Glory of My Right Hand
Title: Glory of My Right Hand
Author: jaune_chat
Fandom: Heroes
Characters/Pairing: Sylar/Claire
Rating: R for violence, gore, and sexual situations
Word Count: 3,064
Spoilers: Through the end of S3
Warnings: Het, angst, violence, gore, D/s situation, general oddness
Disclaimer: Heroes is owned by Tim Kring, NBC, et al.
Notes: Written for the Heroes Kink Meme Rides Again for the prompt: “Claire/Sylar - Sylar is Claire's pet psycho. The leash is both metaphorical and literal.” This has been edited and substantially expanded from the original kink meme version. Title taken from the song “Welcome Home” by Coheed and Cambria (whom I don’t own either).
Summary: Claire is finally ready to take control.
The first cracks in Nathan’s façade appeared only six weeks after Sylar’s death. No one was supposed to know, not with Angela practically living in Nathan’s pocket to keep him on the straight and narrow. Not with Noah Bennet around him daily, reminding him of what he was supposed to be. Not with Matt Parkman inexplicably traveling from L.A. to D.C. every week for a completely pointless meeting with the junior senator from New York.
Claire didn’t know Nathan as well as some others. She wasn’t his mother, hadn’t read his Company file, hadn’t ever invaded his mind. But she did know that the man she’d slowly been growing to respect and love, the one who had tried to clumsily win her over with his show of power, who’d stripped himself to the bone in Mexico with his honesty with her, was not the same as the one who was sitting on Capitol Hill.
Claire had stopped thinking she was paranoid about Sylar when he’d come back from the dead at least two times that she knew of. Why not a third? Why not now? She’d had nightmares about him for the past two years, and in her heart she somehow knew they’d never manage to kill him. His will to live was at least as strong as hers. Stronger, maybe.
She didn’t bother to try to get the truth out of her father or her grandmother. They lied as easily as breathing, and she could call them on it until she was blue in the face and never learn what was really going on. Instead she confronted Matt Parkman and practically drove her suspicions down his throat. She didn’t have to say a thing, just get him alone in a room and think them at him until he cracked.
“How long do we have?” she asked.
Matt honestly didn’t know. The reason he kept coming back was to reinforce the mental conditioning. Everything wasn’t perfect, but as long as Matt could keep the tide of Sylar’s memories at bay, they’d still have a facsimile of Nathan to keep the Company agenda going. Claire hadn’t slapped Matt for that comment, so clearly had it come originally from her father or grandmother’s mouth. She could see he was frightened too.
Six weeks, Claire remembered thinking. Dad tried to save me by killing Sylar, and it only lasted six weeks. I’m the one that has to live with him forever. Why didn’t he see that?
“I don’t know,” Matt said sincerely. “What else could we have done? They thought they knew how to handle him. I didn’t. Claire, I’m sorry.”
The betrayal she should have felt on her own behalf for being lied to, on Peter’s behalf for having his brother snatched from him and replaced with a killer in his skin, burned not quite as bright as her anger with those that should have been her protectors. Her grandmother had been so unable to accept Nathan’s death, and her father had been being the Company Man so hard, that they’d just tried to solve the problem like any other “incident.” They’d put Matt in a horrible position, forcing him to choose between letting a known killer go free or mind-raping him into submission.
Claire had seen the results of that kind of mental tampering on her mother, and wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy. Even Sylar.
She’d forgiven Matt. She’d even started to forgive Noah and Angela, though she wouldn’t tell them that for a long time. She’d forgive Nathan later, once she found where they’d buried him.
“How much of Sylar is left? What is going to be under there when what’s left of Nathan is gone?” she asked, firming her resolve. Something had to be done. Claire was going to be the only one left to face the consequences when everyone was gone.
Matt shook his head tiredly, looking morose and beaten down. “What I did… I’m not exactly sure. I honestly don’t think he’s going to be sane. I’ve been messing with his head so badly, I don’t think there’s going to be a lot left.”
“Just give me time, Matt. I can handle Sylar, when I’m stronger. When I know enough. I promise.”
Matt never questioned her resolve. Unlike her family, he could see her determination plain as day. And compared to the sins he’d committed, giving her the time she needed to gain strength was pure penance.
