dreaming;;;

[makes_you_tick]

It's dark. It's possible to tell this because it's not pitch black. No, there is the occasional flourescent light on- security lights, of course. Nothing seems secure about this place, though. That light keeps blinking off occasionally, for instance, and it looks like one of the glass doors down the hall is shattered onto the floor

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you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[adamantined]

She's been here before: the endless and winding halls of Primatech feeding and pouring into each other, the belly of some monstrous beast. In those memories Claire carries a shot gun in her hands, and her father is at her back. In this reality she is alone and unarmed, her footfalls subdued and dull to her ears. Claire wonders if this is a dream, all her senses blurred and balled up in cotton, and wonders why it's a dream she's having if it is.

Her fingers move across the walls as she walks and walks, and she remembers that a woman died down here, and that Claire herself became a killer, too, in this place. The Company is nothing but a massacre, a real monster, living and breathing, and even though Claire has been here before she walks on pins and needles. "Where are you?" she breathes, though she says it to no one.

In her dreams, he's usually here, too, just out of sight, a shadow on her peripheral the way he had been at Homecoming.

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[makes_you_tick]

One of the halls she moves down gives way to brushed molding, the wood frames and doors of a house. It leads into the familiar, still dark. But the rattling shutters don't make any noise this time, they just hide the promise of palm trees behind them. The lights flicker on and off just the same as before, but the only sound is the ticking.

"Aren't I always here?" Sylar asks. His voice is right next to the ear, and he's nowhere in sight.

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[adamantined]

It's not the dark or the ticking that keeps her on edge, looking back and down across the floor, in the corners, as she moves cautiously. At once it's like being back in Costa Verde, alone in a house with an unearthly presence, something too big and strong for her to wrap her fingers around but still tangible, still breakable. At one point, at least, no longer breakable.

The voice in her ear is tangible, too, a paradox: soft and salient and weighted and jagged. It doesn't scare her, doesn't startle her into running. You can't be afraid of the monsters that you've already face, can't be scared when you know that you're never going to die. But the bottom of her stomach does drop out in sick anticipation, and Claire whirls on the heel of her foot to find the space behind her empty. She moves across the floorboards, her heels slapping hard and confidently in the stillness.

Come out, she thinks, in the darkest parts of her own conscious. Come out and, quieter, where are we? She wishes she would have thought to pick up the glass on the

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[makes_you_tick]

I'm not hiding, he says, still out of sight. The blinds stop moving- everything stops moving, except for the clock on the wall.

Te blinds are gone, and the kitchen is different. A framed picture of Claire, smiling obliviously in her cheerleading outfit, sits on the kitchen counter. There's a jug of iced tea still beading condensation, a cell phone broken into three pieces on the floor.

There's the sound of glass shattering towards the front door.

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[adamantined]

Claire breathes hard through her nose, somehow wishing and hoping that she might become part of the decor, phase through the walls and out of this dream to stumble into another. That voice feels halfway across the room and like it's traveling down her spine all at once, too close for comprehension, and as she moves into the kitchen, it's less to get away from it than it is to get into an open area so maybe she can see it. She feels like she can't see - some warped, half-world vision that won't let her look up, sick with blindness and too much sound - but she can see the photo of herself just fine

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[makes_you_tick]

Sandra lies in the foyer, her left hand held up by the jagged glass left in the cabinet. Blood has dripped down that arm, onto the carpet. The body is still, cold. Bled out, even.

Light peeks around the edges of the front door, as if it's threatening to open. It could expose this all to the harsh light of day. Is that really what Claire's looking for?

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[adamantined]

The back of her throat burns as she croaks, and Claire isn't looking for anything anymore other than a way to get Sandra's hand out of the mess of twisted and jutting glass. Her knees squish against the carpet as she kneels in the mess underneath them, hardly conscious of it, focused only on yanking her mother's hand. She knows this isn't real, knows that it's some sort of hallucination or dream or curse-induced stupor. It isn't real, and her mother is at home with Lyle, and she isn't dead, and they aren't in Odessa, but the copper tang is sharp in her mouth and the stone wedged in her throat makes it almost impossible to breathe, this suffocating numbness, and Claire wishes the yellow fingers stretching across the floor from where the door wants to open would be creeping nuclear tension, ready to explode as soon as she breathes

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[makes_you_tick]

"All that does is stain the floor. Will it make you feel any better?" The first sentence is far away, the second is close enough for her to feel his breath on the back of her shoulder. Again, it isn't there.

