Where They Originally Came Apart

Claire disappeared off the map. Months passed without word of her location or status, and even Angela Petrelli became nervous when the Company psychic was unable to locate her granddaughter.

At first, Sylar was only faintly amused by the stir the missing cheerleader had caused. But as more and more company members were deployed and returned unsuccessful in their attempts, Sylar soon found he was once again obsessed with the only victim that had ever survived an encounter with him. Noah was suspicious of Sylar's growing interest in finding his daughter, but he could no longer deny Sylar's ability to help.

Attention was turned away from her briefly when word was out that the two halves of the formula had been united and Adam Monroe had been dug out of his eternal entrapment. As Noah and Sylar raced across the globe to stop all hell from breaking loose, they found that they were too late.

Sitting on Monroe's desk was the elusive Claire Bennet, calmly reading Machivelli's The Prince as though the bodies of three wanted felons weren't cooling by her feet.

After Claire's disappearance, several former company members had turned up dead. Incinerated corpses were discovered, with the local police force finding no evidence of arson. Their reasoning? All the victims had died of suffocation. All sources of the fire were natural and accidental. The cops found no connection in the cases, considering the bodies were scattered all across the globe and the Company were the only ones who knew that they were working for the same employer. Only Meredith felt unease about the whole situation when it came to Claire. After confiding in Noah about the way she forced a confession out of her, he wasn't as shocked to find his daughter tapping the ashes from her cigarette onto Knox's beheaded corpse.

Forced to take her into custody, Claire just raised her eyebrow and allowed her father to handcuff her and usher her into the very cells he had avoided placing her in since her birth.

Sylar found himself in front of her cage more often than he would like to admit. He was invisible to the human eye, but sometimes he could swear that she knew he was there. She lounged around the cell as if she owned the joint, as if she could simply walk out anytime she wanted. Her father's questions were met with taunts and psychological mind fuckary that even he didn't think he was capable of.

When he had originally let Bennet live, he had done so as a form of revenge. A new game to be played. An act of whimsy that he may come to regret one day if little Claire-Bear actually grew claws but now, he wasn't so sure. He was right, after all. She was special, different. She would never die. But that wasn't what made her different from all the others, what had intrigued him enough to let her live instead of separating her head from her shoulders for Daddy Dearest to find.

Everyone was so predictable, they're behavioral patterns were so easy for him to follow. But Claire... Claire was a wild card. She broke her own pattern and refused to be fixed.

One of the few things that Gabriel Gray and Sylar had in common was that they both detested surprises. But Claire's unpredictability was a drug he didn't remember taking, but one he was undoubtedly addicted to. He couldn't fix her. And after a while, he started wondering if maybe she wasn't broken at all. Maybe the only way she could function was if she was broken. To her, broken was fixed.

Claire was a paradox. Leave it at that.

Couldn't keep his mind off of her, no matter what he did. He tried out eating her out killing her out drinking her out fucking her burning this motherfucker down to the ground and still he could see that half smile of hers (she had taken what was his and made it hers), taste her blood on the air (their dying breathes mingling in the heat, but only she would live if he didn't move fast enough because she was still stronger than him), smell her sweat (she was running away, but he would catch her, pin her beneath him and make her scream only that's not quite what happened), feel her trembling against him (in fear and pain although now he wishes it were pleasure), and hear the way her mocking laughter had pierced the tense silence between them the last time she'd laid eyes on him (since when was she the villain and he the hero?).

Sleep evaded him, poison seeping in. He was her uncle. He was always evil, always wrong, but he had never done something so... dirty. He'd attempted to kill a little girl for her power and never blinked an eyelash but found himself restless for nights after he couldn't stop himself from watching Claire masturbate in her cell, whispering what may have been his name under her breath but he may have been hallucinating at that point because his cock was in his hand and he was nearly blue from holding his breath so she didn't hear his grunts of pleasure.

He spent a week away from her cell to punish himself, but only made it three days before he made some excuse to walk by. And then he was there, captivated by her casually flipping through a chemistry textbook. He found it amusing that although her entire family agreed on her incarceration, they still made sure she kept up with her homework and ate all her vegetables like the good little cheerleader she wasn't anymore. Claire smiled secretly at them and did as they asked. He knew she was just biding her time but he could figure out what she was waiting for.

"I know you're there," she said without looking up at him.

When he didn't immediately show himself, a slow smile tugged at the corner of her lips. She shook her head at his defiance and finished her paragraph before speaking.

"There is evil because without it there is no good. Without the contrast, we'd be walking around like ungrateful bumbling idiots because we wouldn't know what the beauty of Eden was without the pain of reality."

Sylar froze. She was answering his questions, the ones he had tauntingly asked her as he dissected her mind. He came closer to the window of her cell.

