Sick
By: Only October Girl
Disclaimer: Heroes does not belong to me and I do this for fun, not money.
Rating: PG-13
Pair: Sylar/Claire
Genre: Drama/Angst
Summary: Introspection, people bashing (literally and figuratively), and the start of something sick.
Author's Note/Warning: I am not a psychologist and have never even taken a psychology class, so take my mental disorder attempt with a grain of salt please. It is DID, if anyone wants to spoil themselves before reading the story. Also, some blood.
Author's Note 2: This is my first attempt at the Heroes fandom so please, give me constructive feedback. If you think my Sylar or Claire sucked, please tell me in a constructive way (i.e. why).
As far as karma went, Claire could make an open and shut case about her abysmal own. Sure, she’d been a bitch from about sixth grade to junior year in high school. Did that really merit her current life course?
Claire released an explosive sigh as she flopped gracelessly onto her twin bed. There was too much shock inside her body to cry. She was too full, the feeling expanding and expanding to twice her body size, cocooning her in a numb surrealistic state.
Her breath wheezed out of her body, somehow finding space around the shock to squeeze out. The clock above the T.V. tick-tick-ticked its way to death as Claire lunged off the bed and threw herself at it. The object - a cheap red plastic thing - was flung across the room in a not unexpected act of rage, shattering into a zillion tiny little, little pieces. She stood there, her breath laboring harder, staring at the thing, but no satisfaction stepped to the plate. Minutes passed, in complete and absolute silence this time, as Claire regained as much of her tattered equilibrium as she was capable of her in condition.
She still couldn’t mourn. Not yet. Because the next filling that gripped her senses was utter, unadulterated rage. Not at Sylar, whom she now knew was alive and well, but at her adopted father and bio-grandma. Her livid mind heart wanted to include Matt in the party but her mind, somehow still slightly rational at this point, disallowed her to. Matt, like her, like Peter, like Mohinder, like all the fuck of them, was just pawns in Angela Petrelli’s and Noah Bennett’s sick little chess game. Even Sylar, but Claire wasn’t going to dwell on that thought too long. It made her skin crawl to sympathize, to identify, with the man who had killed her mother and father, a former school friend, and terrorized her.
She’d foolishly thought that the time of lying had passed, that her dad had understood that she didn’t need protecting. Not because she couldn’t die and not because she couldn’t feel pain, but because she needed to feel what pain she could – emotional. It was what everyone went through, losing people, and immortal Claire was no different. Soon, too soon for her, but an eternity for her family, Claire would be alone in the world and if she wasn’t allowed to deal with reality on her own, deal with mourning, how would she survive when that time came?
It wasn’t even that that bothered her the most. She’d had the damn right to know about Nathan’s death. She’d had the right to mourn for him, to etch his face onto her heart, to grieve for the man she’d just been getting to know and to understand. A man whom she loved since they’d met, despite his short-comings, and fuck all if she had to discover that with his death.
He’d asked her, after their little Mexico adventure, and before they had met up with everyone else, to consider adding Petrelli to her name. At this moment, despite the connection to Angela, Claire was seriously considering doing more than adding. She was so enraged with Noah Bennett that she was considering that another last name change would do her good.
As her brain whirled and her anger fluctuated with her emerging heartache, the door to her dorm opened and Gretchen entered, her big doe eyes gazing at Claire in concern. It gave Claire the heebie-jeebies and despite the current hell her emotions were, the stray thought she’d had when Gretchen became all stalkerish crossed her mind. I really should get to know people better before I invite them to be roomies.
Gretchen’s voice invaded Claire’s mind when she asked, “Are you okay, Claire?”
Claire thinned her lips in a vain attempt not to feel violent emotions toward this girl and nodded. It would be nice to be able to be sad over her dad’s death in peace. Or feel anything, really, in peace. This girl was always there, whether Claire wanted her to be or not… and it was increasingly not. Gretchen didn’t seem to get the ‘stay the hell away’ vibe and closed the distance between them. She reached for Claire’s shoulders and started massaging.
