar as a "normal" guy. She looked up at him, "How did you know? I mean, you were not at all surprised about Noah when I told you. Is my dad such a fucking bad guy? Did you use your magic bad-guy radar? Am I the only one who thought he wasn't?" she flicked a single stray tear from the corner of her eye, "Am I just that stupid?"
"It has nothing to do with being stupid, Claire. Maybe a little naïve," he shrugged slightly, "but that's part of your charm. It's natural to believe in parents, the parents of your heart, but the world is not black and white and sometimes the fallout is impossible to see from the blast, kiddo," he walked over to the island and set a plate full of cookies in front of her, "I'm not making excuses or trying to placate you. Obviously you are convinced of his guilt, I would like to hope you have significant reason, but Bennet operates under a different moral code than the rest of us."
Claire scoffed as loud as she could, grabbed a cookie and rolled her eyes, "Moral code, my ass! What a crock, coming from you of all people…" Jesus, he had to be fucking kidding. "I'm just tired of his justifying every damn thing he ever does," She was pacing now, from one side of the island to the other, gesturing madly with the cookie, "No one should have to explain everything! It's worse because he always lies. Did you know he almost burned up my mom's brain? Just to keep his precious secrets… her mind, her soul was worthless to him! How can you do that to someone you should love?"
She suddenly wanted to tell Sylar that her father had never loved her mother at all… that Sandra had just been one more layer to his cover. Just one more poor sap in the wrong place and wrong time in the Noah Bennet timeline. Before she could let one more cat out of the bag, he was answering her.
"Most people can't, but I think your father cannot see the line between protection and suffocation. In my experience, his intentions toward you have never been purposely harmful."
Claire started laughing hysterically then, "Did you forget about the vortex disaster! Let me remind you: my dad attempted to use me as a pawn to destroy you via Stephen Canfield, yet another person who hadn't done any damn thing either! Then I had to be rescued by the likes of you!" Tears were freefalling from her eyes when she looked right at him, "I thought I would die when you touched me. I wanted you to die, it didn't matter that you had saved me, I still just wanted your pain. Maybe I am my father's daughter."
She was exhausted. Even thinking about the whole vortex mess made Claire sick to her stomach. That day had been the rudest awakening of Claire's entire life. Saved by her enemy, sacrificed by her father… What the fuck was up with that? The worst part of it all, Sylar had been right, they would always be freaks to Noah… every last one of them, Claire included.
"Claire, Claire, Claire… being terrified of me a few days after I ripped that beautiful ability from your brain is not the same thing as carrying a grudge against a whole sub-species of humanity. Sorry to tell you muffin, but your daddy is never going to be a crusader for the rights of the evolved," Sylar said as his trademark smirk took over his entire face, "I don't know why he hates us all, but something colors his decisions when it comes to us. He would have hid us from the world forever. But you changed all that. You changed the whole goddamn world, Claire. I would guess that your dad has distanced himself from you significantly since the jump. You took his fatherhood away, Claire, because he can never protect you from what comes next."
"What the hell are you talking about? 'What comes next?'" She rolled her eyes overdramatically, "Ooohh, so scary Mr. Ominous! What's that supposed to mean anyways?" Bastard was talking in damn riddles!
Sylar leaned across the island, inches from her face, and whispered, "Do you think I'm the only boogeyman out there, Claire? You're just so damn naïve. Do you honestly think that your power wouldn't call to the weakest and strongest of men? Anyone with the ability to empathize, copy or steal abilities will be after you! You may not believe it, but there are worse evils than me in this world, dark and cold people with nothing to lose and an eternity to gain. Governments, privatized corporations, hell, any damn old person will covet what you are and attempt to acquire it for themselves, no matter the cost."
Claire crossed her arms over her chest, "You can't know that. Not everyone is like you, you know."
Sylar mockingly copied the motion, "Wanna bet, Princess? Since the beginning of human consciousness man has unerringly chased the ultimate prize… immortality. I shudder to think of the logistics of your protection, especially from a father's point of view."