She looked up. Her gaze didn't meet his, but she was looking within the vicinity of him. She wasn't sure exactly where he was standing, but she knew he was close.

"Who cares how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? What I want to know is... what music are they listening to?"

She closed her book and got off the bed. Approaching the window, she placed her hand on the glass.

"I can show you how to make love," she whispered, her pause deliberate, "stay."

He bled into her vision, his hand against hers- mere glass separating them. She swore she could feel his warmth as she trapped his gaze, black as hers.

"Why love if losing hurts so much? We love to know we're not alone," she finished. Her eyes pierced into him. "You don't have to be alone."

"We're-," he started.

"Related?" She smirked at him, tilting her head. "You going to believe everything that you hear? Their words... they are just noises. Angela is trying so hard to control us but she can't. They may have the genetics, Sylar, but we are so much more. The rules don't apply to people like us. We are different. Special."

"What are you saying?" he breathed, confusion coloring his gaze.

Claire looked away, pulled away, walked away. She had a staring contest with the ground for a few moments, tongue at the corner of her lips as she tried to figure out the right way to word this.

"I was free, away from all this. But no matter where I went, I could hear you. Your words... they are like music to me. You helped me find my demon, Sylar. You helped me understand my power. What it really meant. Who I really am."

Her gaze met his. "In a thousand years, the world will have changed but we won't. We'll still be standing while the skeletons of those around us now are turning to ash. The world will fall down around us and rebuild and collapse and rebuild, and through it all we will remain."

Sylar started to notice that the Claire he had cornered in her home, the Claire he had hunted and chased, wasn't as dead as he thought. She had simply grown up. Radically.

"I don't feel pain anymore, Sylar. And without it, how can I know what pleasure is? I am so afraid of living the rest of my life and never feeling a thing. I killed those people not just because of what they had done, but because I needed the guilt. The regret. It's the only kind of pain I can feel."

"Claire... what happened?" he asked.

He was peering inside of her and a buzz at the back of his head made him wonder if this had anything to do with the fact that she didn't make sense anymore, that he couldn't fix her, she wasn't fixable. Before he knew what he was doing, he was inside her cell, watching from the doorway as she simply eyed him.

"I'm not... who you think I am. I'm Claire- but not. Peter came back trying to change the future, make it a better a world to live in. But he's thinking too big- he always thinks the problem stems from one choice, one decision, one place. He thinks that big decisions that a few people make change the world. But it's little choices. It's everyone. It's everything."

Sylar's eyes widened in understanding, everything clicked into place with a sigh. "You're from the future."

Her eyes met his and he was startled by how dead they were. A million ghosts stood behind her and he wondered if this was how he had looked to his victims before they died.

"I was," she whispered. "She... Me- she came to me. Took over. But she didn't do it to control me; she did it to show me. What I become. What happens to the world."

"So why aren't you asking Peter for help? You two seem to be in love with the martyr concept," Sylar remarked sarcastically.

"Because I can't change the future, Sylar!" Claire snapped, suddenly in his face. "I can't stop it. I can't balance out good and evil by myself, can't stop the world from losing control because everything is morally gray!"

The fire in her eyes made him smile. There was the Claire Bennet he was used to. To his surprise, she took a deep calming breath.

"I can't let this happen to me, Sylar. To any of us. I am willing to risk everything that I gain in the future. Power. Strength. My son." She choked on the last bit, turning away from him. Sylar's eyebrow rose in question but she did not elaborate.

"I can't change the future," she repeated softly. "But I can change the present."

Determined, she looked into his eyes. "I know what they want from you. They want you to change. To reform. They tell you that you aren't a bad dog but you are. That hunger wasn't borne for no reason, Sylar. That need... it never goes away. It will never go away. The world will keep growing. You'll feed it. But it doesn't feed you. And it won't take much to make you snap."

"Claire..." Sylar whispered. Not sure why their situations were suddenly reversed. Why he felt tempted and seduced and scared. Why was he the victim? He wasn't in control. He wanted to scream- he couldn't breathe.

"You want forgiveness. You've asked me for it. But I think what you want isn't what you need," her voice was a siren song and she was pressed against him and damn that company bitch because he could feel everything she had felt, feel where she had been, her journey across the world to end here with him.

She was on tiptoe, her arm wrapped around his neck and her lips brushing against his ear.

"I wanted you to let me go. Begged you to. But you didn't. You gave me what I needed instead: strength, truth, power. You woke me up. Made me understand that it isn't what the world wants that is important, but what it needs. Made me realize what I have to do. What we have to do."

"And what do we have to do, Claire?" he asked. He turned his head, stubble grazing her cheek and she let out a soft moan.

All he could see were her eyes, blue and mischievous, his own nymph. All he could feel is her body pressed against him. Her lips so close that when she smiled they whispered against his, a promise of the kisses to come.

"We have to be villains, Sylar."

.end.