And our love become a funeral pyre
Title: And our love become a funeral pyre
Author: cameroncrazed
Rating: um... PG-13 for violent dark themes and some cursing?
Word Count: 1983
Warning: Darkity dark dark dark, or at least as dark as I can manage.
Disclaimer: So not mine, any of it. Belongs to T. Kring, NBC, R. Krieger and The Doors, J. K. Rowling, etc.
Written for challenge #8: fire at sylaire_chall. Thanks for everyone’s input in picking what to write! I tried to incorporate "come on baby, light my fire", funeral pyre + phoenix, fire/ice, touch burns like fire, and "ring of fire" since those were the top vote getters. Enjoy :)
She feels cold, chilled all the way to the bone in a way that all the sweaters and cups of hot tea in the world can’t even begin to touch. Shivers run along her arms and spine like electricity at every loud sound, every bump in the night. She clings to any of the men in her life that’ll hold still long enough, desperate to use their warmth and protection, but it doesn’t help.
He’s still out there, and she knows he’s coming for her. She shudders at the thought, and burrows further into Peter’s jacket.
Angela tells her not to be silly, that he’s dead, that the building had burnt to the ground, that there had been dental records for God’s sake. Later that same day, Claire yanks out one of her front teeth with a pair of pliers supplied by the ever-handy Petrelli butler and presents Angela with the tooth and a quip about expecting the tooth fairy to pay extra well, smiling with a full set of gleaming teeth. Angela blanches, and Claire knows she’s made her point about the damned dental records.
He’s still out there, and she just wonders what’s going to happen when he finally finds her.
- - - - - - - - - -
Claire drops her book bag as soon as she opens the door to her dorm room. Every solid surface is covered in tiny tea light candles, all burning. She immediately slams the door shut, and runs to the RA, asking if she’d allowed anyone access to the room.
No maintenance men, no cleaning crews, no simple stalkers had been there. Angela had pulled all the necessary strings, so there’s no roommate to blame. With shaking fingers, she calls both Peter and Lyle to ask if they’d played a trick on her.
She starts shaking uncontrollably when she realizes he’s found her. The blanket the RA wraps around her trembling shoulders does nothing to help.
- - - - - - - - - -
"Dude, what did you do to the bunsen thingie?" Her lab partner asks as he watches the flames dance into the air, tickling the ceiling tiles.
"I didn’t do anything!" She exclaims as she fiddles with the control, trying to get the fire off.
The professor comes running over. "Petrelli! Smith! Turn that fire off at once!"
When she realizes she’s getting no where with the burner, she switches off the gas nozzle. The flames only grow wilder, curling around like wayward dragon’s breath. Her breath hitches when one of the tendrils forms into a flaming "C".
She rubs her arms in a frantic attempt to dispel the chills when the C warps into "be mine". A thin thread of the fire wraps around her fingers, wrapping around her ring finger like a pyrotechnic claddagh ring, flaming heart pointing towards her. She screams, and jerks her hand back before running.
The only thing she hears when she runs from the room is his laughter, not the frantic screams of her professor and the other students as the flames explode into a fireball.
- - - - - - - - - -
"Claire, read to us!" Simon demands as she’s curled up on the living room couch, trying to watch some stupid TV show on a lazy Saturday night at home, a rare break from the dorms. "You’re never here anymore."
He gives her a puppy dog look that she just can’t deny; she briefly wonders if he’s been taking lessons from Lyle, then decides the look is pure Peter instead. "Sure. Run up and pick a book - make sure it’s something Monty wants to hear too. Get ready for bed first, though."
She gives her brothers enough time to get into their pajamas and get their teeth brushed, then heads upstairs. She doesn’t even have to ask what they’d picked, as Monty starts yelling "Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Harry Potter" over and over as soon as she enters the room. It figures, she thinks.
Heidi had started reading from the book a few days earlier, but they’re only through chapter ten. She gets comfortable in the rocking chair that’s been set in the room for this sole purpose, tucks a think blanket around herself to ward off the chill, and starts reading. "Chapter Eleven, The Dueling Club - wait, this sounds awfully violent, are you sure it’s okay for you to be hearing this?" she teases them.
