Assent (5/?)
Title: Assent (5/?)
Pairing: Sylar/Claire
Word Count: 2738
Rating: R for language and violent imagery (future chapters will be rated M)
Warning(s): I don't own Heroes. Spoilers through end of Season 3 to be on the safe side. Future-fic, technically.
The sound that came from outside the bathroom made Claire hesitate before turning the knob and heading back to the bed. She opened the door slowly, peeking out to make sure everything was ok. Sylar was sitting in the middle his bed, his eyes closed and visibly shaking and short blue sparks were dancing around his tightly closed fists. She slipped out of the bathroom and walked sideways, slowly, to her bed, her heart racing fast. Without taking her eyes off of him or giving him her back, she sat facing his direction, too timid to speak at first for fear it might startle him and cause him to shock her. But then she remembered it wouldn't do anything to her if he did.
"Sylar, are you alright?" she asked quietly.
His eyes popped open and the sparks stopped. His face twisted into an expression she wasn't sure she recognized: his furrowed brow and tight lipped frown, features she knew well, seemed angry. But his eyes, hidden beneath that brow seemed almost hurt. He took several deep, cleansing breaths before asking "Claire, what do you remember?"
There was no need to ask what he was referring to. She knew exactly what he meant. "Well...like I said this morning. The last thing I remember before everything was being at the grocery late at night. I wanted ice cream..."
"Do you remember anything that happened during?"
The images flooded her mind and she hated him for doing this. Part of her wanted to refuse to answer, to push it all back down. But she knew him too well. He would never leave her alone until he got what he wanted. Much like she did to him earlier when being pressed on an issue he wasn't up to discussing. She sighed, throwing herself down, her head bouncing on the soft pillow. She fixed her eyes on the ceiling, refusing to look directly at him.
"I remember waking up and not being able to move my arms or legs. My vision was blurry, there was someone standing over me I think and I lifted my head to see what why I wasn't moving. Things started to get clearer and I saw a lot of blood and silver things stuck in my legs. I think there was a hole in my stomach. I heard myself scream and then it went black," she said. She turned her head, finally looking at him. He was listening intently, but she could see him trembling. "The next thing I remember, I was on your shoulders...moving really fast. I saw the Comp... I saw that building and then we were flying. I think you stopped somewhere in Maryland and stole a car...and well, you know the rest. Why do you ask?"
He stood up from the bed and paced back and forth for a few moments, finally dropping down in the space between the two beds. He brought his knees to his chest and ran his hands through his hair. The urge to do that herself washed over and she swallowed hard. She propped herself up on her elbow and looked down at his face. The sweat on his shoulders glistened in the lamp's light and he suddenly looked paler than she had ever remembered.
"I'm going to give you the option," he said, his voice low. He was staring at the floor between his knees. "and Claire, I want you to seriously think about it before you answer me."
Her heart raced again and she sat up, crossing her legs. She could feel the anxiety coming off of him and it bit at the back of her throat.
"Do you want to know what they were doing to you?" he refused to look at her.
She could feel fear creeping up her spine and she wasn't sure why. “That bad, huh?”
“Yes.”
She honestly didn't know if she wanted to know all the details. “How did you find out?”
“Data absorption from electronics. I took it in the heat of everything but just now remembered that I hadn't sorted through it.”
She just nodded and sucked on her bottom lip. “Is this why you look like you are about to explode?”
“Very much so.”
She sighed and stood up, pulling the covers back on her bed. She settled under them and curled away from him. “Then no. I don't. Not yet anyway. I don't think I can handle it right now.”
Half of her wanted him to tell her anyway. It was her body, her life, she had a right to know. She needed to know. But there is only so much a person can stand to go through in such a short time. She was tired and needed to sleep and if the actions against her were enough to drive Sylar to shake and look on the edge of eruption...well, she doubted that bit of information would be of any sort of sedative to her. She heard him stand up and get into his bed. The lamp flicked off and they were in the dark.
“Good night Claire,” he said.
“Night,” she replied.