"I don't need to be protected! God save me from overbearing men!" Claire threw her hands into the air, "No one needs to be protected less than me."
Sylar turned back to the stove and drug their freshly poured tea from the counter to the island with his telekinesis, "You're right, Claire. What was I thinking?" Sylar hit himself on the forehead in a "duh" motion while Claire watched that damned smirk return with a vengeance, "I mean, what immortal person would possibly be concerned about imprisonment?" Grey walls, itchy uniforms and the memories of seemingly endless monotony overwhelmed him. "An imprisonment that could last fucking centuries?" his voice had tripled in volume, his own private fears evident in his words and he took a calming breath before continuing, "But you're right, Claire, I'm sure the entire medical community doesn't even care about watching your lungs re-grow a billion times."
Sylar circled to her side of the island, mug in hand, tone now curious and captivating, "How long would you last, I wonder? How many pokes, prods and cuts would it take before your mind gave up? How many broken bones would it take to crack into your soul, little cheerleader?"
He was literally a breath away from her, physically, and she could smell him again, damnit, and it was interfering with her thought process. Shouldn't he smell like old eggs or sewage? Claire thought that would be fair if committing a gaggle of murders would have some kind of terrible side effect and the universe would just balance itself out. Instead it was a freaking party for her nose; the forest meets musk for hormonal euphoria.
His words had pulled her toward him emotionally in a way she had never expected. It was, to put it mildly, irritating that he understood. No one had ever understood her in her entire life. She tried not to think about the lab-rat prisons, organ harvesting camps or baby-making stations that could very well be her future. He had hit the nail on the head, summed up all they really had to ever worry about… well, except for an eternity of loneliness.
"I had to! There is no hiding this!" She shook her head, "The secrets were suffocating me, suffocating us all! That's part of the reason that Samuel was able to manipulate all those people. I just want a life," she sighed, "My own life. We can all have the life we want in the open. I'm tired of hiding, I'm tired of running. I won't again. Enough is enough."
"Understandable," he relaxed himself back against the island and sipped his tea, "But you have to be careful Claire. Eternity can be a gift or a curse. I'm telling you from personal experience, a cell is a really bad place to be. The only thing worse..." he shook his head, stopping himself, she didn't need to know what alone really was, and as long as he was here she would never find out, no one should experience that kind of crushing loneliness, "Well you don't have to worry about that, because no psychic cops are mad pissed at you."
She turned towards him, "Peter said it was worse than the virus future, worse than our exposed future... worse than anything."
"It was." he laughed once, even though it wasn't funny at all, "After I had gotten my own goddamn body back," being trapped in Claire's bio-dad's body had been hell on a number of levels and was not something he wanted to discuss with her. It had been hell constantly fighting himself and the man they had forced him to be, "I figured it couldn't get any worse than that. I was very wrong."
"How long were you alone?" Peter had tried to tell her months ago about his "years" with Sylar, but she had flat out refused to hear about Sylar's supposed redemption, "Peter said he lived years with you, in the span of a few hours."
He looked right at her, "Peter arrived 876 days, 4 hours and 13 minutes after me."
"Shit," Claire really didn't know what to say. It was a mindfuck to ponder.
He smiled at her and clapped his hands together, "Enough of that shit, Negative Nancy. It's really damn late and that's just not something I would like to talk about right now."
"Well, I should probably let you sleep," she smiled at him, surprised at herself, "I never thought I'd say this to you, but I'm glad you were here."
"Listen, it's late, you shouldn't be out," he held up his hand when she opened her mouth to object, "I know, I know, overbearing, but Pete would get mad at me if I let you leave alone. Why don't you just sleep on the couch? I'll take the recliner. That way I don't have to walk your ass home," he yawned and scratched the back of his head twice.
Claire sighed, "Fine, but I demand more tea and delicious cookies in the morning."
