Fic: The Pros and Cons of Eternal Life
Title: The Pros and Cons of Eternal Life
Rating: Hard R (non graphic sex, violence and words that would merit me a mouth cleaning)
Word Count: 5,203
Genre: Angst, Romance
Characters: Claire Bennet, Sylar (mentions of Bennet + Petrelli family)
Pairings: Claire/Sylar (mentions of Claire/Peter and Claire/OMC)
Warnings: Seasons 1, 2 & 3
Summary: For Claire, life is something that runs in a loop. She moves, she stays, she moves again, always trying to stay one step ahead of the shadow that follows her around. That shadow’s name is Sylar. But, you can't outrun the boogey man.
Written for the "Thunder" Prompt at sylaire_chall (or challenge 19, oneshot)
Her movements were robotic; jerking arms waving in the air, legs stiffly propelling her up and down, cries automatic and hollow. Her smile was broken but she put it on anyway, painting in bright colors, pink and red. The pompoms ruffled familiarly but she found no more comfort in the sound. The attraction had come and gone, just like those she had loved. Still, she clung onto this constant as if her life depended on it.
It was amazing how the world had changed. Cars that floated, wounds that heal quicker than before, people who lived past a hundred and thirty were all as commonplace as death and deception. However, crime now made grown men cry, bodies littered alleys, or were piled up high in landfills instead of dug into the ground. The rich could not be bothered to clean up their mess and so the world decayed around them while they sprayed fancy perfumes in the air to cover the stench.
It was astonishing how history ran not in a straight line, but a loop.
It was astounding how she stood still. A marble statue, all limbs still attached, watching the world through pivoting green eyes.
Last week she was Nicole, heals enhancing her height, brown hair strikingly long. That day she was Cindy, blonde once again, her hair cut so that it sat above the middle of her back. She was back in her schoolgirl uniform, back to using fake IDs in bars, back to giggling at the boys’ compliments and failing biology.
And she was back to her old habits, back in her old cheerleader outfit that should fit like a second skin by now. In reality, the cloth felt like more of a lie than her identities.
How could she smile, how could she cheer, when she could feel the end of the world like a poisonous smoke chocking her lungs?
Perhaps she had just become another pessimist, destined to walk to the end of the world, a sandwich board strapped to her back proclaiming the ever approaching end of the earth. Someday she would be right.
. . .
Sometimes, she felt him like a toxic void sucking her energy. She could sense in which general direction he waited but could never pinpoint his actually location. After all, his bodyhad changed so many times she doubted that he could remember what he truly looked like. Like hair too often died.
But she remembered him to the minute detail. She remembered his warm brown eyes, his thick eyebrows, his more prominent lower lip. She could still picture the way his jaw dipped in before forming his chin, his stubble (and the feel of it against her face), the warmth of his fingers (she had always pictured them cold).
Tonight was no exception, she could feel him in the rafters behind her, just one man in the crowd of hundreds. She searched the faces, trying to find any hint, any trace, that he was sitting in the bleachers. But she saw no hint of his presence and she tried to convince herself that she imagined it all, that it was just a delusion.
He had yet to approach her, yet to make his presence known. There had been no hint of him for half a century. He could very well be dead.
James, a man she had loved, a man like her, said he had killed him before falling into her arms.
“Diced,” he had said with a red smile.
She had smiled back, thinking the blood was Sylar’s. But when he collapsed into her arms, she knew something was wrong. At first she thought he had fainted, and simply tucked him into their bed. But, when she returned after finding some rags to clean him, she saw that his hands had become cold, that his heart did not beat. When she made the connection and accepted the truth, he was too far gone for her blood to save him.
Those were the last tears she shed. That was more than a hundred years ago.
Since then she had become hollow, her hair losing its shine and she found it hung almost sadly from her scalp. Her eyes no longer shined like they used to and, without her mask, she looked like death.
Since then, everything she touched turned to ashes.