******************************************************************************************************
She knew by the beginning of the second hour of restlessness that she was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Whatever nightmarish things Sylar uncovered would no doubt shake her to the core. But now she knew that he knew, and it was going to drive her insane. Much like when a friend tells you they got you a gift but won't say what, the curiosity would kill her, she was sure. She never was much of a girl that wanted to be kept in the dark, and her past episodes with various bad guys was testament to that. Sometimes she wished that she was more of an airhead. Ignorance is bliss, so the saying goes.
She rolled over in the bed for the 48th time (so it felt) and faced his direction. The room was pitch black, no bright red digital numbers to draw her attention to. Having no idea of the time, she had heard, was a good way to help someone fall into slumber. But the lack of any sort of light source made looking at Sylar pointless. She knew he was there, could hear his deep breathing, but she couldn't see him. This made her uneasy, having no visual confirmation that he was still with her and she hated herself for it. If only this room had a nightlight...
Groaning, she rubbed her eyes hard. She was never going to fall asleep. With that anxious feeling still biting at her insides, she cleared and her throat and called Sylar's name softly. He moaned and she heard him rustling in his bed. She called it again. He made another unintelligible sound. She said it a little louder.
“Claire?” he finally yawned.
“I can't sleep,” she said.
“So you had to keep me from it too?”
“Can you stop being a smart ass for five minutes?” she asked.
“When I'm woken up in the middle of the night, all bets are off. But I shall try. What's on your mind?”
She sat up in her bed but didn't turn the light on. “I want to know what they did to me.”
The bed springs squeaked and she would've guessed he sat up as well. “And you think this is gonna help you sleep?”
“Probably not, but if I don't hear it soon, the curiosity is going to eat me alive.”
“Claire, I don't know if this is such a good...”
“I want to know. You were all ready to tell me earlier.”
He sighed. “It's not pretty. I'm telling you now...”
“I don't care. I need to know. I need you to tell me and stop trying to act like...”
“Alright, alright. Fine. I'll tell you.”
Waiting for him to continue, she realized she was shaking. Her foot was moving a mile a minute and she worried for a millisecond that it might fall off.
“What you told me earlier, what you woke and saw, was real. When I found you, they had cut you all over, to the bone, and were using things to keep the gashes open. The wound they had made in your stomach was the worst of them. They had put a big, circular metal ring inside and that too stopped the healing. Clair, I could see your intestines.”
Her stomach jerked violently but she didn't make a sound. She could do this, she could handle being told the truth.
"Do you want me to go on?"
"Yes," she said, putting more power in her voice than necessary.
"I took the IV out of your arm to stop the drugs. You woke up and looked down at yourself, I silenced the scream you let out and then toy passed out. Shock, I assume. I removed all the instruments and wires from you." He cleared his throat. "You were naked, save a sheet covering your lower half. I eventually found some clean scrubs to put on you."
She could feel the heat rising to her face and was thankful he couldn't see her blushing. So he'd seen her naked. From the waist up. She tried to think of it as nonchalant as possible. They were both grown-ups here. And she was sure he'd seen his fair share of breasts in his life. Besides, he surely to god wasn't ogling her while she unconscious and being tortured...
"Claire, the next thing I found was absolutely deplorable," he warned.
"I don't care, tell me everything," she said, her voice cracking.
"There was another tube, one that I didn't notice at first. I realized very soon where it was connected..."
Claire held her breath. She wasn't sure what he was gonna say, but knew it was bad.
He sighed. "I saw the tube disappear between your legs and under the sheet. I...I couldn't bear to touch that, so I had to use my power to remove it. It was disgusting."
Though he couldn't bring himself to say it completely out loud, she knew what he meant. She suddenly somehow felt even more violated than before. Even more than that day Sylar poked around her brain. She could feel tears sting her eyes and her body started to tremble but she had to keep listening. She needed to know why.
"Claire?" he asked, his voice filled with concern.
"What was the purpose?" she asked quietly, straining to keep her voice from cracking.