Monty is pure Nathan as he grumbles at her. "Just read, okay? Please?"
She smiles and returns to the book, trying to give each character a special voice and to put some life into the words. They’re almost asleep when she gets to the part where Harry watches Fawkes catch on fire when she feels like she’s being watched. She looks to the right, and then the left, but sees nothing but walls. Feeling oddly claustrophobic, she returns to the book.
"Harry gasped. ‘Your bird - I couldn’t do anything..." she reads out, then shrieks as the book bursts into flames. She drops the book, then tries to stomp out the flames, burning her bedroom shoes off before the flames subside.
Monty and Simon are wide awake, and she gives them a shaky smile. "It’s okay, go back to sleep. I’m going to go downstairs for a bit, you’re going to be just fine." Sylar doesn’t want them, she knows that he’s there for her, but there’s no reason it has to happen in the boys’ bedroom.
- - - - - - - - - -
He greets her with a warm hug and a sinisterly whispered "I’ve missed you, Claire-bear". She tries to push him away, but with his arms still wrapped firmly around her, the Petrelli mansion melts from her vision. She gets dizzy as he teleports them to some dirty motel room, wanting to vomit, but she’s not sure if the sick feeling is due to motion sickness or the fact that he’s still alive and stealing powers.
Stomping on his foot, she elbows him hard in the stomach and succeeds in pushing him away. "I thought I killed you." She crossed her arms across her chest, trying to ward off the ever-present coldness, trying futily to protect herself from him.
Sylar just laughs. "Not good enough. Didn’t kill me dead." He taps the back of his head, then smirks at her. "Didn’t hit the sweet spot, guess you don’t know my anatomy well enough - yet."
She tries to ignore how ominous that sounded. "Shame." Her eyes narrow as she realizes that he’d been showing off a new trick quite a bit lately. "Who’d you have to kill to get the flames?" She wonders if he’d gotten to Meredith’s brother; she refused to call the man her uncle, as if he could ever be on the same level as Peter.
"Mommy dearest, of course." He leers at her, then steps closer to her.
Trying to scurry back while looking for a weapon, she ends up falling back onto the bed. "Liar. She died in the fire."
"Don’t be so naïve, Claire. The role of stupid little ingénue doesn’t suit you - or did you actually think that a woman who was living flame could die in a fire? No, sweetheart - as soon as I recovered from that little parting gift of yours, I went looking for her, to make her pay for your actions. I ripped into her, only not nearly as delicately as I did you, and ran my fingers through her." He dances flame-tipped fingers along her fire, setting her pajama bottoms on fire before turning his palm to ice and smoothing the flames out. "She screamed so prettily."
"Get your creepy hands off of me, you son of a bitch." She tries to sound as threatening as she can, but she knows that she has no way of fighting him, no weapon. He has to be lying, she refuses to acknowledge the fact that he’s taken someone else from her; he just has to be lying. Meredith died in the fire, and he killed another pyrokinetic.
Sylar ignores her, crawling up over her then leaning on one elbow to prop himself up beside her. He runs his fingers through her hair before trailing them onto her face. "You burn in my blood, babydoll, even though I’m the one with the flames. How do you do it? How do you make love stay despite everything I’ve put you through, you little witch?"
"You’re insane."
Sylar just laughs, then licks her neck. It’s creepy and gross and, God help her, she kind of likes it. "Stop that."
He presses up against her, and she can feel something hard against her hip. She closes her eyes, trying her best not to think about Sylar; she licks her lips even as she tries not to mentally estimate his length. She sternly reminds herself that he’s creepy and insane and that kissing him would not be a good idea and the fact that she’s even thinking about it means that she’s gone crazy too. Murderous psychopaths should not be hot, she knows this.
His hands find the bottom of her shirt, and the sudden shock of his warm hands trailing up her ribs and palming her breasts shocks her into motion. "Get off of me!" She shrieks as she pushes hard against his shoulders, rolling off the bed and backing up against the nearest wall. The telephone is the only object nearby she can grab, other than the Gideon Bible, so she brandishes the receiver at him as if she could knock him unconscious with the formed plastic.
