(no subject)
Title: Define Dangerous
Characters: Sylar, Claire.
Spoilers: Up to Season 2.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3032
Chapter: 3/?
Previously: Chapter 1, Chapter 2
Summary: While escaping the Company, Sylar meets up with someone from his past. Together, they must piece together some semblance of normality after years of captivity. Future AU.
Claire yawned and stretched, savoring the experience of waking up in a comfortable bed in a safe environment. Even in her barely awakened state, she could tell a big difference between these surroundings and those that had made up her sole existence for too many years.
Gone were the hard prison bunks, with the cheap blankets that could barely keep a person warm that the company always stocked their cells with. Instead, she laid there relishing the feeling of soft cotton sheets and feather pillow, along with the fresh breeze that came through the slightly opened window. It smelled like cut grass and neighborhood barbecues; it smelled like her childhood home.
Not wanting to move for fear that this may be another one of her dreams, Claire starred out the window at the little puffs of clouds dotting the sky and relaxed into her pillow. Almost once a week, while she was down in the compound and the blue sky was nothing more than a fairy tale she barely remembered, Claire would dream of how things could have turned out, how they should have.
In these dreams, Nathan could still be alive to win his presidential campaign, her father still around to protect her, everyone and everything she cared about would still be in her life and she wouldn't be stuck behind four solitary walls or subjected to daily endurance tests. For two long years, she lived from dream to dream only to awake each day to the all-to-real nightmare.
Now she was finally waking up.
It wasn't a perfect world she was returning to though. Nathan was still gone. Her father too. The only constant from her life pre-Primatech and post-Primatech was Sylar and even he was different. Before he only sought to kill her, wanting her brain to usurp her powers of rapid cell regeneration. Then he rescued her, helped her, which was possibly the strangest thing that had happened to her in some time now.
Claire sat up in bed, trying to put the puzzle pieces together. He had no reason to help her and it certainly wasn't in his personality to do so. It didn't make sense. She doubted it ever would. Claire doubted much of anything would ever make sense again. The world had turned over one night, twisting everything until it was all upside down, never to be righted again.
Back in the present, she surveyed her surroundings, still unsure where she was exactly or why she'd been left here alone. Claire was in hotel room, that much was clear by the tacky wallpaper and the room service menu. She couldn't remember how she got there though. The last thing she seemed to recall was passing out in the middle of the road and someone standing over her.
Her feet felt for the floor, plush carpet cushioning her feet instead of cold, cement that Claire's become accustomed to in the company. Standing up, Claire found that she was still feeling weak and the room sometimes seemed to move on its own, creating a strange vertigo. Her regeneration powers had been failing for the past few months after having been pushed to the limit too many times. Maybe, given enough time, they would be up to the level they once were, at least she hoped so.
Walking across the floor, Claire stopped and starred at the mirror that hung on the far wall. Her eyes were sunken and underlined with dark circles, though the creepiest thing was the way the light in them seemed to diminish with age. Where once an energy and fire lit up her blue eyes, there was only a hallow shell of her former self. She ran a hand through her limp hair, embarrassed by the fact that it hadn't been washed in a few days now. Her fingers ran along her lips, the ever present bright smile having since been replaced by the serious expression of someone too young to have experienced what she lived through. She wasn't looking at herself anymore. This was the face of the girl the company broke.
Claire pulled back her fist and then smashed it into the mirror, shattering the image, breaking it into a thousand pieces, each one reflecting another break in her heart and in her soul. She rubbed her hand, watching as it bled and then waiting patiently for it to knit itself back together again. It took longer than it used to before but it still healed faster than a normal human's healing speed.
As the day went on and the sun began to sink a little in the sky, Claire began to get worried. She'd been there for a few hours now, long enough to take a shower and watch some reruns of old tv shows, but no one had come for her yet. She thought about calling the hotel operator, to ask who the room was registered to. It couldn't be Sylar, she told herself. Even after rescuing her from the company, Claire doubted he would care enough to actually spring for a place to stay.
Maybe it was the company. Maybe they finally caught up with them, capturing them both and securing her at the hotel until they could bring her back to the compound. If that was what was going on, Claire wasn't going to give up so easily. They were going to have to drag her corpse back to Primatech because she would never go there, willingly without fighting, never again. They had broken their promise the last time she gave them what they wanted.
She ducked out into the hallway for a moment, testing whether there were locks on the doors or guards standing sentinel outside her room. Rushing outside the hotel room Claire circled and saw that there was no one out there. It didn't stop her from worrying. There was an anxiety that clung to her every waking moment these days. Claire was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the next bout of torture to begin.