Maybe it was time, maybe it was her curse; her life without death. She was not natural and everyone she met felt it in some way, even if it was just their subconscious, telling them to stay away. The more dangerous craved her like a drug and she plied to their touch, unable to ply to anything else. She handed out death on a silver platter even if she could not have a taste of it herself -no matter how she longed for it.
He’s just a figment of your imagination, she told herself. And she wanted to believe it because Sylar was the only thing left of her first life. She raged when she would think that it was not someone else, someone like Peter who was still around (he had once told her he’d be there for eternity and she hated how even that was a lie).
But she also wanted to believe that all the people who had died trying to stop him had not died in vain.
. . .
The mug fractured on the floor, smoldering black coffee leaving its former constraints to burn her toes. She did not move, she did not care, and she saw no need in feigning normalcy in the comfort of her apartment. Instead she watched her screen wall as the news unfolded.
“Jikal Rossdale, the son of business mogul Kirla Rossdale, was found late last night in his apartment with the top of his head removed. This bizarre murder was…” the woman continued, describing the location and talking to several witnesses while, at the top right hand corner of the screen, small samples of images were beginning parade.
Her breath refused to escape as she glanced at picture after picture, each one a slap in the face, a stab in her back. He was alive, there was no denying it. This had his name all over it, from the odd inexplicable occurrences to the blood. Then came the picture that knocked her off her feet.
“Stop,” she told the screen, and it did, freezing the frame. “Enlarge the photo.”
Without losing quality, the gory picture stretched. She could see every detail in the Persian rug stained reddish brown by blood. The body was no longer there but it was easy to tell where the corpse had lain, spilling it’s lifeblood onto the expensive flooring. But the gore was not what had interested her.
“Zoom in on the coffee table.”
It obeyed and soon, centered in her screen of vision was a reflection of the far wall of the room, one the journalists had not shown. Perhaps the police were withholding this information in order to identify the criminal, either way she knew it would not help them find the killer. They would never catch him if he wanted not to be found.
The message was for her.
Hello, Claire-bear.
. . .
Her fingers pulled down clothes from her shelves, stuffing them into a duffle bag with such force that her nails broke, that her fingers bled. But they healed in seconds and then resumed her frantic packing. In her frenzy, her nails scrapped against something cold and metallic.
In a daze, she pulled out the silver heart pendant Noah had give her over a century ago. It was tarnished and old, most of the small diamonds missing from their respective places in the heart shape. She remembered how Noah had given it to her after a fight, how she had opened the navy velvet box with a degree of apprehension. She still remembered how it caught the light and how he felt strong and sure as she hugged him. He had been her anchor in a sea of worries and danger.
She also remembered how Nathan had bought it back and had placed it around her neck. A symbol that he would always be there for her, that he was her father now, her protector just as much as Noah had been for the past seventeen years.
And finally she remembered the way Sylar, wearing Nathan’s face, had stroked his fingers against the chain.
It was all so clear, as with every detail of the day she lost her biological father. She could still picture Sylar’s confident smile when he had told her that she was his. His daughter, his lover. Something fucked up like that.
She hastily took her fingers away from the chain, pulling it roughly from her neck. It held so many memories, just like the few possessions she still had from those days. Twined along the chains, like filmy memories that accompanied the metal chain, was good and hope, but also their constant companions: pain and suffering. She held the piece of jewelry in her hands for a few moments, wondering why everything could break but her.
Contemplating how her scars ran much deeper than the skin.
She was tarnished, stained, and missing the life that used to make her shine, just like her necklace. But she didn’t show it, she couldn’t.
With a sigh she wrapped up the necklace and placed it in her bag.
. . .
“Where to, Miss?”
“Um…” she looked at the big flashing displays, eyes roaming from location to destination, from advertisement to warning of World War Three -one that had been one stop from arrival for the last century- until one name stood out to her. “Paris.”
“Ah…Paris,” the man said with a French accent. She tried to smile, too look as if she wasn’t running away but running towards something. Maybe a lover, maybe a family member, maybe a friend. But she had neither.