Claire’s temper flared, igniting all her feelings of pain, anger, shock, hurt, betrayal and stockpiling in her center. One more wrong move on the other girl’s part and the fuse would strike the volatile mix and Claire would explode. She jerked her body away from Gretchen, strode to her bed and grabbed her jacket. As she was yanking it on, Claire talked, hoping the sound of her voce would prevent her from committing homicide.
“Look Gretchen. I know you think you know me because I told you my secret. But there are things in this world you don’t know, and things in my life I don’t want to tell you, and things in my life I want to deal with on my own. So if you’ll excuse me…”
Claire’s voice trailed off as she strode to the door and yanked it open. Just as she was leaving she had one more parting shot, “And by ‘if you’ll excuse me’, I mean don’t follow me.” The door slammed shut on her exit, and Claire didn’t feel any remorse. It was nice not to care about the entire world, or other people’s feelings for once. Her feeling of joy was short-lived as everything else flooded back.
She zipped through the campus, on the lookout for a nice and quiet solitude. Somewhere Noah wouldn’t be able to find her. Just as she spotted a lovely grove of trees, a mossy bank underneath perfect for her to lie on, Claire felt eyes on her back. She fisted her hands and closed her eyes, allowing her head to fall back in exasperation. She’d fully expected Gretchen to heed her warning and yet, her she was, stalking her AGAIN!
Whipping around, blonde hair glinting in the sun in righteous fury, Claire settled her best glare on her face, ready to throw down. She was so tired of being manipulated and her wishes ignored… except, Gretchen wasn’t there. No one was. Blinking, Claire looked about her, surprised to notice that the place was completely deserted. She’d been sure she’d seen at least a few people out and about. If anything she was absolutely certain there had been a couple sitting next to the river having a picnic but there was nothing there now except an abandoned checker-work blanket.
The feeling of eyes boring into her gradually disappeared as Claire acquainted herself with her own personal ghost town. Something didn’t feel quite right but Claire wasn’t going to allow that to deter her from her course. She was tired of worrying about everyone else, of being the mother all the time. She was tired of cleaning up everyone else’s messes or making her own when no one gave her all the information. So she was going to sit and grieve. Then she was going to think about making some major life choices. But for now, it was mourning time.
She flopped onto the mossy ground and just fell into grief’s embrace. Her eyes welled and leaked copiously. Her heart ached for the room left empty by Nathan’s absence but it also ached for the heart-rooms Nathan and Angela occupied. She would figure out what to do with the last betrayals they would ever get later, though. Now was for a man she never got to fully appreciate until too close to the end.
Little sighs left Claire’s body as she allowed her sadness free reign. They continued to fall until Claire fell into a deep sleep, the sun just setting over the watery horizon.
{}
The strain Sylar was going through to keep up the privacy bubble he’d cast around Claire (with his newly acquired force field) was making it rather difficult to rend his little immortal’s roommate limb from limb. With every jerk and twitch the girl made, a hole appeared in his concentration. But he was feeding off the energy he’d felt Claire broadcast when the girl, Gretchen, had invaded her space. A pure, fiery hatred accompanied by a tiny little homicidal seed growing bigger and bigger with every second that had passed, so he marched on.
A scream ripped out of the girl’s throat, only to be engulfed by the force field around the room, as Sylar sliced through her rib bones. It wouldn’t do to alert the rest of the residents. After all, Claire already suffered the loss of one roommate, if another was found to be dead, Claire might fall under suspicion. That’s why this one was going to run away. His thoughts veered in another direction as he watched the thick goop in her veins drip onto the floor. Making Sylar glad he’d had the forethought to lay down plastic sheets to catch the runoff. Claire would already be angry with him for killing bio-dad. He didn’t want to compound that by staining her carpet with her ungrateful, clueless roommate’s blood. Not at all.
As he continued to slice through the porous bone, which always slowed down his work, Sylar noticed the lateness of the hour. Claire would be ready to come back now, he was sure, so he dropped her force field and concentrated on his victim. It was a relief, not having to spread himself so thin, but it saddened him. It was his job to protect her now that their relationship had changed (he was going to ignore her unpleasant attitude at the Stanton and any negative reaction she might make upon discovering his presence, after all, he had tortured, tormented, and annoyed her, killed bio-mom and bio-dad, and then threw her through a door minutes after informing her of his emotional and sexual attraction to her – her attitude was and would be quite understandable).