------------
Claire had defied her father that day, and every day after. She knew she could be hard, she could be tough, that she could learn to handle whatever pain and damage life could throw at her. When she visited Nathan, she could see a silent scream behind his eyes, his tattered memories dying, Sylar, terrified at what was happening to him, slowly devolving into animal instinct held together inside a shiny façade.
She learned control, how to give commands, know the warning signs, the danger signs, how to let her strength support the person that had given everything to her. She practiced, she tested herself, became who she was destined to be. Because she knew that at the end, it would be her and Sylar, standing together while the world moved into the future around them. And she could either spend eternity with a terrifying enemy, or have him at her side. It was better to have the devil you knew, than the devil you had to chase on a trail littered with the bodies of your loved ones.
Matt Parkman held it together for five years, and the strain aged him almost twenty. When he left Nathan’s house for the last time, Claire had never seen such a look of relief on another human being’s face.
“Matt, please tell my father I’m not coming home,” she said, laying her hand on his shoulder in thanks. “Tell my family I love them.”
She didn’t wait to hear his reply, only stepped inside to meet her destiny.
He was writhing on the floor, body shifting and rippling, clearly in pain, eyes wild with confusion as they switched from Nathan’s hazel to Sylar’s dark brown.
“Claire? Claire?” Once in Nathan’s rich voice, again in Sylar’s rasp. He recognized her, out of both sets of conflicting memories, and reached out to her.
“You need help.” A simple statement, with the assumed authority that she was the only one who would be able to grant him that help.
“Who am I?” Nathan’s voice, Sylar’s eyes, panicked pieces of a puzzle needing a firm hand to be put back together. He didn’t even seem to be realizing what he was asking for.
“I can give you that control.”
“Who am I?” Sylar’s angry snarl ripped across her ears, but she didn’t flinch. Refused to turn away. He was her responsibility.
She held up the collar, and he looked up at her in disbelief and hope.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” she whispered. He nodded his head, whimpering as his limbs twisted from long to short and back, from Nathan’s more compact frame to Sylar’s lankier body.
“Yes. Make it-.” He shuddered, gasped, pounded the ground, wild eyes fractured with pain and madness.
“Stop? Make what stop? The memories? The shifting? You want your control back?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know…”
“Kill, heal, serve, save, you don’t know anything. You know too much.” Claire flung her words like weapons, and saw each one strike at some remaining part of his mind.
“…yes.” His voice was small, a tiny echo of Sylar’s.
“I can make it stop.”
“Tell me.” A plea, his voice confused, terrified, looking for an anchor that no longer existed in his world.
“Say yes. Give yourself to me. I’ll take care of it.” No compromise in her voice. Accept her offer, or she’d leave him to twist and burn in a stew of his own fragmented memories and shattering and reforming bones. There was an axe on the floor of the next room. If he didn’t accept her, she’d end it now, like her family hadn’t been able to.
He knelt upward, eyes two different colors, silently screaming for someone to wake him from this nightmare.
“Who am I?” Nathan’s voice, Sylar’s eyes. Claire leaned down to buckle the collar around his throat, and silently said good-bye to her birth father.
“You are mine. You are Sylar.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“He have to stay?”
Lapaz’s voice was casual, but he was nervous about having Sylar here. Anyone would be. He exuded danger just by walking down the street, a quality Claire had never tried to train him out of. In this tiny room, he looked enormous and dangerous.
“Of course.” Claire didn’t bat an eyelash, simply pushed the papers across the desk with her right hand, her left holding into Sylar’s leash. That was the unspoken signal for him to be wary and ready. If Lapaz and his men made one move she didn’t like, Sylar was free to defend her in any way necessary, barring any of her commands.
Claire no longer had to force her authority on Sylar. Her control was unconscious, his submission and obedience a part of him. He’d needed control so badly, needed answers and help and direction, something that she wasn’t afraid to give him. Claire’s training had been penance for him, finally harnessing his power in a way that didn’t leave a trail of corpses in his wake.
------------
Her father had been horrified when she’d finally emerged from seclusion a year after she’d taken custody of their old enemy. She’d come out of that house with Sylar on a leash by her side, and a hardened look on her face. Noah Bennet had recognized it as an expression he had worn many times, and something he’d never wanted for her.
She’d walked right up to him, Sylar at her side, unafraid.
“Dad,” she said simply, and hugged him. In that, he’d felt the tremors of uncertainty and fear she’d been going through for the whole year. But over that he’d felt hard muscle and iron control that hadn’t been there before.