“Are you going to meet your boyfriend?”
She smiled, trying to act bashful.
He printed the ticket after a quick exchange of credits and another smile. Claire tried to get lost in her character, the loving girlfriend eloping with her boyfriend. She even began to believe that her story was true, that her name was really Isabelle Talbot as her passport claimed. That, at the airport, with flowers and gifts, stood a handsome boy. That he would smile and take her into his arms. And at night, they would talk, kiss and fuck.
Then on the screens behind the man, the footage from this morning flashed. A killer next to advertisements for long lasting gum…
“Here you go Isabelle,” the man said, handing her the tickets. “Stay out of the bad streets. Paris may be beautiful but don’t let that fool you. I’d hate you see your face on one of these feeds,” he said pointing behind him.
She smiled and thanked him, promising to stay away from the dark nooks and the seedy alleys.
Would he have given her the same warning if he had known that she was a freak of nature, that she was so far from human that even death had rejected her? She would hope so, but she knew better.
...
She ran her fingers through her hair. Having kept the length this time, she decided on a dark brown color with a tinge of red just barely visible under the proper lights. The water was warm as it ran down her back, dark die collecting at the bottom of the stained tub. It looked like old blood, as if she had been wounded. She tried to pretend she had.
The towel was rough against her skin and she rubbed herself raw, her skin going pink before returning to its normal pallor. Sighing, she walked over to the fogged up mirror and running her palm against the surface, studying her new reflection.
Michelle Montagnais. That’s who she was. She had picked up enough French through her years that the new personality might fit.
She tried on a smile but found that it didn’t fit and let it drop, listening as it clattered loudly on the floor.
She pulled back, suddenly seeing a new reflection beside her. A man smiling, his face rough, his dark hair almost black in the fading glow of the dusty bulb above head, stood behind her. Her heart stopped, her breath stayed lodged safely in her lungs, untouchable. She felt a hand race from one shoulder to her neck, where it cupped the soft pale skin. It was a half embrace, a half throttle. His other hand rose, unlatching her towel.
In a panic her eyes flew shut. She heard the soft slap of towel against linoleum.
The hand cupped her breast gently before traveling lower, resting on her lower back before travelling forward once again. She expected his fingers to dip into her but they hesitated for a moment before disappearing altogether. Her eyes snapped open, afraid of what she’d see, only to observe her face alone in the mirror. She spun, and still there was no trace of Sylar.
“It’s just your imagination,” she told herself, letting out a shaky breath.
She pulled the towel back on, rubbing at her skin with the coarse fabric, trying to erase the feeling of his fingers on her skin, trying to forget the way he was cautious, carefully, as he explored her. She hadn’t felt such gentleness since James and Peter before him. She had never expected it from him.
She had thought that he would be forceful, that her bones would be broken only to heal again in seconds. She had expected there to be a lot of blood, a lot of gore. But now she realized that she might have guessed wrong.
She shook her head once more, telling herself that this had just all been a dream. She just had yet to decide if it was a good one or a bad one.
Dispelling such thoughts, she stepped out into her room. After one glance, her heart stopped and she was suddenly faced with the grim possibility that she had imagined nothing.
The apartment had been torn apart, her clothes strewn about the room as if her closet had been the detonation site of a bomb. Drawers were tossed on the floors, clothes pulled out of them and lying in haphazard piles on the floor. She stepped over the piles in wonder, trying to figure out their purpose.
He always had a reason, she wasn’t about to lie to herself and pretend that he had changed.
Then she turned to see her bed, and she knew why he had tossed everything.
On the bed sat her old red cheerleading uniform, the color faded and the fabric crinkly with age. Dark spots, she knew as old dried up blood, stood out on the fabric, like a painting detailing her previous life.
She had worn it at homecoming.
Thoughts of revulsion, not only because of what had happened that night, but also at her bodies response to what had happened to her moments ago, flooded her mind like rancid water. Without hesitating, and with fear pushing her forward, she hurried out of her room, shutting the bathroom door behind her.
