The Coming Storm
Title: The Coming Storm
Author: cameroncrazed
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3445
Spoilers: none
Note: Thanks so much to ladyanne525 for betaing - I really appreciate it!
Disclaimer: “Heroes”, it’s concepts and characters do not belong to me.
Written for challenge #10: lightning at sylaire_chall.
“It’s going to be another July scorcher, folks, with no end…”
The old woman reaches over and switches off the radio before the sentence of endless sunshine and hellish heat can be pronounced by their very own judge, jury, and executioner, the local meteorologist. Slowly, she makes her way over to the ice box and grabs out a handful of cubes, letting her head loll back as she rolls the cubes over her neck and shoulders, trying desperately to escape the inescapable heat. She collapses back into her chair, slowly fanning her overheated skin with a calendar, a date a month hence circled in red ink, the date of the coming storm.
- - - - - - - - - -
“You’re a lifesaver, lady.” The businessman tips an imaginary hat in her direction when Claire slides the iced glass of lemonade towards him. He loosens his tie as he orders his sandwich. “Egg salad - cold, please, and plenty of ice cream, doll. God, how can you stand this heat? I’m absolutely melting.” Sweat pours off of him, and he lazily mops at it with the extra napkins she’d brought him before wrapping his hands around the glass, drinking like a man dieing of thirst.
“Years of practice.” She laughs as she walks off to refill his now empty lemonade. Just as she’s carrying the glass back to him, the old woman enters the deserted café. Claire immediately bounds over to her side, helping her into a booth and folding up the walker and resting it against the long stretch of countertop.
“Now, I was going to bring you lunch as soon as this gentleman was done. Annabel, what did I tell you about walking all the way over here, especially in this heat?” Claire asks, hands on hips.
“Not to do it, but when I have ever listened to anything you told me to do? Besides, you always come at 11:30, and it’s already five after twelve.”
“You are so much like your father.” Claire comments.
Before Annabel can retort, the man notices the similarities between the two. “You two family? Grandmother, granddaughter?”
For some reason, both women laugh, laugh until they both have tears streaked down their faces.
- - - - - - - - - -
Annabel takes great pleasure in taking the thick black marker and dragging it along that page of the calendar, marking off yet another day in her countdown. She wonders if any of the other old timers have realized the importance of this month yet; she’s only seen this play out twice before, but she knows the pattern. Only three more weeks to go until their anniversary. Only three more weeks until Daddy Dearest comes home.
- - - - - - - - - -
Claire stands at the counter, elbows rested against the counter top, staring out the giant plate-glass windows at the town and miles of desert surrounding them. She can see the tiny waves of heat rising up off the asphalt, and it makes her even hotter and uncomfortable as she tugs at her sweat-soaked tank top. Maybe she’s been in town to long, maybe she’s hung around a few decades to many, but there’s a restlessness burning in her blood that grows as the mercury soars and the land around her becomes parched and drought-ridden. It hasn’t rained in eight months; she feels like that was the last time she was able to draw a deep breath.
No one’s been in the diner all day; the locals are all safely inside their air-conditioned homes, and won’t venture out until darkness falls. Tourists don’t find anything fascinating in their small main street or in their sun-scorched and sandy acres, not when they could just as easily escape to the manufactured chill of Las Vegas or the blissful shores of Lake Mead or even venture into southern California; businessmen fly overhead in fast jets, glad to bypass the desolation, or they speed by at a hundred miles an hour on the highway that goes through the middle of town, the only paved road in their little community, not wanting to stop and get out in this podunk town for any reason, not in this heat.
She occasionally daydreams about flagging one of them down, hitchhiking straight out of town and back into modern life, but then she sees the people around her; this town needs her, and she needs them. She’s not leaving anytime soon, not leaving ever if she can help it. This is her home, from her tiny little house that she and her eldest son had built to the diner she’d started to the cemetary full of family that she won’t abandon, children she’s buried over the years; she’s left home too many times when she was younger to ever give it up so easily again.
- - - - - - - - - -
“Meemaw, why does Miss Claire look so sad all the time?” The little boy curls up in Annabel’s lap, and she brushes the curls off his forehead.