“Director,” Claire said, when she’d pulled away. She flipped Sylar’s leash once, and he moved right up next to her, eyes clear of both the madness and too-active hunger for knowledge in his mind. “Do you have anything that needs to be done?”
Noah Bennet, director of the officially non-existent government office that both controlled dangerous specials and employed others to help the country, had finally nodded.
“Yes. There’s something you can do.” He didn’t call her Claire-bear then, and Claire knew she’d grown up in his eyes.
----------------
Five years later, she was unshakably certain she’d done the right thing. Finally, Claire Bennet was saving the world, instead of having to be saved. And her pet, Sylar, had never let her down. That had been her choice; it was either have him kneeling at her side, or she and everyone she’d ever loved would have died at his hands when he went on a rampage. There wouldn’t have been a middle ground. She’d chosen wisely.
“All right then,” Lapaz said, trying to hide his nervousness under a quick smile. He signed the papers and shoved them back, fast, too fast, hand coming up from under the table with a gun. Apparently he didn’t want to hand over the weapons she’d purchased, weapons she’d intended to destroy so violent fanatics couldn’t get a hold of them.
Claire saw the weapon and time seemed to slow. She smiled as he brought it up, flicking her hand once on Sylar’s leash, letting him have free rein as Lapaz shoved the gun forward, pulling the trigger. As the bullet came towards her head, she had time for one final thought before everything went black.
Poor choice, Lappy.
-----------
She came back to life hearing harsh breathing in her ears, heat suffusing every inch of her uncovered skin, and the scent of fresh blood, fear, and gun smoke in her nostrils. Blinking, she saw Sylar was crouched over her, shielding her body with his own until she awoke. He looked at her curiously, his fingers bloody, holding a spent bullet between them.
“Good boy,” Claire said absently, bringing up a hand to place it on his dark hair. He shoved into her caress, and she slowly stood up, looking around at the neatly slit throats of Lapaz and his armed cronies. The two consultants the arms dealer has brought in were merely unconscious, and Claire smiled slightly in Sylar’s direction. He nervously shifted from foot to foot as she passed judgment on his performance while she was out. Reaching up, she hooked his leash again, and he immediately calmed down.
Close to five years under her control, and he craved the routine as much as she did. Leather and metal around his throat, leash in her hand, together they were a weapon to be used against those that dared to toy with everything they were working to build. A world slowly becoming freer of the insanity of war and betrayal, that was their goal, the Company goal. No lies. No conspiracies. No secret trials or hidden government camps. Just them, the Company’s blessing, and what Claire knew was right.
Claire nodded in satisfaction, and held the leash in her right hand. Sylar straightened in shock, lips going slack in surprise.
“Speak,” she commanded.
“You were dead. I had to take the bullet out to revive you.” His voice was rusty with disuse, and Claire smiled at the sound. It had been nearly four months since she’d heard him, and this time he hadn’t hesitated. He’d remembered how to use words for her sake. The voice that had once been the soundtrack of her nightmares was now a sign of triumph for both of them.
“You did well. Contained everything very neatly. I’m proud of you, Sylar.”
He bowed his head, trembling in every limb at her praise.
“Were you afraid?” she asked.
“When you didn’t get up,” he whispered.
“You could have broken the collar and gone-.”
“No!” His denial was immediate and loud, and he knelt on the floor by her side, pressing up against her in panic.
“Shh,” Claire soothed, and felt his breathing even out as she set his mind at ease, stroking down his back. She pulled a chair over and sat, tugging on the leash to get Sylar to kneel in front of her. She let him rest his head on her lap and carded her fingers through his hair. She didn’t like raising the possibility of him breaking the collar, but Claire liked to make sure he remembered he was hers.
Sylar practically purred as Claire stroked him, and Claire had the amusing mental image of her as an old woman, rocking in front of a fireplace, her faithful Sylar by her side in her declining years. Dad would have undoubtedly been horrified, but Claire was no longer afraid of Sylar, or of him. She hadn’t been this… content since she was a little girl.
Noises intruded on their private time, and Claire glared as the door opened at the back of the room. A few men with guns broke down the door, waving their Uzis around in panic. They all froze dead at the sight of the blonde woman, blood drying on her face, holding the leash of a man kneeling at her side, a half-dozen bodies on the floor around her.
