(no subject)
Title: Define Dangerous
Characters: Sylar, Claire.
Spoilers: Up to Season 2.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2369
Chapter: 11/?
Previously: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10
Summary: While escaping the Company, Sylar meets up with someone from his past. Together, they must piece together some semblance of normality after years of captivity. Future AU.
Washington DC was a welcome sight at the end of the day with its illuminated, Roman architecture rising in the skyline. The car ride was tense to say the least. The argument from earlier had caused a slow healing rift between them leaving both unusually quiet, neither speaking a word since Roanoke. The only sound filling the car that day was the radio, though even that was a battle, with each of them wanting to listen to a different channel. Claire would change the station, only to have Sylar change it back. Each had their own way of doing things and neither was very good at compromise.
By the time they ordered room services, the last remnants of the bad vibes seemed to dissipate though. It was the bottle of Chianti Sylar bought with their food that helped ease them back into each other's good graces. By the time they were both delightfully drunk, all thoughts of arguing completely vanished.
There were more important things to focus on that past arguments, like making sure they didn't get caught again, eventually moving on to New York City to see Doctor Suresh and walking straight. Walking straight was becoming a harder task the more glasses of wine Claire enjoyed. She giggled, “You couldn't have picked a wine that made you seem less Hannibal Lector-ish, could you?”
She fell off the bed laughing, her joke not that amusing but the spirits made it seem so. He narrowed his eyes at her from the bed, gave her his best spooky voice and answered, “But the lambs were screaming, Clar-ice.”
“You're drunk.” She leaned her head back against the bed and smiled up at him. Claire's head was swimming, the alcohol going straight to her brain. She would have wondered why she trusted Sylar enough to let her guard down this much around him, if Claire wasn't too busy attempting to sit up without falling over.
“So are you,” He told her, pointing out the obvious. “And I'm not entirely sure you're legal. I'm going to get in trouble for corrupting minors.”
“You can't corrupt me, Sylar.” Claire sat up, affecting the air of a proper young woman. The kind of lady Grandmother Petrelli would have been please to have, instead of the troubled woman she grew up to be. She lost her balance as she did so, falling back against the bed again.“I'm far too good of a human being to fall for your tricks.”
“Yeah?” Sylar gave her a devious grin. “We'll see about that.”
The next morning, Claire roused from heavy slumber by someone shaking her arm. She moaned and pulled away, trying to escape back into sleep again. His voice was sweet and singsong, but still grating on her ears and hell on her hangover. “Claire.. ohhh.. Claire.. wake up! I wanna go get ice cream. Come with me.”
“What?” She mumbled, covering her head with more blankets.
From the warmth of her bed, Claire heard him rush over to the large window next to her bed, the one that took up the whole wall and overlooked the beautifully manicured courtyard garden. Sylar quickly drew back the shades, causing sunlight that was far too bright when pitted against her hangover to fill the room. Was this a new form of torture he had created?
He stood there with his arms crossed, expecting her to jump at his command. She respectfully and silently declined. This did nothing to persuade Sylar from his course of action. Already dressed, he was ready to get out into the city, whether or not Claire was as well. “I'm going for breakfast. Wake up and come with me.”
“You eat ice cream for breakfast?”
“It beats the crap out of that garbage they kept serving us in the compound, doesn't it?” Without waiting for her to agree, Sylar raised his hand and the blankets flew off the bed, pulled away by imaginary hands. Claire peered at Sylar, her still blurry vision as he stood by the window smirking. She wondered idly how hard it would be to take him in a fight and if she would be able to get back to bed if they did have an epic showdown.
Claire felt the same invisible power pulling her out of bed, while Sylar wore the grin of a mischievous child. She grasped for the headboard, but he refused to let her win so easily. “You're coming whether you like it or not. If you go by your own accord, it'll be easier on both of us.”
He dropped her onto the floor, letting her hit her ass on the way down. Standing up, Claire rolled her eyes and nodded through the fog her hangover caused in her. She put a hand to her hips, where she had fallen and wondered why he always seemed to get his way. Maybe that was an undisclosed secret power of his, the ability to manipulate people into doing exactly what he wanted them to do. “Fine, let's go.”
The enthusiasm that caused him to nearly bounce with the prospect of getting out of the hotel room and going for breakfast did not seem to build any excitement of her own. At least not this early in the morning.