“Why do you think that?” She doesn’t lie to him, doesn’t tell him that Claire’s not sad. She’s noticed the constant frown on her mother’s face, and she knows why it’s there.
“She doesn’t smile anymore, doesn’t hum under her breath or dance around the diner like she used to. And when she helped heal my knee, she didn’t give me candy afterwards like she usually does.”
The boy’s observant; she’s glad that her granddaughter’s training him correctly. “Good eye. Why do you think she’s sad?”
“I dunno.”
He’s too young to understand; she doesn’t try to explain the futility of trying to tame a tornado to the boy. “Can you keep a secret?” She smiles when he nods. “Miss Claire’s not going to be sad for much longer. You just make sure you give her big hugs and big kisses for the next two weeks, and she’s going to feel a lot better real soon.”
- - - - - - - - - -
She doesn’t even think about him all that much; not anymore. It’s been thirty years, thirty years exactly this month but that’s not to imply that she’s been counting the days, and she had stopped sighing his name in the lonely dark of night at year twenty-three. She stopped remembering his kisses even earlier, never quite sure after year fifteen if it’s a memory or a fantasy when she thinks of his insistent lips pressed against hers. She gave away the clothes that he’d accidentally left behind about the same time; she can’t help but catch her breath when she sees a dark-haired man walking around town dressed just like him, but before she can embarrass herself by jumping in his arms, she remembers who he is - and who he isn’t. Thoughts of him don’t haunt her nighttimes, and she doesn’t daydream of him anymore. She can get through a work day without vivid fantasies of him pinning her to the cool vinyl booth bench or chasing her into the ladies’ restroom, third stall on the left, for a quickie. Requests for decaf coffee are met with a smile, rather than a vacant look at a memory from long-ago; and if they don’t serve peach pie, ever, then it’s not because that she can’t make one without him invading her thoughts.
She barely thinks about him at all, but there are times that she can’t help it. Someone says something, calls out for a refill, and it’s in his voice. A man brushes against her as she spins around the diner, overburdened with trays of fried chicken and thick wedges of apple pie, and the scent of his aftershave makes her weak in the knees. A tall dark drink of water stands in the doorway of the café, and she’s so dazzled by the sunlight streaming in around him that she thinks for a minute that he’s come back, even though she knows better.
She thinks no one knows; never notices the amused or pitying looks on their faces when they catch her staring off into space, humming a love song under her breath. In a way, they prefer it when she’s thinking about him; at least there’s a smile on her face. When she’s starting to forget, when she’s starting to maybe move on and she’s starting to doubt that he’ll ever return, that’s when the smile fades and the laughter’s not as bright and her eyes don’t light up any more. It’s when he’s been gone too long that the love song turns into funereal music, and she hums morbid little marches when she brings them their morning coffee.
Annabel may hate her father, detests his visits, but she hates him most when he stays away too long, when Claire starts to fade.
- - - - - - - - - -
“Miss Annabel.” The mayor is quick to offer her his arm when he spots her digging in what used to be her garden, turning the soil and mixing it with bags of fertilizer and seed. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Prepping the ground. I’m going to have an award-winning garden this year. All the rain, you know.”
She wants to laugh at the horrified look on his face, especially when he hurriedly pulls her up into the cool shadows of the porch. “You sit down, dear; I think you’ve had a touch of sunstroke. I’m calling Miss Claire and your son.”
As he rushes inside to use her telephone to spread the gossip that she’s finally gone senile before finally calling for medical assistance, Annabel laughs. Seven days until the storm; she’s not going to be ready in time.
- - - - - - - - - -
They all feel at unease; there’s a dark tickle that raises the hairs on the back of every neck in town - all except Claire. They gather in the diner, not wanting to be at home with this danger in the air.
The radio blasts reports of relentless heat and sunshine even as the dark clouds start to roll into place at a speed that scares all of them.
“What do you expect; those weather guys don’t know their ass from their elbow.” One man comments. “Just lookit. There’s definitely a storm coming, and fast.” Thunder rolls in the background, making his words seem even more ominous.