Stepping back inside the room, Claire began to pace in a long line from one side to the other. It was the only thing to do when she got like this, the only thing that helped calm her a little. Walking back and forth, Claire made footprints on the newly vacuumed carpet, finding the feeling of the softness of the rug beneath her feet almost heavenly.
She got to the other side of the room and turned to notice the doorknob as it started turning, alerting her attention. Claire halted in her tracks, racing to the desk to pick up a nearby lamp. This was it. She was ready. If a fight was needed to keep her from getting dragged back to hell, she was determined to unleash all the fury contained within her small frame. She hid behind the door and waited, holding her breath.
The door opened and a man in a baseball cap stepped across the threshold. Claire stepped out from her hiding spot and swung full force, almost smashing the lamp into his skull. Her hand stopped in midair, held in place by telekinesis. It was only then that Sylar removed his cap, giving her a smirk and effortlessly returning the lamp to the table with a wave of his finger. “You don't really want to do that to the person who went out and bought you lunch, do you?”
“Lunch?” She dropped her defense and her stomach growled a bit, lured into action by the smell of the food coming from the bag he was carrying. Sylar chucked it at her, still a little pissed at her near-attack. “Where did you get money to get lunch?” She peeked in the bag. “It's not brains is it?”
“Why does everyone think I eat brains?” Sylar plopped onto the desk chair. “Seriously, what is up with that?” He shook his head, as Claire sat across from him on the bed. He was dressed in new clothes, not the basic white shirt and white pants the company dressed freaks like them in. “I may have accidentally mugged someone earlier today and stolen their money and identification. I hope I haven't offended your delicate rich girl sensibilities.”
“Whoever said.. anything about.. being rich?” Claire said between devouring the hamburger Sylar purchased for her. It was the first good meal she'd eaten in what seemed like forever. After taking some huge mouthfuls, Claire remembered just how much she missed fast food, even with all its greasy trans carbs. “My father was middle class; a respectable paper salesman.”
“Paper salesman?” Sylar laughed. “Is that what he told everyone?”
“It was a decent excuse. It kept things hidden.” Back in high school, Claire didn't fully understand the sacrifice her whole family made for her by maintaining their cover story. Her father dressed up and went to his boring paper salesman job, day after day, all for her. It was the only thing that gave her a normal life, for the few short years that she did lead one. “Unfortunately, the lie couldn't last forever.”
“What happened to him?”
Claire shoved another bite of hamburger into her mouth, too hungry to stop and too scared to bring up memories from years ago. She wasn't sure whether she could talk about the past without breaking more. Least of all with Sylar. The man was probably still clinically psychotic.
He was watching her though, peering into her silence with an unending stare. She wondered if he'd ever stolen the power of telepathy; if Sylar could look in and read her very mind if she didn't produce the answer he was searching for. She glanced away but could still feel him waiting for an answer.
“He died, okay?” She shot him a look. “Are you happy? Is that what you wanted to hear? He died protecting me from those monsters when they came to bag and tag me. He stepped in front of one of their bullets. I could have regenerated from that. I could have survived, but he..” There was a franticness in her voice, like a trapped animal as the past was brought up. She dropped the last bit of hamburger back into the bag, no longer hungry. Claire could feel the need to pace again but instead, she sat there, wringing her hands and hating herself for babbling on in front of him. “He couldn't live through that. He died and they took me in.”
“I'm sorry.”
His words almost sounded sincere, but she knew Sylar too well. He wouldn't be sorry for another human's death. Hell, he benefited from quite a few murders committed by his own hands in the past. Claire pushed herself off the bed, away from their conversation and shot back. “Oh, fuck you. Don't you dare tell me you're sorry, or that you care, or that you're having any sort of human feelings at all. Don't think I don't know that you tried to kill him a few times before.”
“That was different, Claire.” He kept his anger in check, though it was starting to leak out. “I told you I was a different person back then.”
She stopped, leaning against the wall. That sorry had been real, she knew, but why was it coming from him? Claire slid down the length of the wall, coming to rest on the floor beside it. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. She sighed and rubbed her head with her hands, feeling a headache growing.
“Maybe. Maybe we all were. I still can't trust you," Claire lifted her head, meeting his gaze, “but you're all I have, aren't you?”