She felt her chest heave and saw her vision wobble. It was only a few seconds later that she realized she was sobbing.
What gave him the right to remind her what she had tried so hard to forget? Why did he want to poison her life?
She had to get out, she had to leave. Her mind buzzed frantically, like an angry swarm of protestors, telling her that he could still be here, getting some sick pleasure from watching her cry. She tried to push away, to fight but all she could do was use her head to beat out a staccato rhythm on the door.
Collecting her thoughts, she tossed open her door, pulling clothes off of the floor and tugging them on quickly. She ran out of her apartment as if fire could hurt her and was licking her heels. A few people watched her as she walked quickly down the street. One man even tugged his girlfriend closer with her approach.
“It’s not me you should be scared off,” she screamed at them, “I’m not the killer.”
She could feel him like the oncoming midnight, sipping on her vitality like expensive scotch. She would turn her head only to see shapes moving out of the corner of her eyes. Shapes and shadows, lurking close by, watching her eagerly, licking their salty lips.
She did not know what had gotten into her. Her apartment might not have been safe, but it was an environment she knew, one she could control. The world was a big place, wild and vast, with danger sitting with its head on beauty’s lap.
She saw a line of people ahead, a crowd talking and buzzing animatedly. She kept her eyes on them, trying to feed off of their energy. Finally she came to the bouncer, a tall broad shouldered man.
“Hi,” she murmured with a smile, leaning over his stand. She was suddenly glad to have landed on a small number, black and tight. The man could not resist.
“How are you, ma belle?”
“Cold,” she jumped lightly, rubbing her arms and pushing up her breasts. The man gulped.
Too easy. No matter what century she found herself in, a man’s mind always stayed in the dark corners, thinking of wandering hands and imagining uncontrolled moans.
“Want to heat up?”
“Mmhmm,” she smiled.
He looked at the crowd, the first few were too busy talking to each other excitedly to even notice their exchange. Sensing no immediate revolution, he opened up the velvet rope and lead her into the club, hand resting on her ass for a moment while he guided her forward. Claire didn’t say anything, what was the point?
The club was a welcome assault on her senses. The music shook her to her core, until even her organs danced within her. The crowd pulsed like one living organism. She lost herself within it, pushing her way into the beast, pretending she was living too.
And with her body pulsing to the beat, her brown hair waving from side to side, and hands crawling on her skin, she could almost believe she was alive. If she closed her eyes she could pretend that this was the life she had once lived, that the music was coming from her speakers of her family home, that the hands on her body were those of friends. She could pretend they were gentle caresses, not the hungry lustful gropes of the men as they pushed their hands across her body.
Then she felt him, a magnet opposite to her own charge. She could feel his presence like a pull, urging her towards the center of the room. Her eyes snapped open and she pushed away the hungry bodies crowding around her own to try and get away. The crowd pulsed, shutting around her like one big biological net. She pushed frantically, fear and maybe something else urging her to get away.
Suddenly the place shook, people looked about, dazed, as the walls spewed dry wall and foam and a low sound shook the ground. It wasn’t a big bass boost, it wasn’t the music, something was wrong.
“THUNDER!” someone claimed.
“EARTHQUAKE!” someone screamed.
Then air raid alarms started to go off, loud foreign noises penetrating the club. The music shut off instantly, people started to look around, very few had heard the sound of an air raid alarm. Very few had cowered in shelters with people fearing for their lives while they stood unafraid and calm. Only a few had tasted fear like acid in their tongue while the smell of sweat fogged up their senses.
They heard a loud whistle then the place shook once more, a far wall ripped off the building as rubble flew like wild demented birds, pecking at all those unlucky enough to be their targets.
“BOMBS!” someone screamed.
Then it was general pandemonium. Girls screamed, holding onto their boyfriends as the men tried to push their way out of the crowd. But they had no less luck than she and several fell over, their screams loud as people walked over them in a desperate attempt to get through the door.
