Competing with a Ghost
Title: Competing with a Ghost
Rating: PG-13 (mostly for language)
Summary: It didn’t matter what the college boys gave Claire. None of them could compete with a ghost. Especially not when her ghost finally comes back to her.
Spoilers: 3x13 and Vol. 4 speculation
Disclaimer: Heroes is not owned by me, but by Tim Kring. I’m simply borrowing these characters for non-profit entertainment.
A/N: I don’t know who to thank here. Matchbox Twenty or the reason I can (and often do) listen to their CDs for hours on end. Maybe I should throw in an apology to all the guys who can’t compete with my own ghost and a dedication to said ghost. Maybe a thank you to my mother too who gave me the idea for the title… Alright: Thanks to all of the above and Rich, wherever you are, this one’s for you in some perverse way.
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Claire had decided to make the most of her college experience. After all her grandmother had insisted on her having an Ivy League education. Of course Claire had also decided to sample some of the college boys who showed an interest.
She hadn’t really had a boyfriend since West and wanted to make up for lost time. That was the funny thing about thinking she had narrowly escaped with her life every time he came back to her, it tended to add to her stress levels and kept her from enjoying even the simplest of things. She wouldn’t let the death of boys back home be her fault. And she knew he would claim they were if he killed them just to get her to think about what he would do next.
She tried to pretend she didn’t think about him constantly as it was. But she knew he had survived her attempt to kill him. She knew he had also survived the fire. They were connected by some unearthly bond and she could always feel him now. Lurking in the shadows, just waiting for his next chance to do whatever it was he wanted. She was his favorite toy, his favorite victim, not even he could deny that.
They knew that was why he had never killed her. Without her he would have no one left to prove anything to, no one to truly understand him, no one who could see him equally as a hero as well as a villain. Sure she could claim to hate him, but if not for him she would still be blindly trusting her father and grandmother. He knew that was what she hated most, that he had forced her to see the truth about her family. And even his own truth, that he had never wanted to be the monster he had become.
Still Claire tried to continue on with her day to day, living weekend by weekend in the other boys’ dorm rooms. She couldn’t die, couldn’t get sick, couldn’t contract anything, what was the harm? All she wanted was to fill that void. All that she knew to be true now was him. Maybe there was no good left in the world, but with him she at least still had truth. And without him, she would be damned if she would admit it, but without him she felt empty. She tried to kid herself that these boys could take that away, that they could somehow replace him.
But that was the problem for each of these boys. It didn’t matter that some gave her gifts, candy, flowers and showered her with compliments. They couldn’t know that nothing they did would ever be enough. They were competing with a ghost. One she never spoke of, but always felt and longed to feel in every other way. He would come to her in her dreams and every morning she would wish that they were real.
Even when she would remember how he had cut into her or threatened her family, still it was better than what she had now. It wasn’t that it felt like home, she didn’t miss home, just that she missed him. That comfort in consistency that someone would always be there for her. After her, maybe, but still if she ever fell she knew he would be there to catch her. Well, as long as he wasn’t distracted by some other manipulative bitch.
Forever alone had never been what she wanted but more and more she was seeing that maybe it was best for her. Maybe she was meant to be alone. After all what was the point of getting attached to someone when she would live forever and they wouldn’t? That was unless she let herself admit her attachment to that supposed ghost. The ghost who like her would live forever.
“I guess I don’t have to ask if you missed me,” an all too familiar dark voice spoke from somewhere deep in the shadows of her room. As always it cut through the deafening silence and though she bolted upright in her bed she wasn’t fearful. She had secretly been longing for this day, or night rather.
“Sylar,” she breathed, her voice revealing her longing. It took all she had not to jump up and throw her arms around him. She couldn’t even see him through the heavy blackness of her room, but damn it she would be willing to try for him.
“You didn’t think I’d left you for good, did you?” he asked, leaning against a far wall, his arms crossed over his chest, keeping his distance though he knew he wouldn’t have shunned her welcome.
“I didn’t know. But I guess you’re finally here for your revenge,” she sighed. She wouldn’t be the first woman to love a man who wanted her dead, she knew. At least she could take comfort in knowing that she wouldn’t have to live with this secret forever. That in of itself was some consolation.
“What revenge would that be, Claire?” he asked as he stood up straight.
“For what I did to you back at Primatech,” she answered, that night having been emblazoned in her mind to where she still felt those flames every night and in every dream.
He smiled though she could hardly see it as he sauntered closer to her. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Then why?”
“You’re not the only one who’s been haunted,” he sighed, his hot breath falling over her neck as he had managed to cross over to her without her noticing.
Her eyes closed. She’d had no idea it would feel so good and so terrifying to have him back. She never knew what to expect from him but then that was half of the appeal. That was what she had missed. Excitement, surprise, someone who could make her heart race by doing no more than coming through her door or saying a single word to her.
“I’ve seen you in my dreams too, Claire,” he went on, inhaling her, letting his senses take over slightly as he fought the urge to touch her. “I knew you were in that room. I could have stopped you, but you had to know you could do it. That you could kill me. And yet almost from the moment you got your wish you wanted me back. Why?”
She looked to him, trying to see him in the darkness. “Because you’re the only one who doesn’t make me feel like I’m alone. You were right. The only thing we can’t heal from is a broken heart.”
“Your father?” he smirked, hoping she had seen him as the cruel son of a bitch he believed him to be.
“You,” she answered, she fought her tears but she knew the fight wouldn’t last. “I hated you for what you did to me, I wanted you dead. But once I had it, I knew what had been done to you. I felt you pain when I shoved that glass into you, I’ve felt it ever since. I can’t forget it. And ever since then I’ve wanted you back. Whether you were coming to kill me or say that you’d told me so or whatever, I just had to know that some part of the man my father destroyed was still there.”
That bond ran deeper than either had known. At least until that moment. Had his empathic power been briefly transferred to her when she killed him? It was possible, he guessed. But he couldn’t know for sure and he wouldn’t waste this time thinking about it.
“Claire -”
She silenced him with a soft, desperate kiss. She couldn’t stop herself. She knew where he was now, that he was right beside her just like she had been wanting for so long and now that she had him here she couldn’t let herself squander this opportunity. It was now or never.
“Don’t leave me again,” she sadly begged when she pulled back seconds later.
“Would you have me move into your dorm room” he laughed. Cruel for the moment, perhaps. But he was stunned, he couldn’t hide that.
“Take me with you when you leave. I don’t care where, I just can’t do this again. I can’t be here every day wondering if my father’s captured you or killed you or -” a choked sob escaped her throat. “I can’t be without you, Sylar,” she finally managed to confess.
She was crying and to even his surprise he was taking her into his arms. On any other day he might have wondered if this wasn’t some trap for her to kill him again. But no, he had seen her dreams. He had heard her cry herself to sleep. He had even heard her wordlessly calling to him day and night. He might have come sooner but he’d had his own matters to attend to. He knew she would ask for this and he wouldn’t have her with him then. Not when he could lose her as soon as he had gotten her. Whether from a stray bullet making its way into the base of her skull or from seeing him as a monster again. No, he had to finish with that first.
After all that time of being the one she feared, he was now the one she was drawing comfort from. After so long of being the one to make her cry, now he was the one to dry her tears. After everything she had been through, admittedly partially because of him, still he was the one she needed.
Who he had killed, what he had become, none of that mattered now. All that did matter now was that she was finally settling into a comfortable sleep because of him and that he would still be there when she woke up. And from there the world would be theirs. Anywhere she wanted to go he would take her and she would have her wish of never again being without him.
The End