“Not unless you want to go back to Primatech and have them cut into you again. I'm sure that was real fun.” He was growing tired of arguing with her, but couldn't resist one last dig. Sylar let that sink in, the truth neither of them could hide. Then, when the tension in the room dissipated, he prodded for more information. “What happened to the rest of them?”
She shrugged. “My mother and brother were both killed during the same attack. When they captured me and took me out of my house, no one was left alive. And Nathan was killed one year before I got taken away. It ironically had nothing to do with his powers or the company, at least not if the news can be believed. Some political competitors saw him as too much of a threat. I'm still not sure whether that was a cover-up or not. I guess it's too late now and the trail's gone too cold to figure it out now.”
Claire paused, the last death the most painful to talk about. “Peter died one year after I was in the compound. They came and told me that if I submitted to their demands, they would let him go. For months I did exactly what they wanted, followed every rule, never tried to break out. Then they came and told me they'd killed him. The guy even had a big smile on his stupid, fucking face when he said it too. It was too late though. I had already been broken. I never fought back after that.” She paused, meeting his eyes. “Not until you came along.”
Sylar nodded slowly, understanding how Primatech enjoyed breaking their captives all too well. For himself, it had been a slow, subliminal process but by the end he was jumping through their hoops just the same as Claire. He'd gotten them both out though, which was the important thing.
This was no consolation to Claire, however, as she punched the floor with her hand. Her emotions were starting to spring forth, unwanted yet not wavering. “Why didn't I fight back? I could have done something.. anything.. I let them all get killed and it's my fault. I was supposed to be the indestructible one, goddamn it. If I had done something Peter and the rest would still be alive!”
Claire crossed her arms and rested them on her knees, leaning her head against her wrists. She hated Sylar for many reasons, though the main reason at the moment was his insistence on drudging up bad memories. She'd been keeping it bottled up for so long now, never letting the company see how much they hurt her. She went through their exercises, did what they wanted but never let them see the pain that was buried inside.
Now that she was finally talking about everything, she wasn't sure she could stop, or whether she would be in one piece when she finally calmed down again. She shut her mouth tight, unwillingly to say anything more on the topic. If she kept up this conversation, Claire knew it wound only end with her in tears.
“There's no evidence that he's not alive,” Sylar ventured. She picked her head up, a frown full of disbelief settling on her face. This wasn't what she wanted to hear, not false hope or denials. She'd tried that tactic before and it never worked. “Primatech said if I cooperated, they had someone who could bring people back from the dead and they would use them to bring back my mother. They never kept their side of the bargain.”
“Obviously not. They're Primatech, they don't have to keep to their side of the deal.” The bitterness in her melted but her stance on the matter did not yield. Shaking her head, Claire continued, “But I would know if he was still out there. I would feel it. I'm not giving in to delusions that he might still be alive. I can't do that anymore.”
“So, you'd rather sit in your self pity and wallow there?” He asked sharply. Sylar couldn't stop himself from returning to his original idea, piecing together vague things he'd heard and seen in the compound those last few years. He might have been looking for something that wasn't there, but he refused to let go of this crusade. “I remember picking up rumors of someone escaping the company. Maybe that was him.”
“No! I can't listen to this anymore!” Claire shouted back, brushing away tears as she grew angrier. This was not the time to take the advice of a madman. “I cared about Peter, but he's gone now and nothing can ever bring him back again.”
“I'm trying to help you, Claire. Isn't that what you want? Or do you want to stay in the same hole the company put you in?” Sylar did not like being ignored. People had been doing that to him since he was born. They pushed him aside, like his ideas were insignificant, like he was insignificant. The room around him began to shake, as power welled up within him, sending his telekinesis out of control. His uncontrollable anger brought forth a mini-earthquake that Sylar seemed completely unaware of in the middle of his rant. “You're free now, you might as well start acting like it. Or are their walls still closing in on you, even now?”
Claire dodged flying debris, as the earthquake turned into a tornado.
Only when he was finished with his tirade, could Sylar notice the sudden turmoil of flying objects his anger caused. He followed the levitating telephone with his eyes before almost getting hit by a remote control that was passing by his head. Lost and confused, he stormed out of the hotel room and slammed the door behind him without saying another word. Claire jumped at the abruptness of his departure.
As soon as Sylar left, all the movement in the room came to a halt. Various objects fell from the air, laying still on the floor and bed. Once again the room was still and Claire was alone. She didn't want to be, there was too much to think over. There was some truth to his words. She could feel those walls he spoke about, even now pressing in on her, though she hated to admit it.
Life was really fucked up when psychotic, homicidal manics could turn out to be right.