"From what I gathered, they were running the standard Company freakshow experiments. Trying different inhibitors, testing the side effects of others. The main reason for your being there was different. They had taken samples of your DNA with the intent of attempting to find the healing gene. Their goal was to isolate that and then replicate it, intended to mimic it in other people," he said. He sighed deeply and she heard him rustle the blankets. When he spoke again, it came from a different direction He had stood up in the dark. "It's not a new idea for the Government. Trying everything they can get their hands on to make the ultimate soldier. The perfect weapon. It's their proposed Plan B that is truly disturbing."
Unable to stand being in the dark any longer (literally and figuratively), Claire slid off the bed and clicked the lamp on. Sylar was leaning against the sink counter, his head hung low. The feeling of hate from the night before was nothing compared to the hellfire burning in her gut now. She ran to him, forcing his head up to look at her. His eyes were glossy and filled with guilt.
"I really didn't want to be the one to tell you this. Any other time, in the past, I would've jumped at the chance to prove to you that everything you thought was safe and true wasn't. I would've done it just to see the fight come out of you to try prove me wrong. But this.." he turned his gaze to the wall beside them. She was still holding his face, the scruff there scratching her skin just like imagined it would.
"What is Plan B?"
“They were collecting your eggs, Claire. If they are unable to duplicate your power in others they plan to just breed new ones,” he finally said.
Claire's hands fell from his face. She didn't scream. She didn't cry or start breaking things. Stepping away from him slowly, she calmly walked into the bathroom and locked the door. She was on the floor then, sitting back against the door, counting the square tiles on the floor.
She was wrong. There was nothing in this world that could prepare her for that. The experiments, the drugs. She could understand that. Hell, at one point she would have even encouraged it if it meant it could save people. But this...it was worse than she could've imagined. Several different scenarios passed through her mind and she was having trouble figuring out what was the worst part of this whole thing.
Genetic theft. How could they take that from her? Her stomach turned at the thought of that tube inside her. It was unbearable and sick and wrong. She could feel her body, it's desire to vomit, feeling herself heave but, like it always did, never allowed her to. She refused to sit there and convulse, she needed something, some physical response, something tangible to happen. Crawling to the toilet, she stuck her fingers down her throat, as far as she could and welcomed the bile that finally came up with open arms. The act was violent for her but not painful, there was never pain, but at least she could feel it.
Wiping her mouth on a discarded towel, she laid on the cool tiles and stared directly at the blinding white light above her. What they did was no different than rape. Her body was still heaving but there was nothing left in her to expel. Her body... She knew, as she jumped up toward the sink, that she had healed from what they did to her. That did not stop her from ripping the mirror from above the sink clean off the wall. She slipped the boxers off and sat on the end of the tub, holding the broken mirror upright and resting on the floor. She examined herself, really looking at that part of her in detail for the first time since she was child. The tears started to well then, seeing everything looking absolutely perfect (and kind of beautiful) but knowing that just a few days ago it wasn't. How long had they been harvesting from her? Was it the entire three weeks? How many eggs did they manage to get from her? She frantically tried to remember what she learned in health class. How many ovum did women have? Did she even have any left? The mirror slipped from her grasp and shattered into large pieces on the tile floor. She glanced down and saw the many reflections of her face staring back at her.
Her thoughts then ran to Plan B. If the genetic altering failed...she would be the unwilling mother to an army of test tube soldiers. She always wanted children, but not like this. It was so wrong, so very, very wrong. She pictured hundreds of young, blond men and women dressed in fatigues and wielding guns. Brainwashed by the god damned Company to kill without remorse. Unstoppable. And it would be all her fault. How much blood would she have on her hands? How many innocent people would be slaughtered by her sons and daughters? And she would be powerless to stop it. They would be invincible, just like she was. They could take over the world. And she would live forever, watching it happen helplessly, unable to do anything about it.
No, she could not let this happen. She would end this, end the Company once and for all. Standing up and walking without a care on the broken glass, she made a decision she never thought she would be forced to. And she sure as hell never imagined it would be such an easy one to make.