At that pronouncement, and the memory of a foreseen storm on this date, they all look over at Annabel - all except Claire. She just stares out the windows again, watching as the clouds turn even darker and sand starts to blow by as what had been a delightfully cool breeze picks up speed. When the sun is completely blotted from the sky, obscured by layers of thick blackness, she’s standing right against the front door, hand pressed against the glass in an effort to support herself.
“Miss Claire?” Someone - and she doesn’t know who - asks, but she can’t answer, to busy gasping for breath as that restless feeling rolls over her again.
They’re all gasping too when the first raindrop hits; Claire rips off her apron, dropping it to the floor before pushing open the doors and running out into the street, into the storm, but no one tries to stop her. No one else is foolhardy or indestructible enough to even try to chase after her, and they know it; they wouldn’t try, even if they could force the door to the diner to open again after it swings shut behind her with a loud boom. It’s like it’s been locked, to prevent anyone else from venturing out into the storm.
- - - - - - - - - -
Sand whips up and hits her cheeks with a sting that makes her feel like she’s finally alive again; the ground beneath her turns to mud as the rain pounds with an intensity that leaves her dizzy and leaves her clothes plastered against her body, rivulets of water running down her legs. Thunder booms, almost deafening her, and the electricity in the air sizzles against her soaked skin. The wind steals a scream from her, and she doesn’t know why, but it’s invigorating to run through town in the middle of the biggest storm to hit the city in ninety years, much worse than the storms thirty and sixty years ago; she wonders what’s got him so upset that he’s taking it out her city like this.
Lightning strikes, strikes near her, and she wants something she can’t quite name; lightning strikes again, only this time hitting her instead of just near her, and she shrieks out again as the charge travels down her spinal cord, screams and laughs in joy as her healing kicks again and she’s left with nothing more than a tingle that sits low in her body and the scent of ozone around her. She continues running, not exactly sure what she’s running to until the next lightning strike illuminates him in a sickly blue glow against the midnight-black sky. He catches her when she jumps into his arms, and it’s only then that she realizes that the lightning’s coming from within him rather than from the storm, that he’s too worked up to discharge properly. Electricity crackles between their lips, tiny little sparks when she presses the lightest of kisses against him, giant bolts of lightning when he plunders her mouth, reminding her of how it used to be between them.
“Miss me, baby?” He murmurs over the peals of thunder and the howl of the wind, and she starts crying, overcome with how much she loves him. He doesn’t say anything else, just strips her storm-soaked clothes off of her before lowering her to the ground, taking her in the mud as the storm intensifies around them, his inner turmoil playing out in nature all around them.
- - - - - - - - - -
“Stay.” She nuzzles against the mud-stained skin of his chest, refusing to let go. “Don’t leave me.”
It’s the first time she’s ever seen his hesitate; he has to think about it for several minutes before he whispers “I can’t.”
She wants to scream at him, wants to slap him, rail at him until he gives in just to get her to shut up, but she doesn’t; it wouldn’t change anything. She knew that he’d say no, but she had to ask. Three hundred years of being lovers, and he can’t stand to be around her for more than twenty-four hours or so at a time; her feelings would be hurt if she hadn’t learned along time ago that his reluctance to stay has nothing to do with her, it’s all about him and his instability and his insecurities. Instead of begging him to stay, begging him to finally give up his wild life to stay with her and their family, she begs for the only thing she knows he’ll agree to. “Stay for just another hour or two?” She wraps her legs around him, holding him firm in her hand and slowly guiding him back into her; she knows he can’t tell her no, not like this, not now.
While he rocks against her, the flood of the storm running around them, she can’t stop herself from babbling words of love that fall on deaf ears.
- - - - - - - - - -
The storm breaks at the crack of dawn, when Sylar falls over in her bed in absolute exhaustion; Claire smoothes the hair back from his forehead, and pulls the blankets up over his tired body as the winds die down and the rain starts to fall gentle. She sits down in the kitchen, hands wrapped around a tall mug of herbal tea, and watches as the sun rises over the destruction he’d wrought the night before, and rainbows bounce off the raindrops.