Sylar seemed supremely unconcerned by their entrance until she transferred the leash to her left hand, and then he rose, expression darkening into a predatory grin, a snarl rumbling in his throat.
“Lady, lady, please, we’ll go, just… don’t let him off the leash!” one of the men, younger than the others, practically bawled.
Claire stood, drawing the moment out, and flicked her fingers. The men ran, dropping their guns, two of them screaming as they fled the room. She shouldn’t feel happy about seeing people run in terror from her, but she did anyway. They were gaining a reputation. She knew Sylar was smiling too, because she was.
“Good boy,” she added, scratching him behind the ear. “Let’s finish this up and go home.”
----------------
Her father would be more than horrified at this, at Sylar in her bed, touching his daughter, making her moan. He didn’t understand, couldn’t know what she was trying to do. The monster-Sylar, the one from before, had taken away her ability to feel pain. It was only fair, only right, that this Sylar, her pet and companion, make her feel something.
She jerked on the leash in her right hand, bringing Sylar’s head up from where he’d been kissing down the side of her neck. He waited for her, heat radiating into her body, hard and powerful above her. A whispered command, and he sank into her, lips brushing hers by accident, one hand cupping and cradling a breast with infinite gentleness.
Claire wrapped her legs around him, letting him pour all that heat and power into her, draining off that edge of danger he always carried with him, staring into his eyes, brushing away his dark hair so she could see right down into him. He was most human in these moments, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, other times just profoundly and silently grateful that he was with her, showing her a silent devotion that made everything worthwhile.
This was not a reward for him, this was a reward for both of them. For her control, for seizing a destiny she might have never have had otherwise, for finally stopping giving in to fear. For his obedience, for giving himself the second chance everyone had denied him, for finally atoning for every life he’d taken.
She waited until she saw that truth, his eyes liquid with happiness that she was here, and jerked hard on the leash again. Crying out, she felt him release in her, burningly hot, and held him hard as he buried his face in her shoulder. Claire’s hand strayed down between them, quickly bringing her to the release she couldn’t let Sylar give her. Soothing him silently, she pulled away, knowing that he’d curl himself up at her side. As always. Until they’d both learned enough, forgiven enough, to be just what they were, instead of what they had to be.
Author: jaune_chat
Fandom: Heroes
Characters/Pairing: Sylar/Claire
Rating: R for violence, gore, and sexual situations
Word Count: 3,064
Spoilers: Through the end of S3
Warnings: Het, angst, violence, gore, D/s situation, general oddness
Disclaimer: Heroes is owned by Tim Kring, NBC, et al.
Notes: Written for the Heroes Kink Meme Rides Again for the prompt: “Claire/Sylar - Sylar is Claire's pet psycho. The leash is both metaphorical and literal.” This has been edited and substantially expanded from the original kink meme version. Title taken from the song “Welcome Home” by Coheed and Cambria (whom I don’t own either).
Summary: Claire is finally ready to take control.
The first cracks in Nathan’s façade appeared only six weeks after Sylar’s death. No one was supposed to know, not with Angela practically living in Nathan’s pocket to keep him on the straight and narrow. Not with Noah Bennet around him daily, reminding him of what he was supposed to be. Not with Matt Parkman inexplicably traveling from L.A. to D.C. every week for a completely pointless meeting with the junior senator from New York.
Claire didn’t know Nathan as well as some others. She wasn’t his mother, hadn’t read his Company file, hadn’t ever invaded his mind. But she did know that the man she’d slowly been growing to respect and love, the one who had tried to clumsily win her over with his show of power, who’d stripped himself to the bone in Mexico with his honesty with her, was not the same as the one who was sitting on Capitol Hill.
Claire had stopped thinking she was paranoid about Sylar when he’d come back from the dead at least two times that she knew of. Why not a third? Why not now? She’d had nightmares about him for the past two years, and in her heart she somehow knew they’d never manage to kill him. His will to live was at least as strong as hers. Stronger, maybe.
She didn’t bother to try to get the truth out of her father or her grandmother. They lied as easily as breathing, and she could call them on it until she was blue in the face and never learn what was really going on. Instead she confronted Matt Parkman and practically drove her suspicions down his throat. She didn’t have to say a thing, just get him alone in a room and think them at him until he cracked.
“How long do we have?” she asked.