So absorbed in his thoughts was he that a few minutes passed before he noticed the absence of loud and distasteful screeching. He came back out of his little mental world and noticed that the girl was finally dead. Nodding to himself in congratulation, Sylar dropped his force field and then released his telekinetic hold on the corpse.
It made a sickening little thud sound as it hit the floor, tiny droplets of blood being displaced as the body settled. Sylar turned from the corpse as he surveyed Claire’s side of the room. He breathed deeply as he made an approach to her bed, catching the smell of jasmine and lavender. It was the same smell she’d sported at the Stanton and it still sent delicious tingles through his veins.
He continued to breathe deeply, enjoying the scent as he ran his hand along the bed. Claire slept there. Every night, she laid her freshly scrubbed body down onto this bed, her hair full of jasmine and her skin drenched in lavender. Every morning, she woke in this bed, her body sleep warmed and malleable. It was enough to make Sylar’s heart flutter and his balls tighten.
An enamored smile flitted across Sylar’s face as he imagined their inexperienced forays into the joys of sex happening on this very bed. He crawled onto it, dragging his too long body up to the pillow, intent on immersing his nose in the scent there. It was the same, but sharper, headier and Sylar released a needy moan. He wasn’t going to get close to this smell again for a while because Claire was going to be angry.
As he lay there, Sylar’s mind started to fuzz and flicker. Something was clawing its way up and out, trying to find the surface. Excruciating pain sot through his head and his breathe became labored. He felt like he was being pulled in, reeled out and being neatly, if painfully, packed away. He jerked, trying to regain control from something that was starting to scare him because that something was inside of him. A presence he’d always felt but ignored. He didn’t know who or what it was but it had been there since he could remember and now it wanted to pull him away from his girl.
No, damn it! Not now that I’ve got this far! No! Fuck!!
As Sylar was dragged under, his eyes caught the cheap red broken plastic clock and he thought that, once he recovered from whatever was happening, he’d restore a real clock for Claire to use.
{}
Claire took her time as she wandered back to the dorms. It was a nice night, the temperature fair (not that she could tell if it was too cold) and the breeze blowing gently. The stars, or what was allowed to penetrate the panorama of fake light in D.C., twinkled down at her merrily, as if to say, Here we are Claire. We’re not gone, not really. We’ll here to guide you through the nights.
A single tear, the last one she promised herself, slid down her cheek. A fantasy, wishful thinking, a hallucination, whatever it was officially called, but a beautiful thought nonetheless. Claire breathed in the night air, letting the crisp coolness sooth her burning lungs and fetter the flames of her inner fire. She was still hurt and angry over the betrayal of two people she relied on but this night, she wasn’t going to let it bother her.
She was bone-tired and emotionally exhausted. She didn’t have the energy for the fight she knew was coming as she approached her dorm room. But she was a new Claire, she’d said as much to Noah her first days here but she’d not actually, really enforced it since. So she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, flung the door open, and froze.
Sylar’s head jerked up to look at her and Claire was startled to see tears running down his cheeks. He was covered in blood and holding Gretchen’s obviously very dead body in his arms. Taking a deep breath and ignoring the fact that she felt very little remorse for the girl’s demise, Claire stepped further into the room and closed and locked the door. She calmly walked to her bed, Sylar’s eyes following her the whole while, and sat on the edge facing her own personal poltergeist.
They stared at each other in silence for what seemed an eternity before Claire spoke.
“Why did you do that, Sylar?”
Puzzlement flashed across the man’s face before he breathed, “I don’t know a Sylar. My name’s Gabriel Gray an- and I don’t know where I am.”
Confusion swept through Claire like a California wildfire as she stared into the depths of Sylar’s eyes. They were different, even ignoring the tears. Shock once again spread through Claire as she recognized the fact that she was looking at who Sylar used to be; before abilities, before Chandra, before her father. Because no one as sick as Sylar could fake that scared, guilty, confused gaze.
Gabriel looked down at the corpse and then back up at Claire. His lower lip quivered as he whispered, “I think I killed her for you.”
Das Ende.
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