Noah would die for this.
Pairing: Sylar/Claire
Word Count: 2738
Rating: R for language and violent imagery (future chapters will be rated M)
Warning(s): I don't own Heroes. Spoilers through end of Season 3 to be on the safe side. Future-fic, technically.
The sound that came from outside the bathroom made Claire hesitate before turning the knob and heading back to the bed. She opened the door slowly, peeking out to make sure everything was ok. Sylar was sitting in the middle his bed, his eyes closed and visibly shaking and short blue sparks were dancing around his tightly closed fists. She slipped out of the bathroom and walked sideways, slowly, to her bed, her heart racing fast. Without taking her eyes off of him or giving him her back, she sat facing his direction, too timid to speak at first for fear it might startle him and cause him to shock her. But then she remembered it wouldn't do anything to her if he did.
"Sylar, are you alright?" she asked quietly.
His eyes popped open and the sparks stopped. His face twisted into an expression she wasn't sure she recognized: his furrowed brow and tight lipped frown, features she knew well, seemed angry. But his eyes, hidden beneath that brow seemed almost hurt. He took several deep, cleansing breaths before asking "Claire, what do you remember?"
There was no need to ask what he was referring to. She knew exactly what he meant. "Well...like I said this morning. The last thing I remember before everything was being at the grocery late at night. I wanted ice cream..."
"Do you remember anything that happened during?"
The images flooded her mind and she hated him for doing this. Part of her wanted to refuse to answer, to push it all back down. But she knew him too well. He would never leave her alone until he got what he wanted. Much like she did to him earlier when being pressed on an issue he wasn't up to discussing. She sighed, throwing herself down, her head bouncing on the soft pillow. She fixed her eyes on the ceiling, refusing to look directly at him.
"I remember waking up and not being able to move my arms or legs. My vision was blurry, there was someone standing over me I think and I lifted my head to see what why I wasn't moving. Things started to get clearer and I saw a lot of blood and silver things stuck in my legs. I think there was a hole in my stomach. I heard myself scream and then it went black," she said. She turned her head, finally looking at him. He was listening intently, but she could see him trembling. "The next thing I remember, I was on your shoulders...moving really fast. I saw the Comp... I saw that building and then we were flying. I think you stopped somewhere in Maryland and stole a car...and well, you know the rest. Why do you ask?"
He stood up from the bed and paced back and forth for a few moments, finally dropping down in the space between the two beds. He brought his knees to his chest and ran his hands through his hair. The urge to do that herself washed over and she swallowed hard. She propped herself up on her elbow and looked down at his face. The sweat on his shoulders glistened in the lamp's light and he suddenly looked paler than she had ever remembered.
"I'm going to give you the option," he said, his voice low. He was staring at the floor between his knees. "and Claire, I want you to seriously think about it before you answer me."
Her heart raced again and she sat up, crossing her legs. She could feel the anxiety coming off of him and it bit at the back of her throat.
"Do you want to know what they were doing to you?" he refused to look at her.
She could feel fear creeping up her spine and she wasn't sure why. “That bad, huh?”
“Yes.”
She honestly didn't know if she wanted to know all the details. “How did you find out?”
“Data absorption from electronics. I took it in the heat of everything but just now remembered that I hadn't sorted through it.”
She just nodded and sucked on her bottom lip. “Is this why you look like you are about to explode?”
“Very much so.”
She sighed and stood up, pulling the covers back on her bed. She settled under them and curled away from him. “Then no. I don't. Not yet anyway. I don't think I can handle it right now.”
Half of her wanted him to tell her anyway. It was her body, her life, she had a right to know. She needed to know. But there is only so much a person can stand to go through in such a short time. She was tired and needed to sleep and if the actions against her were enough to drive Sylar to shake and look on the edge of eruption...well, she doubted that bit of information would be of any sort of sedative to her. She heard him stand up and get into his bed. The lamp flicked off and they were in the dark.
“Good night Claire,” he said.
“Night,” she replied.