..to be continued..
Characters: Sylar, Claire.
Spoilers: Up to Season 2.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3032
Chapter: 3/?
Previously: Chapter 1, Chapter 2
Summary: While escaping the Company, Sylar meets up with someone from his past. Together, they must piece together some semblance of normality after years of captivity. Future AU.
Claire yawned and stretched, savoring the experience of waking up in a comfortable bed in a safe environment. Even in her barely awakened state, she could tell a big difference between these surroundings and those that had made up her sole existence for too many years.
Gone were the hard prison bunks, with the cheap blankets that could barely keep a person warm that the company always stocked their cells with. Instead, she laid there relishing the feeling of soft cotton sheets and feather pillow, along with the fresh breeze that came through the slightly opened window. It smelled like cut grass and neighborhood barbecues; it smelled like her childhood home.
Not wanting to move for fear that this may be another one of her dreams, Claire starred out the window at the little puffs of clouds dotting the sky and relaxed into her pillow. Almost once a week, while she was down in the compound and the blue sky was nothing more than a fairy tale she barely remembered, Claire would dream of how things could have turned out, how they should have.
In these dreams, Nathan could still be alive to win his presidential campaign, her father still around to protect her, everyone and everything she cared about would still be in her life and she wouldn't be stuck behind four solitary walls or subjected to daily endurance tests. For two long years, she lived from dream to dream only to awake each day to the all-to-real nightmare.
Now she was finally waking up.
It wasn't a perfect world she was returning to though. Nathan was still gone. Her father too. The only constant from her life pre-Primatech and post-Primatech was Sylar and even he was different. Before he only sought to kill her, wanting her brain to usurp her powers of rapid cell regeneration. Then he rescued her, helped her, which was possibly the strangest thing that had happened to her in some time now.
Claire sat up in bed, trying to put the puzzle pieces together. He had no reason to help her and it certainly wasn't in his personality to do so. It didn't make sense. She doubted it ever would. Claire doubted much of anything would ever make sense again. The world had turned over one night, twisting everything until it was all upside down, never to be righted again.
Back in the present, she surveyed her surroundings, still unsure where she was exactly or why she'd been left here alone. Claire was in hotel room, that much was clear by the tacky wallpaper and the room service menu. She couldn't remember how she got there though. The last thing she seemed to recall was passing out in the middle of the road and someone standing over her.
Her feet felt for the floor, plush carpet cushioning her feet instead of cold, cement that Claire's become accustomed to in the company. Standing up, Claire found that she was still feeling weak and the room sometimes seemed to move on its own, creating a strange vertigo. Her regeneration powers had been failing for the past few months after having been pushed to the limit too many times. Maybe, given enough time, they would be up to the level they once were, at least she hoped so.
Walking across the floor, Claire stopped and starred at the mirror that hung on the far wall. Her eyes were sunken and underlined with dark circles, though the creepiest thing was the way the light in them seemed to diminish with age. Where once an energy and fire lit up her blue eyes, there was only a hallow shell of her former self. She ran a hand through her limp hair, embarrassed by the fact that it hadn't been washed in a few days now. Her fingers ran along her lips, the ever present bright smile having since been replaced by the serious expression of someone too young to have experienced what she lived through. She wasn't looking at herself anymore. This was the face of the girl the company broke.
Claire pulled back her fist and then smashed it into the mirror, shattering the image, breaking it into a thousand pieces, each one reflecting another break in her heart and in her soul. She rubbed her hand, watching as it bled and then waiting patiently for it to knit itself back together again. It took longer than it used to before but it still healed faster than a normal human's healing speed.
As the day went on and the sun began to sink a little in the sky, Claire began to get worried. She'd been there for a few hours now, long enough to take a shower and watch some reruns of old tv shows, but no one had come for her yet. She thought about calling the hotel operator, to ask who the room was registered to. It couldn't be Sylar, she told herself. Even after rescuing her from the company, Claire doubted he would care enough to actually spring for a place to stay.
Maybe it was the company. Maybe they finally caught up with them, capturing them both and securing her at the hotel until they could bring her back to the compound. If that was what was going on, Claire wasn't going to give up so easily. They were going to have to drag her corpse back to Primatech because she would never go there, willingly without fighting, never again. They had broken their promise the last time she gave them what they wanted.
She ducked out into the hallway for a moment, testing whether there were locks on the doors or guards standing sentinel outside her room. Rushing outside the hotel room Claire circled and saw that there was no one out there. It didn't stop her from worrying. There was an anxiety that clung to her every waking moment these days. Claire was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the next bout of torture to begin.