Matt honestly didn’t know. The reason he kept coming back was to reinforce the mental conditioning. Everything wasn’t perfect, but as long as Matt could keep the tide of Sylar’s memories at bay, they’d still have a facsimile of Nathan to keep the Company agenda going. Claire hadn’t slapped Matt for that comment, so clearly had it come originally from her father or grandmother’s mouth. She could see he was frightened too.
Six weeks, Claire remembered thinking. Dad tried to save me by killing Sylar, and it only lasted six weeks. I’m the one that has to live with him forever. Why didn’t he see that?
“I don’t know,” Matt said sincerely. “What else could we have done? They thought they knew how to handle him. I didn’t. Claire, I’m sorry.”
The betrayal she should have felt on her own behalf for being lied to, on Peter’s behalf for having his brother snatched from him and replaced with a killer in his skin, burned not quite as bright as her anger with those that should have been her protectors. Her grandmother had been so unable to accept Nathan’s death, and her father had been being the Company Man so hard, that they’d just tried to solve the problem like any other “incident.” They’d put Matt in a horrible position, forcing him to choose between letting a known killer go free or mind-raping him into submission.
Claire had seen the results of that kind of mental tampering on her mother, and wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy. Even Sylar.
She’d forgiven Matt. She’d even started to forgive Noah and Angela, though she wouldn’t tell them that for a long time. She’d forgive Nathan later, once she found where they’d buried him.
“How much of Sylar is left? What is going to be under there when what’s left of Nathan is gone?” she asked, firming her resolve. Something had to be done. Claire was going to be the only one left to face the consequences when everyone was gone.
Matt shook his head tiredly, looking morose and beaten down. “What I did… I’m not exactly sure. I honestly don’t think he’s going to be sane. I’ve been messing with his head so badly, I don’t think there’s going to be a lot left.”
“Just give me time, Matt. I can handle Sylar, when I’m stronger. When I know enough. I promise.”
Matt never questioned her resolve. Unlike her family, he could see her determination plain as day. And compared to the sins he’d committed, giving her the time she needed to gain strength was pure penance.
------------
Claire had defied her father that day, and every day after. She knew she could be hard, she could be tough, that she could learn to handle whatever pain and damage life could throw at her. When she visited Nathan, she could see a silent scream behind his eyes, his tattered memories dying, Sylar, terrified at what was happening to him, slowly devolving into animal instinct held together inside a shiny façade.
She learned control, how to give commands, know the warning signs, the danger signs, how to let her strength support the person that had given everything to her. She practiced, she tested herself, became who she was destined to be. Because she knew that at the end, it would be her and Sylar, standing together while the world moved into the future around them. And she could either spend eternity with a terrifying enemy, or have him at her side. It was better to have the devil you knew, than the devil you had to chase on a trail littered with the bodies of your loved ones.
Matt Parkman held it together for five years, and the strain aged him almost twenty. When he left Nathan’s house for the last time, Claire had never seen such a look of relief on another human being’s face.
“Matt, please tell my father I’m not coming home,” she said, laying her hand on his shoulder in thanks. “Tell my family I love them.”
She didn’t wait to hear his reply, only stepped inside to meet her destiny.
He was writhing on the floor, body shifting and rippling, clearly in pain, eyes wild with confusion as they switched from Nathan’s hazel to Sylar’s dark brown.
“Claire? Claire?” Once in Nathan’s rich voice, again in Sylar’s rasp. He recognized her, out of both sets of conflicting memories, and reached out to her.
“You need help.” A simple statement, with the assumed authority that she was the only one who would be able to grant him that help.
“Who am I?” Nathan’s voice, Sylar’s eyes, panicked pieces of a puzzle needing a firm hand to be put back together. He didn’t even seem to be realizing what he was asking for.
“I can give you that control.”
“Who am I?” Sylar’s angry snarl ripped across her ears, but she didn’t flinch. Refused to turn away. He was her responsibility.
She held up the collar, and he looked up at her in disbelief and hope.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” she whispered. He nodded his head, whimpering as his limbs twisted from long to short and back, from Nathan’s more compact frame to Sylar’s lankier body.
“Yes. Make it-.” He shuddered, gasped, pounded the ground, wild eyes fractured with pain and madness.
“Stop? Make what stop? The memories? The shifting? You want your control back?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know…”
“Kill, heal, serve, save, you don’t know anything. You know too much.” Claire flung her words like weapons, and saw each one strike at some remaining part of his mind.