The weather was beautiful and warm that afternoon, the rainstorms of Virginia left behind along with their bad moods. Claire was still plagued with one killer of a hangover, but as she walked with Sylar, enjoying the cookies and cream ice cream cone he'd bought for her, the pain seemed to melt away along with the fatigue. She had to admit that she was enjoying herself. Sylar seemed to be in high spirits as well, since his powers were working again.
After getting ice cream, they decided they needed a break from the never-ending monotony of traveling cross country to go out and enjoy themselves. Claire suggested a walk through the tree-lined National Mall, which was bordered by the White House, Lincoln Memorial and the Capital Building. As they passed the White House, walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, Claire sadly noted, “It reminds me of Camelot.”
“What does?” Sylar scooped the last bits of his rocky road ice cream out of the cup with his spoon.
“This place.. the country, sometimes the whole world. It was supposed to be better than this, wasn't it? Everyone had these big dreams and then everything fell apart. I mean, whatever happened to the whole men are created equal thing. When exactly was the constitution thrown out the window?” She starred up at the columned white building through the slots of the fence that stood in front of it, wondering what would have happened had Nathan won the election. Would things have changed for them at all? Would he have been able to take down the company with that much power? They never got a chance to find out after he was shot down in the middle of his campaign. “I doubt our forefathers would have wanted Big Brother to control us like they do and lock us up in those cells just because they think we're different.”
“We are different.” He was smiling as he spoke, reveling in this fact. “We're not equal, we're better. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. Besides, I doubt our forefathers would be able to grasp the concept of evolution, as simple minded as they were. They wouldn't have locked us up for having advanced abilities, but rather because we were, in their eyes, demons or witches.”
They took a left down 17th street, which led down to the Holocaust Memorial Museum and Claire's mind began to fill with other metaphors. Claire dumped the rest of her ice cream cone in a trash can, no longer hungry. In the past decade, she had seen the worst of humanity, now she was caught wondering if there was anything better out there.
“When did you hear about Nathan's death?”
It was a simple question, asked for the same reason that she was left thinking of her father. This whole place stood as a reminder of him, a monument to everything he thought he was working towards. Each road was one that he might have walked back when he worked in Congress. Still, Claire couldn't answer at first, too caught up in memories and her own emotions to give words to her thoughts.
“I was coming home from a date with West.. when I walked into the living room, I thought at first he was angry. He had this really serious expression on his face like something was really wrong. I was about to explain why I was late. I was prepared to get an argument about how I wasn't going to get pregnant just by being five minutes late..” She knew she was babbling, but the scene was so clear in her mind that she felt the need to explain every detail of it. Her voice sounded so far away, even to her own ears. “Then he moved, he didn't say anything.. he just moved to the side of the tv and let me see what he was watching. It was some news bulletin.”
“You heard about your father's death through a news bulletin?” Sylar shook his head, whistling low.
“Yeah. It was this bouncy ditz of a reporter too, who couldn't care less about who she was talking about or whether he had family somewhere. She couldn't even give many details on what actually happened. All she knew was the suspect was a masked man and there were possible campaign connections.” Claire starred up at the Washington Memorial as it nearly touched the clouds, scraping the sky, as she tried not to let her tears fall. “He would have made a good president, I think. Maybe we could have been outed, safely, and had laws made to protect our kind. Eh, it's silly thinking about what should have been, but it could have been better.”
After a moment of silence, Sylar noted, “My mother wanted me to be president. I think she wanted it more for herself than for me. For a while, I was okay with that dream too. Being a watchmaker, it was a good job, I did good work, but it was so.. insignificant. I wanted to be special.”
“Is that why you started killing people.. to be special?” Claire waited for an answer, but all she got back was an annoyed sigh. They'd been down this road and talked this subject to its metaphorical death. Changing the topic, she asked. “So, what happened to that dream?”
“I got sidetracked.” He replied. “Primatech got a hold of me. Four years passed and now, even if I wanted to pursue that option, I don't think I would. There are so many other things I could aspire to, other things I could do rather than follow someone else's dreams.”
“Like what?”
“I don't know.” After thinking about it for a while, he simply shrugged, lost for an answer. It wasn't until they reached the edge of the Reflecting Pool, that Sylar finally noticed Claire was holding back a laugh that seemed to be bubbling up inside of her. “What?!”