Sylar headed for the living room, stretching his arms over his head. "Yeah, Emma made me about 14 types of delicious desserts before they left. She's the best."
'What the hell was he doing now? More importantly, why couldn't he just put on a goddamn shirt?' Claire thought. This creepy attraction to him was incredibly disconcerting, and now here he was stretching and she was staring. There had been a moment in the kitchen where she thought she had lost her mind, she had wanted him, and for about half a second there it had been pretty mentally dicey. The impulse to lean toward him had been damn near overwhelming, just to see what he tasted like.
The TV was still on when they walked into the living room and Sylar collapsed on the right side of the couch, "Well, looks like sleep is going to have to wait. We've got about twenty-three minutes left in this episode, then we can sleep."
Claire looked at the screen and saw a tall, curly-haired guy with the longest scarf she had ever seen. He was crouched between some sort of consul and a tiny grey garbage can, "Why is he talking to a garbage can?"
He turned around on the couch and faced her with a rather distraught look, "Claire, that's K-9. He's not a garbage can; he is a super intelligent robot dog. You really need some culture, you know that?"
"Culture?" Claire headed for the TV and pointed to the sets, "Sylar, this looks like 70s retrograde action. What's with Scarfy? Does he trip on that thing all the time? Look, it's all wrapped up around his feet. That's just silly, what if he needs to run somewhere? What the hell are you watching?"
Sylar shook his head, "This is Doctor Who, Claire, and it is only an institution of British sci-fi glory. Sit the hell down, cause I'm about to change your whole life."
Warnings: Language, always language...
Sylar and Claire have a heart to heart...
Chapter 2
'Tea?' Where was she? Bizarro world? What's next? Would he knit her a sweater or two? This was ri-goddamn-diculous. Another ridiculous thing was Claire's own behavior in the past few minutes. Had her brain taken a fucking holiday? Touching Sylar? On her own nonetheless! No puppet powers to blame this on, she had touched him. Caressed his arm, if she was being completely honest with herself, and that was just plain unacceptable. This was the brain poker! The ability thief! The bio-dad/mom/childhood-best-friend murder! Yet here she was, checking out his ass as she followed him to the kitchen. Claire slapped her face into her palm, hard.
Yeah… this was soooo not good.
Sylar chuckled very, very quietly to himself as he heard what could only be the sound of a facepalm, followed by a muttered swear. He had thrown her a curve, he knew, she was incredibly easy to read. One of the things he had always admired about Claire was her backbone, her inability to give up. He knew she would follow him, just as he knew that fate had tossed him a slow easy pitch right down the center.
There were a couple reasons why interacting with Claire on a personal level was not exactly easy for him to accomplish, the first, her dad would shoot him, probably 50 or 60 times in rapid succession. Additionally Sylar had personal goals of his own that had nothing to do with Claire, which he was working on a semi-daily basis. Sylar was busy searching for spectacular abilities to empathize into his arsenal.
Two days after what Sylar personally referred to as F-day, he had high-tailed it to New Orleans. It had taken him 7 minutes and 21 seconds to empathize with that Sanders kid. Sylar had figured with their shared, "Oh my mom is dead," angst it would be pretty easy, but that giant 'issue' never reared its ugly and painful head. When he had arrived, Micah had not been surprised to see him in the least. He had been greeted with excited preteen ramblings, "Holy crap, Sylar! Did you see what Claire did? I can't believe it! I youtubed it like 400 times! Oh man, everything is gonna change all over again! Maybe we can really come into the open and stuff, ya know?"
Sylar had then been dragged swiftly into the house and interrogated by a 14-year-old. After giving the kid his personal run down of Claire's jump, he had been sucked into the world of video games by a clear expert, who introduced Sylar to the cathartic wonders of Super Smash Brothers. In all honesty the kid wasn't that bad, he worked hard on his ability, was damn smart and had a gaggle of little, ability toting friends, with whom Micah was fighting crime with, "X-Men Style" as the kid put it. Before he knew it, Sylar was spending the night on the couch and was wrangled into an epic video game tournament the next morning.