He lunges at her, and she swings the phone at his nose. It does nothing, and before she can blink, he has her suspended in the air and pressed against the unforgiving dry wall, oddly similar to the way he’d held her at Primatech. He makes the mistake of letting his arm get to close to her mouth, and she does the only thing she can; the tooth marks take only a second to heal over, but the damage is done.
"Bitch! You shouldn’t have done that." Sylar drops her, and his eyes grow cold. Claire tries to run, but finds that she can’t move; his telekinetic hold is unforgiving. He leans closer to her again, just long enough to run his hands through her hair as he hisses "Do you know what they did to witches in the old day, Claire?"
"What, drown them?" As soon as the words leave her mouth, she knows that she’s just made a very stupid mistake. "You’re not seriously..." Panic sets in, and she starts bucking against the restraints.
He cups her face with his hands. The soft and chaste kiss he presses against her lips is a sharp contrast to the harsh flames he shoves against the rest of her face. Pulling back, he runs his hands through her hair again. "Come on babydoll, let me light your fire."
She screams as her hair starts to burn, as she realizes what he’s going to do to her. The fact that she can’t feel pain anymore doesn’t even occur to her as one of her worst nightmares starts to play out.
- - - - - - - - - -
Watching her scream and writhe in his flames isn’t as exciting as he’d thought it would be. Retribution leaves him feeling oddly cold, even as the fire dances along her skin.
The polyester coverlet burst into flames, as do his pants. He swats at the fabric, trying to put it out just so that the clothing isn’t ruined but not because of any worry for himself. He’s spent so much time playing with fire anymore, it tickles more than anything, the light teasing hand of a persistent lover.
He doesn’t even bother to look back as he walks out of the hotel room, leaving her pinned against the wall. She’s as much a phoenix as he is, and this can only make her stronger. Oddly enough, he can’t way to see what she does next, what she’ll let him do to her.
Author: cameroncrazed
Rating: um... PG-13 for violent dark themes and some cursing?
Word Count: 1983
Warning: Darkity dark dark dark, or at least as dark as I can manage.
Disclaimer: So not mine, any of it. Belongs to T. Kring, NBC, R. Krieger and The Doors, J. K. Rowling, etc.
Written for challenge #8: fire at sylaire_chall. Thanks for everyone’s input in picking what to write! I tried to incorporate "come on baby, light my fire", funeral pyre + phoenix, fire/ice, touch burns like fire, and "ring of fire" since those were the top vote getters. Enjoy :)
She feels cold, chilled all the way to the bone in a way that all the sweaters and cups of hot tea in the world can’t even begin to touch. Shivers run along her arms and spine like electricity at every loud sound, every bump in the night. She clings to any of the men in her life that’ll hold still long enough, desperate to use their warmth and protection, but it doesn’t help.
He’s still out there, and she knows he’s coming for her. She shudders at the thought, and burrows further into Peter’s jacket.
Angela tells her not to be silly, that he’s dead, that the building had burnt to the ground, that there had been dental records for God’s sake. Later that same day, Claire yanks out one of her front teeth with a pair of pliers supplied by the ever-handy Petrelli butler and presents Angela with the tooth and a quip about expecting the tooth fairy to pay extra well, smiling with a full set of gleaming teeth. Angela blanches, and Claire knows she’s made her point about the damned dental records.
He’s still out there, and she just wonders what’s going to happen when he finally finds her.
- - - - - - - - - -
Claire drops her book bag as soon as she opens the door to her dorm room. Every solid surface is covered in tiny tea light candles, all burning. She immediately slams the door shut, and runs to the RA, asking if she’d allowed anyone access to the room.
No maintenance men, no cleaning crews, no simple stalkers had been there. Angela had pulled all the necessary strings, so there’s no roommate to blame. With shaking fingers, she calls both Peter and Lyle to ask if they’d played a trick on her.