Claire couldn't stop herself from teasing, even though she could tell he was barely resisting the urge to push her in the water. “Is the great and all powerful Sylar actually admitting that he doesn't know something?”
He glared at her but when that caused her no fear, he rolled his eyes. “Well, I would say that my goals now consist of murdering people and eventual world domination, but every time that comes up into conversation, you look at me like I'm the devil incarnate.”
“Aren't you?” She raised an eyebrow, unsure if she was teasing that time or not. Half and half, Claire supposed. She gazed down at the pool, the waters reflecting the perfect deep blue sky with a few puffs of white clouds here and there. It was nice here, calm. There hadn't been any signs of the company in some time and she was finally getting along with Sylar. “Despite anything that happened between us in the past, you are trying to get me back to my family. That means a lot to me, Sylar. I still don't think we'll find anyone out there and I still doubt that Peter's alive but you've given me hope. And that's something I haven't had in a long time. Thank you.”
At first he seemed touched, but then Sylar let the smile fall as he answered sarcastically. “Is this the part where you tell me I'm your hero and we hug and shit?”
They starred at each other, sizing the prospect up and before they both burst out laughing. Claire raised a hand to her mouth as she giggled out her words. “Somehow, I don't think so.” Sylar seemed okay with this, he much preferred playing the villain's role anyway. “How's about we get back to the car and start out for New York now? There's still four hours of driving ahead and then we have to figure out how you're going to get to Molly.”
“Leave that to me, Claire, I have plans in my head already forming. Things are clicking into place, I simply need to manipulate them in the right way to reach the desired outcome.” Sylar replied as they started heading back to their hotel in the Penn Quarter section of the city.
Claire was sure he would have it all worked out by the time they got there, she just hoped his methods weren't too violent. She would have warned him against doing anything too rash, but that had become a point of contention between them and right now she was enjoying the calm between their fights.
Excitement filled each of her steps as they walked through the city, to where the Rogue was waiting for them. If what Sylar proposed turned out to be true, if someone in her family was still alive, she wouldn't have to be alone anymore. She would have someone to keep her safe, to love her and take care of her. Things would be better.
..to be continued..
Characters: Sylar, Claire.
Spoilers: Up to Season 2.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2369
Chapter: 11/?
Previously: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10
Summary: While escaping the Company, Sylar meets up with someone from his past. Together, they must piece together some semblance of normality after years of captivity. Future AU.
Washington DC was a welcome sight at the end of the day with its illuminated, Roman architecture rising in the skyline. The car ride was tense to say the least. The argument from earlier had caused a slow healing rift between them leaving both unusually quiet, neither speaking a word since Roanoke. The only sound filling the car that day was the radio, though even that was a battle, with each of them wanting to listen to a different channel. Claire would change the station, only to have Sylar change it back. Each had their own way of doing things and neither was very good at compromise.
By the time they ordered room services, the last remnants of the bad vibes seemed to dissipate though. It was the bottle of Chianti Sylar bought with their food that helped ease them back into each other's good graces. By the time they were both delightfully drunk, all thoughts of arguing completely vanished.
There were more important things to focus on that past arguments, like making sure they didn't get caught again, eventually moving on to New York City to see Doctor Suresh and walking straight. Walking straight was becoming a harder task the more glasses of wine Claire enjoyed. She giggled, “You couldn't have picked a wine that made you seem less Hannibal Lector-ish, could you?”
She fell off the bed laughing, her joke not that amusing but the spirits made it seem so. He narrowed his eyes at her from the bed, gave her his best spooky voice and answered, “But the lambs were screaming, Clar-ice.”
“You're drunk.” She leaned her head back against the bed and smiled up at him. Claire's head was swimming, the alcohol going straight to her brain. She would have wondered why she trusted Sylar enough to let her guard down this much around him, if Claire wasn't too busy attempting to sit up without falling over.
“So are you,” He told her, pointing out the obvious. “And I'm not entirely sure you're legal. I'm going to get in trouble for corrupting minors.”
“You can't corrupt me, Sylar.” Claire sat up, affecting the air of a proper young woman. The kind of lady Grandmother Petrelli would have been please to have, instead of the troubled woman she grew up to be. She lost her balance as she did so, falling back against the bed again.“I'm far too good of a human being to fall for your tricks.”
