Part 7: Nuclear Holocaust

by Hedge Labyrinth

Note: Series of short vignettes set in an AU universe where Sylar and Claire are both in the same containment facility. In this world, "specials" have been under surveillance for several years and Big Brother watches them.

They need a new car. They’ve stolen two and ditched them since the woods in Maine, and now that they are in Boston they definitely need a new vehicle. Money, too.

Claire plays her part like graduate of drama school, luring the scummy idiot who thinks he is purchasing sex with a teenage prostitute right into Sylar’s hands. For once she doesn’t complain when he slams the businessman against the wall a couple of times. His wallet is stuffed with one hundred dollar bills and credit cards. Sylar tosses the cards into the dumpster where he has unceremoniously thrown the man. He pockets the cash.

The first thing Sylar does after they pawn the expensive watch, gold cuffs and lighter is buy some clothes. The shirt he found at the empty house is checkered and makes him look like a lumberjack. Claire gets a new jacket and tries to hide the underwear and bra she is carrying in her hands. He wants to tell her he does not care what she wears, but does not bother.

They find a suitable vehicle with a “for sale” sign in the morning. It’s an older model, but it seems in good shape. The owner leans on his cane and views them suspiciously when Sylar offers to pay in cash right there and then.

Claire smiles and chats with him, defusing his worries. Soon, the old man is talking to them like they are old friends.

“I hope you find it useful,” he tells them when Sylar is getting into the driver’s seat. “My son loved it. They took him a year ago.”

The man is not wearing one of the silver bracelets that signals specials, – in Sylar’s youth it had been a card, recently changed to a more obvious visual identification – so he must be a normal. Disinterested, Sylar rolls up the window while Claire waves goodbye.

Sylar thinks about his plans to engage in a similar roadtrip. Elle was with him and he honestly believed she was in trouble. They were going to flee the country together. Now he’s with the wrong blonde heading in the same direction he had once traced on a map.

Claire turns on the radio, fiddles with it. He doesn’t hear the music. He’s thinking of Elle.

He recalls the last time he saw her. She visited him in the facility. To gloat or extract more information, he could not be sure. They thought Sylar was somehow connected to a resistance movement organized by some specials. They threw names around, like Rebel and Ellen, but Sylar knew nothing of this. When he told her so, Elle smiled and informed him that he had been her favourite assignment.

Sylar doubted that even the pie she had baked for him when they had first met was real. For all he knew, Noah Bennet had made it, along with the script she was supposed to play. False emotions. False everything.

Claire turns the radio off. She’s chewing a strand of hair. His mother would object to such a filthy habit, he thinks.

“Do you really believe I’ll live forever?” she asks.

“Why not? Cellular regeneration. You should be able to survive a nuclear holocaust,” he mutters. “A cockroach can, why shouldn’t we?”

“I’m not a roach.”

“Even better.”

“I don’t like the idea. All I’ve ever wanted is to be normal.”

All Sylar has ever wanted is to be special. The dichotomy amuses him.

“Don’t tell me you were normal before. The perfect cheerleader? Bet you were homecoming queen. No disappearing into the woodwork for you.”

It had been an entirely different experience for him. Gabriel Gray had shuffled through the hallways of his school as a double-pariah. Not only was he a geeky, gangly youth ripe for a beating, but rumour had it that he had tested positive for “special” powers. He was universally hated. The worst part was that he was not really “special.” Whatever result the machine had spit out, Gabriel had no powers, no anything. Bitter disappointment filled most of his waking moments.

Because, he could have been something, someone. He could have been noticed.

“It doesn’t mean I was abnormal,” she counters.

“Oh, no. I mean, because petite, young and beautiful is such an ordinary occurrence,” he replies before he can process the words coherently. It sounds all wrong. Not that he considers her ugly, but he did not intended to shovel it out like that.

Claire chortles. She’s annoying him once more.

“What were you like before?”

“Before what?” he asks, avoiding the question.

“You know, before you started eating people’s brains.”

“Claire, that is disgusting,” he says, a little horrified by her breezy comment.

He thinks of Gabriel Gray in his horrid sweaters and his glasses, standing behind his work table. Hair slicked back and parted. Clean-shaved and dorky.

“Dull,” he finally answers.

Obviously, it’s not enough to satisfy her curiosity. “What did you do for a living?”

“Fixed watches.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“No,” he lies.

He does not want to go into a rant about the exquisite beauty of timepieces, the little store with the crowded shelves, clocks ticking in every corner. How he loved the music of their gears. It made him feel safe, happy.

“What did you do for fun?”

“Listen to records. Read. Really, is this necessary?” he asks, in a sudden bout of anxiety. He grasps the wheel tightly. Calm down.

“It’s just a conversation,” she mutters and then she swears, and he wants to tell her not to swear. Old habits die hard. His mother would have washed that potty mouth with soap.

For a few, precious minutes Claire looks offended and quiet. He is starting to believe they might make it to New York without another session of Inquisition 101 when she’s talking. Again.

“Favourite book?”

“Oh, so you don’t want to know my favourite colour? Because I thought maybe then we could move onto which celebrity I want to marry when I grow up,” he asks sarcasm dripping from his mouth.

“Well excuse me for trying to be nice to you.”

“There is no need for it, Claire Bennet,” he growls.

“Maybe you skipped the chapter on human interaction, but I didn’t. I’m sorry if my chit-chat offends you. I’m sorry if you been waking up on the wrong side of the bed for the last twenty-something years. But I am not going to ride all the way to Oregon with my mouth taped shut.”

“That could be arranged.”

Sylar considers opening the car door and shoving her out the passenger’s side. She’s laughing all of a sudden. He wonders what is so funny. Their eyes lock for a second.

“I was thinking,” she says, stifling her laughter, “that this is eternity. Two immortals bickering inside a car until one of us gets the courage to chop the other one’s head off in their sleep.”

“That makes you laugh?”

“It’s funny. In a morbid kind of way. Best friends forever. Literally. Awfully. When the world ends, we’ll scavenge for twinkies and fight the giant roaches that will dominate the earth.”

“That’s an urban legend. Twinkies can’t survive a nuclear winter. They’d go stale.”

“Then just you and me and the roaches.”

To Claire, it must sound like a horrible fate. To Sylar, it’s not so bad. When he was Gabriel Gray, he had planned on spending his entire existence locked in a repair shop, in the darkness, with nothing but the company of his timepieces. Alone.

As Sylar he thought of collecting powers. People were only interesting for the abilities he could steal from them. Nothing else.

The idea of a world without others does not disturb him. Her lone presence in that world is a splinter in his existence, but it is not such a dire thing. He can think of worse company to spend eternity with. Elle, for one.

Not that he’s spending eternity with anyone. He’s ditching Claire in Vancouver. She knows it. He knows it.

“Madame Bovary,” he says.

“Took you more for a Clockwork Orange kind of man,” she quips. “Maybe a little Camus on the side.”

When he raises an eyebrow at her she looks smug. “They have libraries in Texas,” she says, derailing him with her smile.

If he were younger, if he were Gabriel Gray, it would be easy to stumble into a fallacy of timid friendship and camaraderie. If he were Gabriel Gray he might smile back, shyly. If he were Gabriel Gray he might cup that moment in his mind, like a precious flower.

He’s Sylar. He switches the radio on. Don Giovanni booms around them and drowns out conversation.