“…yes.” His voice was small, a tiny echo of Sylar’s.
“I can make it stop.”
“Tell me.” A plea, his voice confused, terrified, looking for an anchor that no longer existed in his world.
“Say yes. Give yourself to me. I’ll take care of it.” No compromise in her voice. Accept her offer, or she’d leave him to twist and burn in a stew of his own fragmented memories and shattering and reforming bones. There was an axe on the floor of the next room. If he didn’t accept her, she’d end it now, like her family hadn’t been able to.
He knelt upward, eyes two different colors, silently screaming for someone to wake him from this nightmare.
“Who am I?” Nathan’s voice, Sylar’s eyes. Claire leaned down to buckle the collar around his throat, and silently said good-bye to her birth father.
“You are mine. You are Sylar.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“He have to stay?”
Lapaz’s voice was casual, but he was nervous about having Sylar here. Anyone would be. He exuded danger just by walking down the street, a quality Claire had never tried to train him out of. In this tiny room, he looked enormous and dangerous.
“Of course.” Claire didn’t bat an eyelash, simply pushed the papers across the desk with her right hand, her left holding into Sylar’s leash. That was the unspoken signal for him to be wary and ready. If Lapaz and his men made one move she didn’t like, Sylar was free to defend her in any way necessary, barring any of her commands.
Claire no longer had to force her authority on Sylar. Her control was unconscious, his submission and obedience a part of him. He’d needed control so badly, needed answers and help and direction, something that she wasn’t afraid to give him. Claire’s training had been penance for him, finally harnessing his power in a way that didn’t leave a trail of corpses in his wake.
------------
Her father had been horrified when she’d finally emerged from seclusion a year after she’d taken custody of their old enemy. She’d come out of that house with Sylar on a leash by her side, and a hardened look on her face. Noah Bennet had recognized it as an expression he had worn many times, and something he’d never wanted for her.
She’d walked right up to him, Sylar at her side, unafraid.
“Dad,” she said simply, and hugged him. In that, he’d felt the tremors of uncertainty and fear she’d been going through for the whole year. But over that he’d felt hard muscle and iron control that hadn’t been there before.
“Director,” Claire said, when she’d pulled away. She flipped Sylar’s leash once, and he moved right up next to her, eyes clear of both the madness and too-active hunger for knowledge in his mind. “Do you have anything that needs to be done?”
Noah Bennet, director of the officially non-existent government office that both controlled dangerous specials and employed others to help the country, had finally nodded.
“Yes. There’s something you can do.” He didn’t call her Claire-bear then, and Claire knew she’d grown up in his eyes.
----------------
Five years later, she was unshakably certain she’d done the right thing. Finally, Claire Bennet was saving the world, instead of having to be saved. And her pet, Sylar, had never let her down. That had been her choice; it was either have him kneeling at her side, or she and everyone she’d ever loved would have died at his hands when he went on a rampage. There wouldn’t have been a middle ground. She’d chosen wisely.
“All right then,” Lapaz said, trying to hide his nervousness under a quick smile. He signed the papers and shoved them back, fast, too fast, hand coming up from under the table with a gun. Apparently he didn’t want to hand over the weapons she’d purchased, weapons she’d intended to destroy so violent fanatics couldn’t get a hold of them.
Claire saw the weapon and time seemed to slow. She smiled as he brought it up, flicking her hand once on Sylar’s leash, letting him have free rein as Lapaz shoved the gun forward, pulling the trigger. As the bullet came towards her head, she had time for one final thought before everything went black.
Poor choice, Lappy.
-----------
She came back to life hearing harsh breathing in her ears, heat suffusing every inch of her uncovered skin, and the scent of fresh blood, fear, and gun smoke in her nostrils. Blinking, she saw Sylar was crouched over her, shielding her body with his own until she awoke. He looked at her curiously, his fingers bloody, holding a spent bullet between them.
“Good boy,” Claire said absently, bringing up a hand to place it on his dark hair. He shoved into her caress, and she slowly stood up, looking around at the neatly slit throats of Lapaz and his armed cronies. The two consultants the arms dealer has brought in were merely unconscious, and Claire smiled slightly in Sylar’s direction. He nervously shifted from foot to foot as she passed judgment on his performance while she was out. Reaching up, she hooked his leash again, and he immediately calmed down.