“Yeah?” Sylar gave her a devious grin. “We'll see about that.”
The next morning, Claire roused from heavy slumber by someone shaking her arm. She moaned and pulled away, trying to escape back into sleep again. His voice was sweet and singsong, but still grating on her ears and hell on her hangover. “Claire.. ohhh.. Claire.. wake up! I wanna go get ice cream. Come with me.”
“What?” She mumbled, covering her head with more blankets.
From the warmth of her bed, Claire heard him rush over to the large window next to her bed, the one that took up the whole wall and overlooked the beautifully manicured courtyard garden. Sylar quickly drew back the shades, causing sunlight that was far too bright when pitted against her hangover to fill the room. Was this a new form of torture he had created?
He stood there with his arms crossed, expecting her to jump at his command. She respectfully and silently declined. This did nothing to persuade Sylar from his course of action. Already dressed, he was ready to get out into the city, whether or not Claire was as well. “I'm going for breakfast. Wake up and come with me.”
“You eat ice cream for breakfast?”
“It beats the crap out of that garbage they kept serving us in the compound, doesn't it?” Without waiting for her to agree, Sylar raised his hand and the blankets flew off the bed, pulled away by imaginary hands. Claire peered at Sylar, her still blurry vision as he stood by the window smirking. She wondered idly how hard it would be to take him in a fight and if she would be able to get back to bed if they did have an epic showdown.
Claire felt the same invisible power pulling her out of bed, while Sylar wore the grin of a mischievous child. She grasped for the headboard, but he refused to let her win so easily. “You're coming whether you like it or not. If you go by your own accord, it'll be easier on both of us.”
He dropped her onto the floor, letting her hit her ass on the way down. Standing up, Claire rolled her eyes and nodded through the fog her hangover caused in her. She put a hand to her hips, where she had fallen and wondered why he always seemed to get his way. Maybe that was an undisclosed secret power of his, the ability to manipulate people into doing exactly what he wanted them to do. “Fine, let's go.”
The enthusiasm that caused him to nearly bounce with the prospect of getting out of the hotel room and going for breakfast did not seem to build any excitement of her own. At least not this early in the morning.
The weather was beautiful and warm that afternoon, the rainstorms of Virginia left behind along with their bad moods. Claire was still plagued with one killer of a hangover, but as she walked with Sylar, enjoying the cookies and cream ice cream cone he'd bought for her, the pain seemed to melt away along with the fatigue. She had to admit that she was enjoying herself. Sylar seemed to be in high spirits as well, since his powers were working again.
After getting ice cream, they decided they needed a break from the never-ending monotony of traveling cross country to go out and enjoy themselves. Claire suggested a walk through the tree-lined National Mall, which was bordered by the White House, Lincoln Memorial and the Capital Building. As they passed the White House, walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, Claire sadly noted, “It reminds me of Camelot.”
“What does?” Sylar scooped the last bits of his rocky road ice cream out of the cup with his spoon.
“This place.. the country, sometimes the whole world. It was supposed to be better than this, wasn't it? Everyone had these big dreams and then everything fell apart. I mean, whatever happened to the whole men are created equal thing. When exactly was the constitution thrown out the window?” She starred up at the columned white building through the slots of the fence that stood in front of it, wondering what would have happened had Nathan won the election. Would things have changed for them at all? Would he have been able to take down the company with that much power? They never got a chance to find out after he was shot down in the middle of his campaign. “I doubt our forefathers would have wanted Big Brother to control us like they do and lock us up in those cells just because they think we're different.”
“We are different.” He was smiling as he spoke, reveling in this fact. “We're not equal, we're better. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. Besides, I doubt our forefathers would be able to grasp the concept of evolution, as simple minded as they were. They wouldn't have locked us up for having advanced abilities, but rather because we were, in their eyes, demons or witches.”
They took a left down 17th street, which led down to the Holocaust Memorial Museum and Claire's mind began to fill with other metaphors. Claire dumped the rest of her ice cream cone in a trash can, no longer hungry. In the past decade, she had seen the worst of humanity, now she was caught wondering if there was anything better out there.
“When did you hear about Nathan's death?”
It was a simple question, asked for the same reason that she was left thinking of her father. This whole place stood as a reminder of him, a monument to everything he thought he was working towards. Each road was one that he might have walked back when he worked in Congress. Still, Claire couldn't answer at first, too caught up in memories and her own emotions to give words to her thoughts.