When he finally wakes, she pushes him towards the shower with the intention of cooking his breakfast while he bathes; instead, she can’t say no when he asks her to wash his back. That time, he’s more loving, gentler; he’d worked out all his fears and frustrations the night before. She closes her eyes, clings to him, tries to commit every single second, every touch, every whispered word into her memory for when he’s gone; maybe she’ll be able to remember longer this next time.
They eat breakfast in complete silence, and she can tell it’s killing him when she tells him it’s time for him to leave, that she’s going to be late for work. She says it as matter-of-factly as she can, already distancing herself from him mentally, hardening her heart like she knows she must.
“Come with me.” He offers as he pauses in the door frame, unwilling to leave this quickly, hesitant to walk out on her again.
He’s never offered that before, and she’s slightly tempted, but she can’t, won’t. “I can no more go with you than you can stay here with me. Go, I get it, you need to find yourself or get more powerful or whatever. Do what it is you need to do, and come back when you can.” She kisses him goodbye, and bites the inside of her lip to keep from crying, letting him leave before the tears fall; she doesn’t want him to think that he’s the cause of her tears. She doesn’t want him to stay just because just because he doesn’t want to hurt her; it wouldn’t mean anything, not like that.
- - - - - - - - - -
Annabel’s been watching from across the street, waiting for him to leave. She wants to call out to him, ask him why she’s not good enough for him to want to stay to get to know her, ask why Claire’s not good enough, ask what the hell his problem is, but she’d gotten over her abandonment issues a good sixty or seventy years prior.
“Good riddance.” She mutters under her breath as she carefully circles a particular May date in her calendar for the next year, exactly two hundred and sixty six days later. She hopes she gets a baby brother this time.
- - - - - - - - - -
The rest of summer, there’s only two topics on conversation on everyone’s tongues - the damage the storm had done, and the unmitigated heat. Autumn brings new topics to discuss, like the start of school, the mystery of the mysterious benefactor who’d funded all the storm repairs, and the way that Miss Claire has taken to wearing baggier clothes and the way she can’t stop smiling and dancing around the diner again. Winter fades away in a bore of yet another year without snow, but the last week of winter, the tongues are blazing again as flowers start to sprout in Annabel’s garden and every other abandoned flower bed in town, just in time for the baby shower.
- - - - - - - - - -
The locals aren’t real sure who the man is, the one standing silent and still in the doorway of the diner. He looks vaguely familiar, but no one can remember his name or where they’ve seen him before.
Claire drops the coffee carafe, splashing her feet and staining her snow-white sneakers with the dark brew, when she steps out of the kitchen to see him standing there, suitcase in hand. He sucks in a deep breath between gritted teeth when he notices the obvious changes, the way her apron is pulled tight, the way she caresses the curve of her belly; the look on his face is stricken, as if he’s been hit with lightning. He’s never seen her like this, never seen her nine months gone with his child before; he’s never stuck around long enough to see all the effects he has on her life.
Annabel and the rest of the town watch, fascinated, as he steps all the way in and lets the door slam shut behind him, the bell on the door jingling out a belated warning.
“Well?” Claire asks.
He stumbles in a few more steps, then a few more, until he’s standing right before her. “Claire…”
“Sylar.” Her voice trembles, and she closes her eyes, taking a deep breath. Everyone waits to hear what she’s going to say now; it’s the most excitement they’ve had in years, except for last time he was in town. “What do you want?”
He covers her hand with his. “Claire, please.”
“What do you we want?” She steps back from him, nervously, grabbing a menu and shoving it at him. “Burger? Soup?”
“I want to talk about us.”
She goes on as if she hasn’t heard him, but they all know she did as she sways on her feet. “Salad? Dessert?”
“How about pie? I could go for a nice slice of pumpkin pie.”
“Won’t have that until October.” She doesn’t point out that obvious, that it’s only the last week of May.
“Guess I’ll be sticking around until then at least,” he pauses, then grabs her hand again, “that is, if it’s okay with you? Or, if you don’t mind, longer?”
He has to drop the suitcase to catch her when she flings herself at him.