And she stood like a pillar, unable to move as the crowd ran around her. She watched as people pushed by, hands on bleeding appendages. She could barely hear the screams of the injured above the sound of alarms.
Her mind was hardly coherent. It fell from side to side like one of the injured. It screamed wildly, as if trying to rip itself from its casing. But a part of her remained logical as it listened to the sounds of war.
Maybe this will be it, maybe this is how I will die.
She felt oddly calm, closing her eyes and taking in the smell of sweaty bodies, blood and fear. This could be her last memory.
Then came another whistle and she looked up as the sky collapsed.
...
Consciousness came back to her like a baseball bat tapped against her skull with reckless abandon. She chocked on the dust she had breathed in during the explosion, now turned to mud in her lungs.
Cement and various structural aids buried her and pinned her limbs to the uneven ground. She coughed, tears rising to her eyes.
It took her a minute before she remembered what had happened. Before she remembered the crowds and the rush and the explosion that ended it all. She turned her head to the side to see a pair of sightless eyes observing her. The face was covered in blood and its scalp held on by a couple of weak strands. She screamed, attempting to free herself.
She remembered the hundreds, possibly thousands, of people in the club and knew with certainty that they were all dead.
She whipped her head to the other side, but it was no better. This time she saw her family lying in the ruins, Sandra still clinging to Lyle, Noah with a gun in his hand. She recognized Peter’s body but could not spot his head. Even Nathan was there, standing tall behind a shard of wall that resembled a podium.
“All dead…”
She kept hearing those two words accompanied by sobs. It took her a moment before she realized that she was the origins of those sounds. She hardly sounded human, which was, for once, fitting.
“Claire!”
She heard rocks move to her right but hardly cared. She just stared at her dead family and all the others she had loved. They walked towards her in death, like some morbid parade.
The break was almost audible. Her sprit was gone, she was just a shell, an empty shell. She didn’t want to live anymore, she didn’t want to love. She wanted the rocks to crush her into a million bits that would not reassemble.
Suddenly air rushed into her lungs and she found she could move. She looked up to see a cement slab floating above her. She did not brace herself for the impact; she simply glanced once more at her family.
Two hands pulled her out of the hole she had been resting it. She fought them, wanting to go back into her fake grave.
“All dead…”
“I’m not dead, Claire.”
She recognized the voice as her body flopped lifelessly. Sylar. He had come for her. A sob arose and tore itself from her throat, running across the stones like a wounded animal.
Claire did not know who initiated the caress, but she was suddenly in his arms, sobbing.
She must have blacked out because when she pealed herself from him she was no longer in the club. They were both kneeling in a badly lit bathroom, green tiles under their knees and a pink tub sitting against a wall. She could not tell what color the walls had once been, but they now appeared to be a dark musty yellow with dark blobs spotting the walls at random intervals.
“Where?” she started.
Suddenly his hands were on her body, slowly peeling off her sodden clothes. She did not fight him, she didn’t care. Let him use her. Let him fuck her still she was only a mass of broken skin, puddles of blood and splintered bones. Let him kill her.
Please, let him kill her.
Sylar slowly lifted her, setting her into the tub. He walked away to turn on the water and, like a wounded child, she reached out for him, holding onto his arm tightly.
The water shocked her out of her daze. She gritted her teeth together and slowly she felt the water rise and cover her legs. Her muscles relaxed and she closed her eyes. She felt a rag travel across her body causing her rebellious toes to curl.
“Why?” she asked once he stopped the water.
“Like you said Claire, they’re all dead. We’re the only ones who are still alive.”
She opened her eyes and faced him.
“I don’t want to live anymore,” she told him, feeling like a little child, vulnerable and pleading. He was the adult, the only one capable of giving her what she wanted.
“I can’t kill you Claire,” he muttered, as if he could read her thoughts. By now, she had no doubt he could.
“You can kill anyone, Sylar. Kill me. Do it. I know you’ve always wanted to.”
“I don’t want to kill you.”
She thought about throwing a fit, screaming and throwing herself out of the window, letting the light from the moon and stars caress her body.