“I was coming home from a date with West.. when I walked into the living room, I thought at first he was angry. He had this really serious expression on his face like something was really wrong. I was about to explain why I was late. I was prepared to get an argument about how I wasn't going to get pregnant just by being five minutes late..” She knew she was babbling, but the scene was so clear in her mind that she felt the need to explain every detail of it. Her voice sounded so far away, even to her own ears. “Then he moved, he didn't say anything.. he just moved to the side of the tv and let me see what he was watching. It was some news bulletin.”
“You heard about your father's death through a news bulletin?” Sylar shook his head, whistling low.
“Yeah. It was this bouncy ditz of a reporter too, who couldn't care less about who she was talking about or whether he had family somewhere. She couldn't even give many details on what actually happened. All she knew was the suspect was a masked man and there were possible campaign connections.” Claire starred up at the Washington Memorial as it nearly touched the clouds, scraping the sky, as she tried not to let her tears fall. “He would have made a good president, I think. Maybe we could have been outed, safely, and had laws made to protect our kind. Eh, it's silly thinking about what should have been, but it could have been better.”
After a moment of silence, Sylar noted, “My mother wanted me to be president. I think she wanted it more for herself than for me. For a while, I was okay with that dream too. Being a watchmaker, it was a good job, I did good work, but it was so.. insignificant. I wanted to be special.”
“Is that why you started killing people.. to be special?” Claire waited for an answer, but all she got back was an annoyed sigh. They'd been down this road and talked this subject to its metaphorical death. Changing the topic, she asked. “So, what happened to that dream?”
“I got sidetracked.” He replied. “Primatech got a hold of me. Four years passed and now, even if I wanted to pursue that option, I don't think I would. There are so many other things I could aspire to, other things I could do rather than follow someone else's dreams.”
“Like what?”
“I don't know.” After thinking about it for a while, he simply shrugged, lost for an answer. It wasn't until they reached the edge of the Reflecting Pool, that Sylar finally noticed Claire was holding back a laugh that seemed to be bubbling up inside of her. “What?!”
Claire couldn't stop herself from teasing, even though she could tell he was barely resisting the urge to push her in the water. “Is the great and all powerful Sylar actually admitting that he doesn't know something?”
He glared at her but when that caused her no fear, he rolled his eyes. “Well, I would say that my goals now consist of murdering people and eventual world domination, but every time that comes up into conversation, you look at me like I'm the devil incarnate.”
“Aren't you?” She raised an eyebrow, unsure if she was teasing that time or not. Half and half, Claire supposed. She gazed down at the pool, the waters reflecting the perfect deep blue sky with a few puffs of white clouds here and there. It was nice here, calm. There hadn't been any signs of the company in some time and she was finally getting along with Sylar. “Despite anything that happened between us in the past, you are trying to get me back to my family. That means a lot to me, Sylar. I still don't think we'll find anyone out there and I still doubt that Peter's alive but you've given me hope. And that's something I haven't had in a long time. Thank you.”
At first he seemed touched, but then Sylar let the smile fall as he answered sarcastically. “Is this the part where you tell me I'm your hero and we hug and shit?”
They starred at each other, sizing the prospect up and before they both burst out laughing. Claire raised a hand to her mouth as she giggled out her words. “Somehow, I don't think so.” Sylar seemed okay with this, he much preferred playing the villain's role anyway. “How's about we get back to the car and start out for New York now? There's still four hours of driving ahead and then we have to figure out how you're going to get to Molly.”
“Leave that to me, Claire, I have plans in my head already forming. Things are clicking into place, I simply need to manipulate them in the right way to reach the desired outcome.” Sylar replied as they started heading back to their hotel in the Penn Quarter section of the city.
Claire was sure he would have it all worked out by the time they got there, she just hoped his methods weren't too violent. She would have warned him against doing anything too rash, but that had become a point of contention between them and right now she was enjoying the calm between their fights.
Excitement filled each of her steps as they walked through the city, to where the Rogue was waiting for them. If what Sylar proposed turned out to be true, if someone in her family was still alive, she wouldn't have to be alone anymore. She would have someone to keep her safe, to love her and take care of her. Things would be better.
..to be continued..