Author: cameroncrazed
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3445
Spoilers: none
Note: Thanks so much to ladyanne525 for betaing - I really appreciate it!
Disclaimer: “Heroes”, it’s concepts and characters do not belong to me.
Written for challenge #10: lightning at sylaire_chall.
“It’s going to be another July scorcher, folks, with no end…”
The old woman reaches over and switches off the radio before the sentence of endless sunshine and hellish heat can be pronounced by their very own judge, jury, and executioner, the local meteorologist. Slowly, she makes her way over to the ice box and grabs out a handful of cubes, letting her head loll back as she rolls the cubes over her neck and shoulders, trying desperately to escape the inescapable heat. She collapses back into her chair, slowly fanning her overheated skin with a calendar, a date a month hence circled in red ink, the date of the coming storm.
- - - - - - - - - -
“You’re a lifesaver, lady.” The businessman tips an imaginary hat in her direction when Claire slides the iced glass of lemonade towards him. He loosens his tie as he orders his sandwich. “Egg salad - cold, please, and plenty of ice cream, doll. God, how can you stand this heat? I’m absolutely melting.” Sweat pours off of him, and he lazily mops at it with the extra napkins she’d brought him before wrapping his hands around the glass, drinking like a man dieing of thirst.
“Years of practice.” She laughs as she walks off to refill his now empty lemonade. Just as she’s carrying the glass back to him, the old woman enters the deserted café. Claire immediately bounds over to her side, helping her into a booth and folding up the walker and resting it against the long stretch of countertop.
“Now, I was going to bring you lunch as soon as this gentleman was done. Annabel, what did I tell you about walking all the way over here, especially in this heat?” Claire asks, hands on hips.
“Not to do it, but when I have ever listened to anything you told me to do? Besides, you always come at 11:30, and it’s already five after twelve.”
“You are so much like your father.” Claire comments.
Before Annabel can retort, the man notices the similarities between the two. “You two family? Grandmother, granddaughter?”
For some reason, both women laugh, laugh until they both have tears streaked down their faces.
- - - - - - - - - -
Annabel takes great pleasure in taking the thick black marker and dragging it along that page of the calendar, marking off yet another day in her countdown. She wonders if any of the other old timers have realized the importance of this month yet; she’s only seen this play out twice before, but she knows the pattern. Only three more weeks to go until their anniversary. Only three more weeks until Daddy Dearest comes home.
- - - - - - - - - -
Claire stands at the counter, elbows rested against the counter top, staring out the giant plate-glass windows at the town and miles of desert surrounding them. She can see the tiny waves of heat rising up off the asphalt, and it makes her even hotter and uncomfortable as she tugs at her sweat-soaked tank top. Maybe she’s been in town to long, maybe she’s hung around a few decades to many, but there’s a restlessness burning in her blood that grows as the mercury soars and the land around her becomes parched and drought-ridden. It hasn’t rained in eight months; she feels like that was the last time she was able to draw a deep breath.
No one’s been in the diner all day; the locals are all safely inside their air-conditioned homes, and won’t venture out until darkness falls. Tourists don’t find anything fascinating in their small main street or in their sun-scorched and sandy acres, not when they could just as easily escape to the manufactured chill of Las Vegas or the blissful shores of Lake Mead or even venture into southern California; businessmen fly overhead in fast jets, glad to bypass the desolation, or they speed by at a hundred miles an hour on the highway that goes through the middle of town, the only paved road in their little community, not wanting to stop and get out in this podunk town for any reason, not in this heat.
She occasionally daydreams about flagging one of them down, hitchhiking straight out of town and back into modern life, but then she sees the people around her; this town needs her, and she needs them. She’s not leaving anytime soon, not leaving ever if she can help it. This is her home, from her tiny little house that she and her eldest son had built to the diner she’d started to the cemetary full of family that she won’t abandon, children she’s buried over the years; she’s left home too many times when she was younger to ever give it up so easily again.
- - - - - - - - - -
“Meemaw, why does Miss Claire look so sad all the time?” The little boy curls up in Annabel’s lap, and she brushes the curls off his forehead.