She starts shaking uncontrollably when she realizes he’s found her. The blanket the RA wraps around her trembling shoulders does nothing to help.
- - - - - - - - - -
"Dude, what did you do to the bunsen thingie?" Her lab partner asks as he watches the flames dance into the air, tickling the ceiling tiles.
"I didn’t do anything!" She exclaims as she fiddles with the control, trying to get the fire off.
The professor comes running over. "Petrelli! Smith! Turn that fire off at once!"
When she realizes she’s getting no where with the burner, she switches off the gas nozzle. The flames only grow wilder, curling around like wayward dragon’s breath. Her breath hitches when one of the tendrils forms into a flaming "C".
She rubs her arms in a frantic attempt to dispel the chills when the C warps into "be mine". A thin thread of the fire wraps around her fingers, wrapping around her ring finger like a pyrotechnic claddagh ring, flaming heart pointing towards her. She screams, and jerks her hand back before running.
The only thing she hears when she runs from the room is his laughter, not the frantic screams of her professor and the other students as the flames explode into a fireball.
- - - - - - - - - -
"Claire, read to us!" Simon demands as she’s curled up on the living room couch, trying to watch some stupid TV show on a lazy Saturday night at home, a rare break from the dorms. "You’re never here anymore."
He gives her a puppy dog look that she just can’t deny; she briefly wonders if he’s been taking lessons from Lyle, then decides the look is pure Peter instead. "Sure. Run up and pick a book - make sure it’s something Monty wants to hear too. Get ready for bed first, though."
She gives her brothers enough time to get into their pajamas and get their teeth brushed, then heads upstairs. She doesn’t even have to ask what they’d picked, as Monty starts yelling "Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Harry Potter" over and over as soon as she enters the room. It figures, she thinks.
Heidi had started reading from the book a few days earlier, but they’re only through chapter ten. She gets comfortable in the rocking chair that’s been set in the room for this sole purpose, tucks a think blanket around herself to ward off the chill, and starts reading. "Chapter Eleven, The Dueling Club - wait, this sounds awfully violent, are you sure it’s okay for you to be hearing this?" she teases them.
Monty is pure Nathan as he grumbles at her. "Just read, okay? Please?"
She smiles and returns to the book, trying to give each character a special voice and to put some life into the words. They’re almost asleep when she gets to the part where Harry watches Fawkes catch on fire when she feels like she’s being watched. She looks to the right, and then the left, but sees nothing but walls. Feeling oddly claustrophobic, she returns to the book.
"Harry gasped. ‘Your bird - I couldn’t do anything..." she reads out, then shrieks as the book bursts into flames. She drops the book, then tries to stomp out the flames, burning her bedroom shoes off before the flames subside.
Monty and Simon are wide awake, and she gives them a shaky smile. "It’s okay, go back to sleep. I’m going to go downstairs for a bit, you’re going to be just fine." Sylar doesn’t want them, she knows that he’s there for her, but there’s no reason it has to happen in the boys’ bedroom.
- - - - - - - - - -
He greets her with a warm hug and a sinisterly whispered "I’ve missed you, Claire-bear". She tries to push him away, but with his arms still wrapped firmly around her, the Petrelli mansion melts from her vision. She gets dizzy as he teleports them to some dirty motel room, wanting to vomit, but she’s not sure if the sick feeling is due to motion sickness or the fact that he’s still alive and stealing powers.
Stomping on his foot, she elbows him hard in the stomach and succeeds in pushing him away. "I thought I killed you." She crossed her arms across her chest, trying to ward off the ever-present coldness, trying futily to protect herself from him.
Sylar just laughs. "Not good enough. Didn’t kill me dead." He taps the back of his head, then smirks at her. "Didn’t hit the sweet spot, guess you don’t know my anatomy well enough - yet."
She tries to ignore how ominous that sounded. "Shame." Her eyes narrow as she realizes that he’d been showing off a new trick quite a bit lately. "Who’d you have to kill to get the flames?" She wonders if he’d gotten to Meredith’s brother; she refused to call the man her uncle, as if he could ever be on the same level as Peter.