******************************************************************************************************
She knew by the beginning of the second hour of restlessness that she was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Whatever nightmarish things Sylar uncovered would no doubt shake her to the core. But now she knew that he knew, and it was going to drive her insane. Much like when a friend tells you they got you a gift but won't say what, the curiosity would kill her, she was sure. She never was much of a girl that wanted to be kept in the dark, and her past episodes with various bad guys was testament to that. Sometimes she wished that she was more of an airhead. Ignorance is bliss, so the saying goes.
She rolled over in the bed for the 48th time (so it felt) and faced his direction. The room was pitch black, no bright red digital numbers to draw her attention to. Having no idea of the time, she had heard, was a good way to help someone fall into slumber. But the lack of any sort of light source made looking at Sylar pointless. She knew he was there, could hear his deep breathing, but she couldn't see him. This made her uneasy, having no visual confirmation that he was still with her and she hated herself for it. If only this room had a nightlight...
Groaning, she rubbed her eyes hard. She was never going to fall asleep. With that anxious feeling still biting at her insides, she cleared and her throat and called Sylar's name softly. He moaned and she heard him rustling in his bed. She called it again. He made another unintelligible sound. She said it a little louder.
“Claire?” he finally yawned.
“I can't sleep,” she said.
“So you had to keep me from it too?”
“Can you stop being a smart ass for five minutes?” she asked.
“When I'm woken up in the middle of the night, all bets are off. But I shall try. What's on your mind?”
She sat up in her bed but didn't turn the light on. “I want to know what they did to me.”
The bed springs squeaked and she would've guessed he sat up as well. “And you think this is gonna help you sleep?”
“Probably not, but if I don't hear it soon, the curiosity is going to eat me alive.”
“Claire, I don't know if this is such a good...”
“I want to know. You were all ready to tell me earlier.”
He sighed. “It's not pretty. I'm telling you now...”
“I don't care. I need to know. I need you to tell me and stop trying to act like...”
“Alright, alright. Fine. I'll tell you.”
Waiting for him to continue, she realized she was shaking. Her foot was moving a mile a minute and she worried for a millisecond that it might fall off.
“What you told me earlier, what you woke and saw, was real. When I found you, they had cut you all over, to the bone, and were using things to keep the gashes open. The wound they had made in your stomach was the worst of them. They had put a big, circular metal ring inside and that too stopped the healing. Clair, I could see your intestines.”
Her stomach jerked violently but she didn't make a sound. She could do this, she could handle being told the truth.
"Do you want me to go on?"
"Yes," she said, putting more power in her voice than necessary.
"I took the IV out of your arm to stop the drugs. You woke up and looked down at yourself, I silenced the scream you let out and then toy passed out. Shock, I assume. I removed all the instruments and wires from you." He cleared his throat. "You were naked, save a sheet covering your lower half. I eventually found some clean scrubs to put on you."
She could feel the heat rising to her face and was thankful he couldn't see her blushing. So he'd seen her naked. From the waist up. She tried to think of it as nonchalant as possible. They were both grown-ups here. And she was sure he'd seen his fair share of breasts in his life. Besides, he surely to god wasn't ogling her while she unconscious and being tortured...
"Claire, the next thing I found was absolutely deplorable," he warned.
"I don't care, tell me everything," she said, her voice cracking.
"There was another tube, one that I didn't notice at first. I realized very soon where it was connected..."
Claire held her breath. She wasn't sure what he was gonna say, but knew it was bad.
He sighed. "I saw the tube disappear between your legs and under the sheet. I...I couldn't bear to touch that, so I had to use my power to remove it. It was disgusting."
Though he couldn't bring himself to say it completely out loud, she knew what he meant. She suddenly somehow felt even more violated than before. Even more than that day Sylar poked around her brain. She could feel tears sting her eyes and her body started to tremble but she had to keep listening. She needed to know why.
"Claire?" he asked, his voice filled with concern.
"What was the purpose?" she asked quietly, straining to keep her voice from cracking.