Stepping back inside the room, Claire began to pace in a long line from one side to the other. It was the only thing to do when she got like this, the only thing that helped calm her a little. Walking back and forth, Claire made footprints on the newly vacuumed carpet, finding the feeling of the softness of the rug beneath her feet almost heavenly.
She got to the other side of the room and turned to notice the doorknob as it started turning, alerting her attention. Claire halted in her tracks, racing to the desk to pick up a nearby lamp. This was it. She was ready. If a fight was needed to keep her from getting dragged back to hell, she was determined to unleash all the fury contained within her small frame. She hid behind the door and waited, holding her breath.
The door opened and a man in a baseball cap stepped across the threshold. Claire stepped out from her hiding spot and swung full force, almost smashing the lamp into his skull. Her hand stopped in midair, held in place by telekinesis. It was only then that Sylar removed his cap, giving her a smirk and effortlessly returning the lamp to the table with a wave of his finger. “You don't really want to do that to the person who went out and bought you lunch, do you?”
“Lunch?” She dropped her defense and her stomach growled a bit, lured into action by the smell of the food coming from the bag he was carrying. Sylar chucked it at her, still a little pissed at her near-attack. “Where did you get money to get lunch?” She peeked in the bag. “It's not brains is it?”
“Why does everyone think I eat brains?” Sylar plopped onto the desk chair. “Seriously, what is up with that?” He shook his head, as Claire sat across from him on the bed. He was dressed in new clothes, not the basic white shirt and white pants the company dressed freaks like them in. “I may have accidentally mugged someone earlier today and stolen their money and identification. I hope I haven't offended your delicate rich girl sensibilities.”
“Whoever said.. anything about.. being rich?” Claire said between devouring the hamburger Sylar purchased for her. It was the first good meal she'd eaten in what seemed like forever. After taking some huge mouthfuls, Claire remembered just how much she missed fast food, even with all its greasy trans carbs. “My father was middle class; a respectable paper salesman.”
“Paper salesman?” Sylar laughed. “Is that what he told everyone?”
“It was a decent excuse. It kept things hidden.” Back in high school, Claire didn't fully understand the sacrifice her whole family made for her by maintaining their cover story. Her father dressed up and went to his boring paper salesman job, day after day, all for her. It was the only thing that gave her a normal life, for the few short years that she did lead one. “Unfortunately, the lie couldn't last forever.”
“What happened to him?”
Claire shoved another bite of hamburger into her mouth, too hungry to stop and too scared to bring up memories from years ago. She wasn't sure whether she could talk about the past without breaking more. Least of all with Sylar. The man was probably still clinically psychotic.
He was watching her though, peering into her silence with an unending stare. She wondered if he'd ever stolen the power of telepathy; if Sylar could look in and read her very mind if she didn't produce the answer he was searching for. She glanced away but could still feel him waiting for an answer.
“He died, okay?” She shot him a look. “Are you happy? Is that what you wanted to hear? He died protecting me from those monsters when they came to bag and tag me. He stepped in front of one of their bullets. I could have regenerated from that. I could have survived, but he..” There was a franticness in her voice, like a trapped animal as the past was brought up. She dropped the last bit of hamburger back into the bag, no longer hungry. Claire could feel the need to pace again but instead, she sat there, wringing her hands and hating herself for babbling on in front of him. “He couldn't live through that. He died and they took me in.”
“I'm sorry.”
His words almost sounded sincere, but she knew Sylar too well. He wouldn't be sorry for another human's death. Hell, he benefited from quite a few murders committed by his own hands in the past. Claire pushed herself off the bed, away from their conversation and shot back. “Oh, fuck you. Don't you dare tell me you're sorry, or that you care, or that you're having any sort of human feelings at all. Don't think I don't know that you tried to kill him a few times before.”
“That was different, Claire.” He kept his anger in check, though it was starting to leak out. “I told you I was a different person back then.”
She stopped, leaning against the wall. That sorry had been real, she knew, but why was it coming from him? Claire slid down the length of the wall, coming to rest on the floor beside it. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. She sighed and rubbed her head with her hands, feeling a headache growing.
“Maybe. Maybe we all were. I still can't trust you," Claire lifted her head, meeting his gaze, “but you're all I have, aren't you?”
“Not unless you want to go back to Primatech and have them cut into you again. I'm sure that was real fun.” He was growing tired of arguing with her, but couldn't resist one last dig. Sylar let that sink in, the truth neither of them could hide. Then, when the tension in the room dissipated, he prodded for more information. “What happened to the rest of them?”