Close to five years under her control, and he craved the routine as much as she did. Leather and metal around his throat, leash in her hand, together they were a weapon to be used against those that dared to toy with everything they were working to build. A world slowly becoming freer of the insanity of war and betrayal, that was their goal, the Company goal. No lies. No conspiracies. No secret trials or hidden government camps. Just them, the Company’s blessing, and what Claire knew was right.
Claire nodded in satisfaction, and held the leash in her right hand. Sylar straightened in shock, lips going slack in surprise.
“Speak,” she commanded.
“You were dead. I had to take the bullet out to revive you.” His voice was rusty with disuse, and Claire smiled at the sound. It had been nearly four months since she’d heard him, and this time he hadn’t hesitated. He’d remembered how to use words for her sake. The voice that had once been the soundtrack of her nightmares was now a sign of triumph for both of them.
“You did well. Contained everything very neatly. I’m proud of you, Sylar.”
He bowed his head, trembling in every limb at her praise.
“Were you afraid?” she asked.
“When you didn’t get up,” he whispered.
“You could have broken the collar and gone-.”
“No!” His denial was immediate and loud, and he knelt on the floor by her side, pressing up against her in panic.
“Shh,” Claire soothed, and felt his breathing even out as she set his mind at ease, stroking down his back. She pulled a chair over and sat, tugging on the leash to get Sylar to kneel in front of her. She let him rest his head on her lap and carded her fingers through his hair. She didn’t like raising the possibility of him breaking the collar, but Claire liked to make sure he remembered he was hers.
Sylar practically purred as Claire stroked him, and Claire had the amusing mental image of her as an old woman, rocking in front of a fireplace, her faithful Sylar by her side in her declining years. Dad would have undoubtedly been horrified, but Claire was no longer afraid of Sylar, or of him. She hadn’t been this… content since she was a little girl.
Noises intruded on their private time, and Claire glared as the door opened at the back of the room. A few men with guns broke down the door, waving their Uzis around in panic. They all froze dead at the sight of the blonde woman, blood drying on her face, holding the leash of a man kneeling at her side, a half-dozen bodies on the floor around her.
Sylar seemed supremely unconcerned by their entrance until she transferred the leash to her left hand, and then he rose, expression darkening into a predatory grin, a snarl rumbling in his throat.
“Lady, lady, please, we’ll go, just… don’t let him off the leash!” one of the men, younger than the others, practically bawled.
Claire stood, drawing the moment out, and flicked her fingers. The men ran, dropping their guns, two of them screaming as they fled the room. She shouldn’t feel happy about seeing people run in terror from her, but she did anyway. They were gaining a reputation. She knew Sylar was smiling too, because she was.
“Good boy,” she added, scratching him behind the ear. “Let’s finish this up and go home.”
----------------
Her father would be more than horrified at this, at Sylar in her bed, touching his daughter, making her moan. He didn’t understand, couldn’t know what she was trying to do. The monster-Sylar, the one from before, had taken away her ability to feel pain. It was only fair, only right, that this Sylar, her pet and companion, make her feel something.
She jerked on the leash in her right hand, bringing Sylar’s head up from where he’d been kissing down the side of her neck. He waited for her, heat radiating into her body, hard and powerful above her. A whispered command, and he sank into her, lips brushing hers by accident, one hand cupping and cradling a breast with infinite gentleness.
Claire wrapped her legs around him, letting him pour all that heat and power into her, draining off that edge of danger he always carried with him, staring into his eyes, brushing away his dark hair so she could see right down into him. He was most human in these moments, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, other times just profoundly and silently grateful that he was with her, showing her a silent devotion that made everything worthwhile.
This was not a reward for him, this was a reward for both of them. For her control, for seizing a destiny she might have never have had otherwise, for finally stopping giving in to fear. For his obedience, for giving himself the second chance everyone had denied him, for finally atoning for every life he’d taken.
She waited until she saw that truth, his eyes liquid with happiness that she was here, and jerked hard on the leash again. Crying out, she felt him release in her, burningly hot, and held him hard as he buried his face in her shoulder. Claire’s hand strayed down between them, quickly bringing her to the release she couldn’t let Sylar give her. Soothing him silently, she pulled away, knowing that he’d curl himself up at her side. As always. Until they’d both learned enough, forgiven enough, to be just what they were, instead of what they had to be.