Sylar had spent the following weeks exclusively chasing down new abilities, which had been much easier once he had technological manipulation at his disposal. God bless the Internet. As the hunger plagued him, he had come to find that the acquisition and learning of a new power would ease the burn for a decent amount of time. He was currently coasting a wave of a significant power acquisition that he figured would last a couple of months at the least.
But the main reason it was hard to interact with Claire was because she wanted nothing to do with him.
Granted, he supposed she was justified, but Sylar was a firm believer in the old adage, "Time heals all wounds." He had figured with eternity on his side he would have to wait a couple decades or so until she would really talk to him. His original plan had been good, stupendous if he said so himself, using time as his ultimate weapon, until he became the only remnant of her old life that remained; her only touchstone in a cold, dark and lonely future.
Right now, he just wanted to start doing a victory dance. His entire timetable of seducing, wooing and generally having Claire as his own had been pushed forward quite a bit. The fact that she was still in the apartment and hadn't stormed out like a 4-year-old had been surprising, as that had been her reaction to his presence the other two times they had run into each other since F-Day.
During the alone years, before Peter, with her face stalking him from his own arm in an empty world, like some kind of cruel joke, he came to the conclusion that if he was going to ever truly have her, he would have to wait. She would have to come to him, this was the only way the relationship could ever be real, given it could take years, but Sylar wanted Claire, not some ruined version that he forced into submission. Claire's beauty was in her bravery and her spirit and those were two things Sylar would never take from his girl.
Often to pass the time in that empty world, he would troll through his mental files for images of her, adjusting and toying with the ways she would look or react to thousands of scenarios. Never did he consider that offering her a cup of tea would be a turning point of any type of relevance in their life together, but fate has a funny way of taking the path least expected.
As she walked into the kitchen he had already reached the counter and set the tea to boil. She stood on the other side of the kitchen's island and began dancing her fingers rapidly across the tabletop. This was weird, Domestic Type Sylar was something Claire never thought she would see. "So… never took you for a tea-drinker."
Sylar turned around to face her from the stove, "Tea is delicious, Claire, and very good for you. Tea sooths the nerves, helps maintain a health immune system and generally improves longevity," he smirked at her then, "I also have a minor obsession with certain aspects of British pop culture."
"Okay then," the incessant finger taping stopped for a moment. There were bigger fish to fry here than Sylar as a "normal" guy. She looked up at him, "How did you know? I mean, you were not at all surprised about Noah when I told you. Is my dad such a fucking bad guy? Did you use your magic bad-guy radar? Am I the only one who thought he wasn't?" she flicked a single stray tear from the corner of her eye, "Am I just that stupid?"
"It has nothing to do with being stupid, Claire. Maybe a little naïve," he shrugged slightly, "but that's part of your charm. It's natural to believe in parents, the parents of your heart, but the world is not black and white and sometimes the fallout is impossible to see from the blast, kiddo," he walked over to the island and set a plate full of cookies in front of her, "I'm not making excuses or trying to placate you. Obviously you are convinced of his guilt, I would like to hope you have significant reason, but Bennet operates under a different moral code than the rest of us."
Claire scoffed as loud as she could, grabbed a cookie and rolled her eyes, "Moral code, my ass! What a crock, coming from you of all people…" Jesus, he had to be fucking kidding. "I'm just tired of his justifying every damn thing he ever does," She was pacing now, from one side of the island to the other, gesturing madly with the cookie, "No one should have to explain everything! It's worse because he always lies. Did you know he almost burned up my mom's brain? Just to keep his precious secrets… her mind, her soul was worthless to him! How can you do that to someone you should love?"
She suddenly wanted to tell Sylar that her father had never loved her mother at all… that Sandra had just been one more layer to his cover. Just one more poor sap in the wrong place and wrong time in the Noah Bennet timeline. Before she could let one more cat out of the bag, he was answering her.