She shrugged. “My mother and brother were both killed during the same attack. When they captured me and took me out of my house, no one was left alive. And Nathan was killed one year before I got taken away. It ironically had nothing to do with his powers or the company, at least not if the news can be believed. Some political competitors saw him as too much of a threat. I'm still not sure whether that was a cover-up or not. I guess it's too late now and the trail's gone too cold to figure it out now.”
Claire paused, the last death the most painful to talk about. “Peter died one year after I was in the compound. They came and told me that if I submitted to their demands, they would let him go. For months I did exactly what they wanted, followed every rule, never tried to break out. Then they came and told me they'd killed him. The guy even had a big smile on his stupid, fucking face when he said it too. It was too late though. I had already been broken. I never fought back after that.” She paused, meeting his eyes. “Not until you came along.”
Sylar nodded slowly, understanding how Primatech enjoyed breaking their captives all too well. For himself, it had been a slow, subliminal process but by the end he was jumping through their hoops just the same as Claire. He'd gotten them both out though, which was the important thing.
This was no consolation to Claire, however, as she punched the floor with her hand. Her emotions were starting to spring forth, unwanted yet not wavering. “Why didn't I fight back? I could have done something.. anything.. I let them all get killed and it's my fault. I was supposed to be the indestructible one, goddamn it. If I had done something Peter and the rest would still be alive!”
Claire crossed her arms and rested them on her knees, leaning her head against her wrists. She hated Sylar for many reasons, though the main reason at the moment was his insistence on drudging up bad memories. She'd been keeping it bottled up for so long now, never letting the company see how much they hurt her. She went through their exercises, did what they wanted but never let them see the pain that was buried inside.
Now that she was finally talking about everything, she wasn't sure she could stop, or whether she would be in one piece when she finally calmed down again. She shut her mouth tight, unwillingly to say anything more on the topic. If she kept up this conversation, Claire knew it wound only end with her in tears.
“There's no evidence that he's not alive,” Sylar ventured. She picked her head up, a frown full of disbelief settling on her face. This wasn't what she wanted to hear, not false hope or denials. She'd tried that tactic before and it never worked. “Primatech said if I cooperated, they had someone who could bring people back from the dead and they would use them to bring back my mother. They never kept their side of the bargain.”
“Obviously not. They're Primatech, they don't have to keep to their side of the deal.” The bitterness in her melted but her stance on the matter did not yield. Shaking her head, Claire continued, “But I would know if he was still out there. I would feel it. I'm not giving in to delusions that he might still be alive. I can't do that anymore.”
“So, you'd rather sit in your self pity and wallow there?” He asked sharply. Sylar couldn't stop himself from returning to his original idea, piecing together vague things he'd heard and seen in the compound those last few years. He might have been looking for something that wasn't there, but he refused to let go of this crusade. “I remember picking up rumors of someone escaping the company. Maybe that was him.”
“No! I can't listen to this anymore!” Claire shouted back, brushing away tears as she grew angrier. This was not the time to take the advice of a madman. “I cared about Peter, but he's gone now and nothing can ever bring him back again.”
“I'm trying to help you, Claire. Isn't that what you want? Or do you want to stay in the same hole the company put you in?” Sylar did not like being ignored. People had been doing that to him since he was born. They pushed him aside, like his ideas were insignificant, like he was insignificant. The room around him began to shake, as power welled up within him, sending his telekinesis out of control. His uncontrollable anger brought forth a mini-earthquake that Sylar seemed completely unaware of in the middle of his rant. “You're free now, you might as well start acting like it. Or are their walls still closing in on you, even now?”
Claire dodged flying debris, as the earthquake turned into a tornado.
Only when he was finished with his tirade, could Sylar notice the sudden turmoil of flying objects his anger caused. He followed the levitating telephone with his eyes before almost getting hit by a remote control that was passing by his head. Lost and confused, he stormed out of the hotel room and slammed the door behind him without saying another word. Claire jumped at the abruptness of his departure.
As soon as Sylar left, all the movement in the room came to a halt. Various objects fell from the air, laying still on the floor and bed. Once again the room was still and Claire was alone. She didn't want to be, there was too much to think over. There was some truth to his words. She could feel those walls he spoke about, even now pressing in on her, though she hated to admit it.
Life was really fucked up when psychotic, homicidal manics could turn out to be right.
..to be continued..