“Why do you think that?” She doesn’t lie to him, doesn’t tell him that Claire’s not sad. She’s noticed the constant frown on her mother’s face, and she knows why it’s there.
“She doesn’t smile anymore, doesn’t hum under her breath or dance around the diner like she used to. And when she helped heal my knee, she didn’t give me candy afterwards like she usually does.”
The boy’s observant; she’s glad that her granddaughter’s training him correctly. “Good eye. Why do you think she’s sad?”
“I dunno.”
He’s too young to understand; she doesn’t try to explain the futility of trying to tame a tornado to the boy. “Can you keep a secret?” She smiles when he nods. “Miss Claire’s not going to be sad for much longer. You just make sure you give her big hugs and big kisses for the next two weeks, and she’s going to feel a lot better real soon.”
- - - - - - - - - -
She doesn’t even think about him all that much; not anymore. It’s been thirty years, thirty years exactly this month but that’s not to imply that she’s been counting the days, and she had stopped sighing his name in the lonely dark of night at year twenty-three. She stopped remembering his kisses even earlier, never quite sure after year fifteen if it’s a memory or a fantasy when she thinks of his insistent lips pressed against hers. She gave away the clothes that he’d accidentally left behind about the same time; she can’t help but catch her breath when she sees a dark-haired man walking around town dressed just like him, but before she can embarrass herself by jumping in his arms, she remembers who he is - and who he isn’t. Thoughts of him don’t haunt her nighttimes, and she doesn’t daydream of him anymore. She can get through a work day without vivid fantasies of him pinning her to the cool vinyl booth bench or chasing her into the ladies’ restroom, third stall on the left, for a quickie. Requests for decaf coffee are met with a smile, rather than a vacant look at a memory from long-ago; and if they don’t serve peach pie, ever, then it’s not because that she can’t make one without him invading her thoughts.
She barely thinks about him at all, but there are times that she can’t help it. Someone says something, calls out for a refill, and it’s in his voice. A man brushes against her as she spins around the diner, overburdened with trays of fried chicken and thick wedges of apple pie, and the scent of his aftershave makes her weak in the knees. A tall dark drink of water stands in the doorway of the café, and she’s so dazzled by the sunlight streaming in around him that she thinks for a minute that he’s come back, even though she knows better.
She thinks no one knows; never notices the amused or pitying looks on their faces when they catch her staring off into space, humming a love song under her breath. In a way, they prefer it when she’s thinking about him; at least there’s a smile on her face. When she’s starting to forget, when she’s starting to maybe move on and she’s starting to doubt that he’ll ever return, that’s when the smile fades and the laughter’s not as bright and her eyes don’t light up any more. It’s when he’s been gone too long that the love song turns into funereal music, and she hums morbid little marches when she brings them their morning coffee.
Annabel may hate her father, detests his visits, but she hates him most when he stays away too long, when Claire starts to fade.
- - - - - - - - - -
“Miss Annabel.” The mayor is quick to offer her his arm when he spots her digging in what used to be her garden, turning the soil and mixing it with bags of fertilizer and seed. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Prepping the ground. I’m going to have an award-winning garden this year. All the rain, you know.”
She wants to laugh at the horrified look on his face, especially when he hurriedly pulls her up into the cool shadows of the porch. “You sit down, dear; I think you’ve had a touch of sunstroke. I’m calling Miss Claire and your son.”
As he rushes inside to use her telephone to spread the gossip that she’s finally gone senile before finally calling for medical assistance, Annabel laughs. Seven days until the storm; she’s not going to be ready in time.
- - - - - - - - - -
They all feel at unease; there’s a dark tickle that raises the hairs on the back of every neck in town - all except Claire. They gather in the diner, not wanting to be at home with this danger in the air.
The radio blasts reports of relentless heat and sunshine even as the dark clouds start to roll into place at a speed that scares all of them.
“What do you expect; those weather guys don’t know their ass from their elbow.” One man comments. “Just lookit. There’s definitely a storm coming, and fast.” Thunder rolls in the background, making his words seem even more ominous.