"Most people can't, but I think your father cannot see the line between protection and suffocation. In my experience, his intentions toward you have never been purposely harmful."
Claire started laughing hysterically then, "Did you forget about the vortex disaster! Let me remind you: my dad attempted to use me as a pawn to destroy you via Stephen Canfield, yet another person who hadn't done any damn thing either! Then I had to be rescued by the likes of you!" Tears were freefalling from her eyes when she looked right at him, "I thought I would die when you touched me. I wanted you to die, it didn't matter that you had saved me, I still just wanted your pain. Maybe I am my father's daughter."
She was exhausted. Even thinking about the whole vortex mess made Claire sick to her stomach. That day had been the rudest awakening of Claire's entire life. Saved by her enemy, sacrificed by her father… What the fuck was up with that? The worst part of it all, Sylar had been right, they would always be freaks to Noah… every last one of them, Claire included.
"Claire, Claire, Claire… being terrified of me a few days after I ripped that beautiful ability from your brain is not the same thing as carrying a grudge against a whole sub-species of humanity. Sorry to tell you muffin, but your daddy is never going to be a crusader for the rights of the evolved," Sylar said as his trademark smirk took over his entire face, "I don't know why he hates us all, but something colors his decisions when it comes to us. He would have hid us from the world forever. But you changed all that. You changed the whole goddamn world, Claire. I would guess that your dad has distanced himself from you significantly since the jump. You took his fatherhood away, Claire, because he can never protect you from what comes next."
"What the hell are you talking about? 'What comes next?'" She rolled her eyes overdramatically, "Ooohh, so scary Mr. Ominous! What's that supposed to mean anyways?" Bastard was talking in damn riddles!
Sylar leaned across the island, inches from her face, and whispered, "Do you think I'm the only boogeyman out there, Claire? You're just so damn naïve. Do you honestly think that your power wouldn't call to the weakest and strongest of men? Anyone with the ability to empathize, copy or steal abilities will be after you! You may not believe it, but there are worse evils than me in this world, dark and cold people with nothing to lose and an eternity to gain. Governments, privatized corporations, hell, any damn old person will covet what you are and attempt to acquire it for themselves, no matter the cost."
Claire crossed her arms over her chest, "You can't know that. Not everyone is like you, you know."
Sylar mockingly copied the motion, "Wanna bet, Princess? Since the beginning of human consciousness man has unerringly chased the ultimate prize… immortality. I shudder to think of the logistics of your protection, especially from a father's point of view."
"I don't need to be protected! God save me from overbearing men!" Claire threw her hands into the air, "No one needs to be protected less than me."
Sylar turned back to the stove and drug their freshly poured tea from the counter to the island with his telekinesis, "You're right, Claire. What was I thinking?" Sylar hit himself on the forehead in a "duh" motion while Claire watched that damned smirk return with a vengeance, "I mean, what immortal person would possibly be concerned about imprisonment?" Grey walls, itchy uniforms and the memories of seemingly endless monotony overwhelmed him. "An imprisonment that could last fucking centuries?" his voice had tripled in volume, his own private fears evident in his words and he took a calming breath before continuing, "But you're right, Claire, I'm sure the entire medical community doesn't even care about watching your lungs re-grow a billion times."
Sylar circled to her side of the island, mug in hand, tone now curious and captivating, "How long would you last, I wonder? How many pokes, prods and cuts would it take before your mind gave up? How many broken bones would it take to crack into your soul, little cheerleader?"
He was literally a breath away from her, physically, and she could smell him again, damnit, and it was interfering with her thought process. Shouldn't he smell like old eggs or sewage? Claire thought that would be fair if committing a gaggle of murders would have some kind of terrible side effect and the universe would just balance itself out. Instead it was a freaking party for her nose; the forest meets musk for hormonal euphoria.