"I didn't want it this way, you know." The voice invades the house, and the door starts pushing in. Maybe the light is nuclear, it certainly shines like an explosion. The ticking speeds up.

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[adamantined]

She drops the glass. It's pointless to hold onto. Killing someone didn't make her feel better the first time that she did it, not necessarily. There had been no crunch of success, no slip of sudden contentment. She'd felt some thirst finally satiated, coupled with the pounding knowledge that she could do something like that if it came to it, that she could kill without thought if she meant it. It was as horrifying as being in the locker room with Jackie had been.

But she's not doing it again, not if she doesn't have to, and not if it means letting him win. That door wants to open so badly, then she's going to open it. Her shoes don't make any noise against the flooring of the foyer as she steps over her mother and reaches for a familiar knob, a door she opened for years and years and years. Her home. A safe haven. She yanks it open.

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[makes_you_tick]

It opens into elegant hallways decorated with far too many expensive things. Things are quiet, but it's the quiet of an early morning, not of a dead night. Sunlight streams in through the windows and the air is warm.

There's the smell of breakfast down the hall. "Claire?" It's Peter's voice, coming from that direction. "You awake already?"

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[adamantined]

This is, if possible, worse and more distressing than either of the previous areas had been. Of all the places in all the worlds, this mansion is the last place she wants to be, and with the lingering sensation of eyes and breath on her neck and ear, a place that she once dreamed could grow to become a potential comfort suddenly feels like a paranoia trip. She's dressed differently than she was before: something nice and fitting now, the kind of top that Angela would put her in, the kind of slacks Nathan would ask her to wear. She feels stretched and thin, and Peter's voice is deceptively relieving

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[makes_you_tick]

Peter looks up and smiles at her, pleased to see her. "Hey! I didn't think you were going to make it for a minute there." He's arranging the plates on the patio. There's only four place settings on the large table. He put them all on one end. "I told the staff to take the day off, so you're getting my cooking here. Hope you don't mind."

He continues setting the table, pulling out a chair for her before sitting in one himself. "You want orange juice?"

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[adamantined]

Claire doesn't hide the look of confusion on her face as she sits down, her back ramrod straight in the chair as she unfolds her napkin in her lap like she's seen in the movies. She isn't a proper girl, doesn't have many manners outside of her Southern respect and charm. High society situations confuse her, even if she does the part of blending in well, and with Peter's awkward behavior, nothing is being helped by anything else.

"Sure," she says, reaching forward to push the glass in his direct. Claire glances around the table again, looks up at her uncle's face with the same sort of open vulnerability she favors with him, her eyes a naked flame. "What's going on? Where's everyone else?"

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[makes_you_tick]

Peter looks down at his glass, then back up to Claire. "Claire..." he starts out, pausing as he decides how best to word things. "Simon and the kids couldn't visit this week. It's just us," he says gently. "Could be worse, though, right?"

He gives her an apologetic smile, then stares awkwardly down at the table. "Eggs?" he asks, carefully, as he grabs a plate.

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[adamantined]

She shakes her head. Of course it could be worse. Peter is the only person in this world that she trusts anymore, the only person that has the ability of making her actually feel safe, which is why so much of this is so disconcerting. Claire doesn't feel safe. Her senses are all on edge and high alert. "It could be a lot worse," she says with a smile smile, that same one she gave him in Odessa, though now it feels forced.

Nodding, Claire agrees, says, "Eggs'll be great. With hot sauce if you have some." She pours him some juice and sets it at the setting next to hers and then looks up at him again. "Why couldn't they visit?" She's not even sure what's going on, but it seems imperative to ask.

you are not wrong, who deem that my days have been a dream

[makes_you_tick]

Peter laughs a bit, but it sounds bitter. He passes the hot sauce. "Simon has another big trial this week. You know him, he won't focus on anything else until he wins it. And- well, you know he won't trust me with his kids, no matter what I say. They're with the nanny."

He pours syrup on his pancakes and looks back up to Claire. "Maybe he's right. Maybe I shouldn't be hiding here like this, but if I don't take care of the place, who will?" He slices up his pancakes with expert skill and takes a couple of bites. "Sorry, didn't mean to make this breakfast such a downer. But you still want me here, right? I can be your uncle again, can't I?"