At that pronouncement, and the memory of a foreseen storm on this date, they all look over at Annabel - all except Claire. She just stares out the windows again, watching as the clouds turn even darker and sand starts to blow by as what had been a delightfully cool breeze picks up speed. When the sun is completely blotted from the sky, obscured by layers of thick blackness, she’s standing right against the front door, hand pressed against the glass in an effort to support herself.
“Miss Claire?” Someone - and she doesn’t know who - asks, but she can’t answer, to busy gasping for breath as that restless feeling rolls over her again.
They’re all gasping too when the first raindrop hits; Claire rips off her apron, dropping it to the floor before pushing open the doors and running out into the street, into the storm, but no one tries to stop her. No one else is foolhardy or indestructible enough to even try to chase after her, and they know it; they wouldn’t try, even if they could force the door to the diner to open again after it swings shut behind her with a loud boom. It’s like it’s been locked, to prevent anyone else from venturing out into the storm.
- - - - - - - - - -
Sand whips up and hits her cheeks with a sting that makes her feel like she’s finally alive again; the ground beneath her turns to mud as the rain pounds with an intensity that leaves her dizzy and leaves her clothes plastered against her body, rivulets of water running down her legs. Thunder booms, almost deafening her, and the electricity in the air sizzles against her soaked skin. The wind steals a scream from her, and she doesn’t know why, but it’s invigorating to run through town in the middle of the biggest storm to hit the city in ninety years, much worse than the storms thirty and sixty years ago; she wonders what’s got him so upset that he’s taking it out her city like this.
Lightning strikes, strikes near her, and she wants something she can’t quite name; lightning strikes again, only this time hitting her instead of just near her, and she shrieks out again as the charge travels down her spinal cord, screams and laughs in joy as her healing kicks again and she’s left with nothing more than a tingle that sits low in her body and the scent of ozone around her. She continues running, not exactly sure what she’s running to until the next lightning strike illuminates him in a sickly blue glow against the midnight-black sky. He catches her when she jumps into his arms, and it’s only then that she realizes that the lightning’s coming from within him rather than from the storm, that he’s too worked up to discharge properly. Electricity crackles between their lips, tiny little sparks when she presses the lightest of kisses against him, giant bolts of lightning when he plunders her mouth, reminding her of how it used to be between them.
“Miss me, baby?” He murmurs over the peals of thunder and the howl of the wind, and she starts crying, overcome with how much she loves him. He doesn’t say anything else, just strips her storm-soaked clothes off of her before lowering her to the ground, taking her in the mud as the storm intensifies around them, his inner turmoil playing out in nature all around them.
- - - - - - - - - -
“Stay.” She nuzzles against the mud-stained skin of his chest, refusing to let go. “Don’t leave me.”
It’s the first time she’s ever seen his hesitate; he has to think about it for several minutes before he whispers “I can’t.”
She wants to scream at him, wants to slap him, rail at him until he gives in just to get her to shut up, but she doesn’t; it wouldn’t change anything. She knew that he’d say no, but she had to ask. Three hundred years of being lovers, and he can’t stand to be around her for more than twenty-four hours or so at a time; her feelings would be hurt if she hadn’t learned along time ago that his reluctance to stay has nothing to do with her, it’s all about him and his instability and his insecurities. Instead of begging him to stay, begging him to finally give up his wild life to stay with her and their family, she begs for the only thing she knows he’ll agree to. “Stay for just another hour or two?” She wraps her legs around him, holding him firm in her hand and slowly guiding him back into her; she knows he can’t tell her no, not like this, not now.
While he rocks against her, the flood of the storm running around them, she can’t stop herself from babbling words of love that fall on deaf ears.
- - - - - - - - - -
The storm breaks at the crack of dawn, when Sylar falls over in her bed in absolute exhaustion; Claire smoothes the hair back from his forehead, and pulls the blankets up over his tired body as the winds die down and the rain starts to fall gentle. She sits down in the kitchen, hands wrapped around a tall mug of herbal tea, and watches as the sun rises over the destruction he’d wrought the night before, and rainbows bounce off the raindrops.