"From what I gathered, they were running the standard Company freakshow experiments. Trying different inhibitors, testing the side effects of others. The main reason for your being there was different. They had taken samples of your DNA with the intent of attempting to find the healing gene. Their goal was to isolate that and then replicate it, intended to mimic it in other people," he said. He sighed deeply and she heard him rustle the blankets. When he spoke again, it came from a different direction He had stood up in the dark. "It's not a new idea for the Government. Trying everything they can get their hands on to make the ultimate soldier. The perfect weapon. It's their proposed Plan B that is truly disturbing."
Unable to stand being in the dark any longer (literally and figuratively), Claire slid off the bed and clicked the lamp on. Sylar was leaning against the sink counter, his head hung low. The feeling of hate from the night before was nothing compared to the hellfire burning in her gut now. She ran to him, forcing his head up to look at her. His eyes were glossy and filled with guilt.
"I really didn't want to be the one to tell you this. Any other time, in the past, I would've jumped at the chance to prove to you that everything you thought was safe and true wasn't. I would've done it just to see the fight come out of you to try prove me wrong. But this.." he turned his gaze to the wall beside them. She was still holding his face, the scruff there scratching her skin just like imagined it would.
"What is Plan B?"
“They were collecting your eggs, Claire. If they are unable to duplicate your power in others they plan to just breed new ones,” he finally said.
Claire's hands fell from his face. She didn't scream. She didn't cry or start breaking things. Stepping away from him slowly, she calmly walked into the bathroom and locked the door. She was on the floor then, sitting back against the door, counting the square tiles on the floor.
She was wrong. There was nothing in this world that could prepare her for that. The experiments, the drugs. She could understand that. Hell, at one point she would have even encouraged it if it meant it could save people. But this...it was worse than she could've imagined. Several different scenarios passed through her mind and she was having trouble figuring out what was the worst part of this whole thing.
Genetic theft. How could they take that from her? Her stomach turned at the thought of that tube inside her. It was unbearable and sick and wrong. She could feel her body, it's desire to vomit, feeling herself heave but, like it always did, never allowed her to. She refused to sit there and convulse, she needed something, some physical response, something tangible to happen. Crawling to the toilet, she stuck her fingers down her throat, as far as she could and welcomed the bile that finally came up with open arms. The act was violent for her but not painful, there was never pain, but at least she could feel it.
Wiping her mouth on a discarded towel, she laid on the cool tiles and stared directly at the blinding white light above her. What they did was no different than rape. Her body was still heaving but there was nothing left in her to expel. Her body... She knew, as she jumped up toward the sink, that she had healed from what they did to her. That did not stop her from ripping the mirror from above the sink clean off the wall. She slipped the boxers off and sat on the end of the tub, holding the broken mirror upright and resting on the floor. She examined herself, really looking at that part of her in detail for the first time since she was child. The tears started to well then, seeing everything looking absolutely perfect (and kind of beautiful) but knowing that just a few days ago it wasn't. How long had they been harvesting from her? Was it the entire three weeks? How many eggs did they manage to get from her? She frantically tried to remember what she learned in health class. How many ovum did women have? Did she even have any left? The mirror slipped from her grasp and shattered into large pieces on the tile floor. She glanced down and saw the many reflections of her face staring back at her.
Her thoughts then ran to Plan B. If the genetic altering failed...she would be the unwilling mother to an army of test tube soldiers. She always wanted children, but not like this. It was so wrong, so very, very wrong. She pictured hundreds of young, blond men and women dressed in fatigues and wielding guns. Brainwashed by the god damned Company to kill without remorse. Unstoppable. And it would be all her fault. How much blood would she have on her hands? How many innocent people would be slaughtered by her sons and daughters? And she would be powerless to stop it. They would be invincible, just like she was. They could take over the world. And she would live forever, watching it happen helplessly, unable to do anything about it.
No, she could not let this happen. She would end this, end the Company once and for all. Standing up and walking without a care on the broken glass, she made a decision she never thought she would be forced to. And she sure as hell never imagined it would be such an easy one to make.
Noah would die for this.