"Mommy dearest, of course." He leers at her, then steps closer to her.
Trying to scurry back while looking for a weapon, she ends up falling back onto the bed. "Liar. She died in the fire."
"Don’t be so naïve, Claire. The role of stupid little ingénue doesn’t suit you - or did you actually think that a woman who was living flame could die in a fire? No, sweetheart - as soon as I recovered from that little parting gift of yours, I went looking for her, to make her pay for your actions. I ripped into her, only not nearly as delicately as I did you, and ran my fingers through her." He dances flame-tipped fingers along her fire, setting her pajama bottoms on fire before turning his palm to ice and smoothing the flames out. "She screamed so prettily."
"Get your creepy hands off of me, you son of a bitch." She tries to sound as threatening as she can, but she knows that she has no way of fighting him, no weapon. He has to be lying, she refuses to acknowledge the fact that he’s taken someone else from her; he just has to be lying. Meredith died in the fire, and he killed another pyrokinetic.
Sylar ignores her, crawling up over her then leaning on one elbow to prop himself up beside her. He runs his fingers through her hair before trailing them onto her face. "You burn in my blood, babydoll, even though I’m the one with the flames. How do you do it? How do you make love stay despite everything I’ve put you through, you little witch?"
"You’re insane."
Sylar just laughs, then licks her neck. It’s creepy and gross and, God help her, she kind of likes it. "Stop that."
He presses up against her, and she can feel something hard against her hip. She closes her eyes, trying her best not to think about Sylar; she licks her lips even as she tries not to mentally estimate his length. She sternly reminds herself that he’s creepy and insane and that kissing him would not be a good idea and the fact that she’s even thinking about it means that she’s gone crazy too. Murderous psychopaths should not be hot, she knows this.
His hands find the bottom of her shirt, and the sudden shock of his warm hands trailing up her ribs and palming her breasts shocks her into motion. "Get off of me!" She shrieks as she pushes hard against his shoulders, rolling off the bed and backing up against the nearest wall. The telephone is the only object nearby she can grab, other than the Gideon Bible, so she brandishes the receiver at him as if she could knock him unconscious with the formed plastic.
He lunges at her, and she swings the phone at his nose. It does nothing, and before she can blink, he has her suspended in the air and pressed against the unforgiving dry wall, oddly similar to the way he’d held her at Primatech. He makes the mistake of letting his arm get to close to her mouth, and she does the only thing she can; the tooth marks take only a second to heal over, but the damage is done.
"Bitch! You shouldn’t have done that." Sylar drops her, and his eyes grow cold. Claire tries to run, but finds that she can’t move; his telekinetic hold is unforgiving. He leans closer to her again, just long enough to run his hands through her hair as he hisses "Do you know what they did to witches in the old day, Claire?"
"What, drown them?" As soon as the words leave her mouth, she knows that she’s just made a very stupid mistake. "You’re not seriously..." Panic sets in, and she starts bucking against the restraints.
He cups her face with his hands. The soft and chaste kiss he presses against her lips is a sharp contrast to the harsh flames he shoves against the rest of her face. Pulling back, he runs his hands through her hair again. "Come on babydoll, let me light your fire."
She screams as her hair starts to burn, as she realizes what he’s going to do to her. The fact that she can’t feel pain anymore doesn’t even occur to her as one of her worst nightmares starts to play out.
- - - - - - - - - -
Watching her scream and writhe in his flames isn’t as exciting as he’d thought it would be. Retribution leaves him feeling oddly cold, even as the fire dances along her skin.
The polyester coverlet burst into flames, as do his pants. He swats at the fabric, trying to put it out just so that the clothing isn’t ruined but not because of any worry for himself. He’s spent so much time playing with fire anymore, it tickles more than anything, the light teasing hand of a persistent lover.
He doesn’t even bother to look back as he walks out of the hotel room, leaving her pinned against the wall. She’s as much a phoenix as he is, and this can only make her stronger. Oddly enough, he can’t way to see what she does next, what she’ll let him do to her.