Instead, he placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Sleep, Claire.”
She suddenly felt compelled to do so.
...
She wakes up and stretches, the water sloshing around the tub. It is dark and filled with grainy bits and rocks that scratch at her skin like sandpaper. She grunts, stands and steps out of the tub, her foot landing on a razor. She yelps in pain as it cuts into her foot. Sitting back down on the tub and pulling the blade out of her foot, she is surprised when she feels that as well.
It’s evident that something is wrong.
Then she watches the cut heal. And, it’s like something in her head suddenly shifts into its proper space.
She can feel again.
She runs over to the small mirror above the sink and traces the red line on her forehead where her skull seamed itself together. He gave her back her senses. She can suddenly feel the cold tiles underfoot, the wind coming in from the old window.
She feels the change come and embraces it like an old friend. She almost cries, she almost laughs. She wants to feel joy and pain and love. Today is the present, there is no longer a past or a distant future but a glorious now, and she treats it like a long lost friend.
Her feet carry her to the door, dark wet marks forming where her feet hit the ground. She doesn’t care. She is suddenly running cross his room towards the sleeping shape on the bed. He sleeps on top of the covers, his eyes closed, his fingers intertwined on his chest, his body still as stone. He looks like a corpse in a coffin.
“You fixed me,” she informs him, her voice so soft she can barely hear it over the loud clapping in the sky.
His eyes open and she suddenly realizes that he had not been sleeping after all.
“I could not kill you, so I gave you your humanity back. Consider it a gift.”
Every sensation is a million times stronger, from the soft touch of his hands, gently reassuring her, to the odor of his cologne.
“Your hands are cold,” she tells him with a smile.
His hands fly off her of her arms, his smile almost apologetic. But there is a glint of malice in his eyes, as if he knows what he is about to do, and knows she will allow him.
It’s not like she can restrain herself.
Her body is taut as a guitar string as he sits up, hands traveling down her body slowly, as if appreciating it for the first time. She can feel herself tremble and her hairs stand on end as if he is filling her with an electrical charge.
She is on top of him in one swift motion, pushing him down as her mouth explores his neck. Grinding down onto him, they both moan and she bites his neck roughly, drawing blood.
He flips her in one fast movement. His clothes are stripped off with an almost blinding speed, as his mouth travels slowly down her body. She feels him travel impossibly low before he spreads her legs, his mouth making her feel things she was not even aware could be felt. She screams to the angry clouds as her fingers knit themselves into the sheets.
“Still want to die?” he asks after she comes.
She pulls him up with surprising strength and kisses him, tongue exploring his mouth and tasting herself. He does not stop, his fingers working magic on her as she moans into his mouth, grinding into his hand. She rakes her nails down his back, her nails biting into his flesh. He groans, an almost animalistic sound that brings new shivers to her spine.
So this is what it feels like to be alive.
He only enters her when her knees have grown weak. Her back arches into an impossible shape while moans rip themselves from her throat with a frequency she had never known. They did not stop, hungry for each other’s skin as if they would never again have another meal. But she knew better. She cannot leave.
And she does not want to.
They fall asleep, planes flying overhead and bombs detonating close by, his arms wrapped tightly around her.
“I brought your things from your apartment,” he tells her as bites her neck gently, kissing the spot afterwards.
She smiles and stays still until his breathing slows.
She disentangles herself from the sheets and his limbs and walks over to her duffle bag, pulling out clothes and necessities. Finally she finds the towel and pulls out its precious cargo. Taking the necklace from its bundle, she lets the towel drop to the floor before wrapping the silver strand around her neck. She palms the pendant before returning into bed.
With a grunt Sylar moves forwards, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close, muttering gently in his sleep. Above head, the storm rages on. Either it’s war or weather, it cannot touch them.
Her necklace catches the blinking light of bombs or lighting, twinkling dully.
Her cuts might not show, her wounds might be invisible, but they are still there. And now that she has something to show her true condition, maybe she can learn to heal.