His words had pulled her toward him emotionally in a way she had never expected. It was, to put it mildly, irritating that he understood. No one had ever understood her in her entire life. She tried not to think about the lab-rat prisons, organ harvesting camps or baby-making stations that could very well be her future. He had hit the nail on the head, summed up all they really had to ever worry about… well, except for an eternity of loneliness.
"I had to! There is no hiding this!" She shook her head, "The secrets were suffocating me, suffocating us all! That's part of the reason that Samuel was able to manipulate all those people. I just want a life," she sighed, "My own life. We can all have the life we want in the open. I'm tired of hiding, I'm tired of running. I won't again. Enough is enough."
"Understandable," he relaxed himself back against the island and sipped his tea, "But you have to be careful Claire. Eternity can be a gift or a curse. I'm telling you from personal experience, a cell is a really bad place to be. The only thing worse..." he shook his head, stopping himself, she didn't need to know what alone really was, and as long as he was here she would never find out, no one should experience that kind of crushing loneliness, "Well you don't have to worry about that, because no psychic cops are mad pissed at you."
She turned towards him, "Peter said it was worse than the virus future, worse than our exposed future... worse than anything."
"It was." he laughed once, even though it wasn't funny at all, "After I had gotten my own goddamn body back," being trapped in Claire's bio-dad's body had been hell on a number of levels and was not something he wanted to discuss with her. It had been hell constantly fighting himself and the man they had forced him to be, "I figured it couldn't get any worse than that. I was very wrong."
"How long were you alone?" Peter had tried to tell her months ago about his "years" with Sylar, but she had flat out refused to hear about Sylar's supposed redemption, "Peter said he lived years with you, in the span of a few hours."
He looked right at her, "Peter arrived 876 days, 4 hours and 13 minutes after me."
"Shit," Claire really didn't know what to say. It was a mindfuck to ponder.
He smiled at her and clapped his hands together, "Enough of that shit, Negative Nancy. It's really damn late and that's just not something I would like to talk about right now."
"Well, I should probably let you sleep," she smiled at him, surprised at herself, "I never thought I'd say this to you, but I'm glad you were here."
"Listen, it's late, you shouldn't be out," he held up his hand when she opened her mouth to object, "I know, I know, overbearing, but Pete would get mad at me if I let you leave alone. Why don't you just sleep on the couch? I'll take the recliner. That way I don't have to walk your ass home," he yawned and scratched the back of his head twice.
Claire sighed, "Fine, but I demand more tea and delicious cookies in the morning."
Sylar headed for the living room, stretching his arms over his head. "Yeah, Emma made me about 14 types of delicious desserts before they left. She's the best."
'What the hell was he doing now? More importantly, why couldn't he just put on a goddamn shirt?' Claire thought. This creepy attraction to him was incredibly disconcerting, and now here he was stretching and she was staring. There had been a moment in the kitchen where she thought she had lost her mind, she had wanted him, and for about half a second there it had been pretty mentally dicey. The impulse to lean toward him had been damn near overwhelming, just to see what he tasted like.
The TV was still on when they walked into the living room and Sylar collapsed on the right side of the couch, "Well, looks like sleep is going to have to wait. We've got about twenty-three minutes left in this episode, then we can sleep."
Claire looked at the screen and saw a tall, curly-haired guy with the longest scarf she had ever seen. He was crouched between some sort of consul and a tiny grey garbage can, "Why is he talking to a garbage can?"
He turned around on the couch and faced her with a rather distraught look, "Claire, that's K-9. He's not a garbage can; he is a super intelligent robot dog. You really need some culture, you know that?"
"Culture?" Claire headed for the TV and pointed to the sets, "Sylar, this looks like 70s retrograde action. What's with Scarfy? Does he trip on that thing all the time? Look, it's all wrapped up around his feet. That's just silly, what if he needs to run somewhere? What the hell are you watching?"
Sylar shook his head, "This is Doctor Who, Claire, and it is only an institution of British sci-fi glory. Sit the hell down, cause I'm about to change your whole life."