When he finally wakes, she pushes him towards the shower with the intention of cooking his breakfast while he bathes; instead, she can’t say no when he asks her to wash his back. That time, he’s more loving, gentler; he’d worked out all his fears and frustrations the night before. She closes her eyes, clings to him, tries to commit every single second, every touch, every whispered word into her memory for when he’s gone; maybe she’ll be able to remember longer this next time.
They eat breakfast in complete silence, and she can tell it’s killing him when she tells him it’s time for him to leave, that she’s going to be late for work. She says it as matter-of-factly as she can, already distancing herself from him mentally, hardening her heart like she knows she must.
“Come with me.” He offers as he pauses in the door frame, unwilling to leave this quickly, hesitant to walk out on her again.
He’s never offered that before, and she’s slightly tempted, but she can’t, won’t. “I can no more go with you than you can stay here with me. Go, I get it, you need to find yourself or get more powerful or whatever. Do what it is you need to do, and come back when you can.” She kisses him goodbye, and bites the inside of her lip to keep from crying, letting him leave before the tears fall; she doesn’t want him to think that he’s the cause of her tears. She doesn’t want him to stay just because just because he doesn’t want to hurt her; it wouldn’t mean anything, not like that.
- - - - - - - - - -
Annabel’s been watching from across the street, waiting for him to leave. She wants to call out to him, ask him why she’s not good enough for him to want to stay to get to know her, ask why Claire’s not good enough, ask what the hell his problem is, but she’d gotten over her abandonment issues a good sixty or seventy years prior.
“Good riddance.” She mutters under her breath as she carefully circles a particular May date in her calendar for the next year, exactly two hundred and sixty six days later. She hopes she gets a baby brother this time.
- - - - - - - - - -
The rest of summer, there’s only two topics on conversation on everyone’s tongues - the damage the storm had done, and the unmitigated heat. Autumn brings new topics to discuss, like the start of school, the mystery of the mysterious benefactor who’d funded all the storm repairs, and the way that Miss Claire has taken to wearing baggier clothes and the way she can’t stop smiling and dancing around the diner again. Winter fades away in a bore of yet another year without snow, but the last week of winter, the tongues are blazing again as flowers start to sprout in Annabel’s garden and every other abandoned flower bed in town, just in time for the baby shower.
- - - - - - - - - -
The locals aren’t real sure who the man is, the one standing silent and still in the doorway of the diner. He looks vaguely familiar, but no one can remember his name or where they’ve seen him before.
Claire drops the coffee carafe, splashing her feet and staining her snow-white sneakers with the dark brew, when she steps out of the kitchen to see him standing there, suitcase in hand. He sucks in a deep breath between gritted teeth when he notices the obvious changes, the way her apron is pulled tight, the way she caresses the curve of her belly; the look on his face is stricken, as if he’s been hit with lightning. He’s never seen her like this, never seen her nine months gone with his child before; he’s never stuck around long enough to see all the effects he has on her life.
Annabel and the rest of the town watch, fascinated, as he steps all the way in and lets the door slam shut behind him, the bell on the door jingling out a belated warning.
“Well?” Claire asks.
He stumbles in a few more steps, then a few more, until he’s standing right before her. “Claire…”
“Sylar.” Her voice trembles, and she closes her eyes, taking a deep breath. Everyone waits to hear what she’s going to say now; it’s the most excitement they’ve had in years, except for last time he was in town. “What do you want?”
He covers her hand with his. “Claire, please.”
“What do you we want?” She steps back from him, nervously, grabbing a menu and shoving it at him. “Burger? Soup?”
“I want to talk about us.”
She goes on as if she hasn’t heard him, but they all know she did as she sways on her feet. “Salad? Dessert?”
“How about pie? I could go for a nice slice of pumpkin pie.”
“Won’t have that until October.” She doesn’t point out that obvious, that it’s only the last week of May.
“Guess I’ll be sticking around until then at least,” he pauses, then grabs her hand again, “that is, if it’s okay with you? Or, if you don’t mind, longer?”
He has to drop the suitcase to catch her when she flings herself at him.