kiki_miserychic

Title: Cardboard Cinderella
Author:

kiki_miserychic
Fandom: Heroes
Rating: Explicit
Characters/Pairings: Claire/Sylar
Timeline: after volume 4 and continues into the future
Summary: Sylar and Claire break ups over the centuries.
Notes: Written for

aloveaffair in the fic exchange from the "forever is a long time. Sylar/Claire's spectacular break-ups through the centuries. Their fights can be as silly or serious as you'd like" prompt. With thanks for

prettysirenx for the beta. All errors my own.

There was no other way it could have happened. The first time they were together, it had been after years of fighting one another, chasing one another, one turning to chase the other, and hiding out. It was all flashes of skin and tattered clothing, coupled with screams and grunts. It might have happened in an abandoned warehouse, but Claire remembered it as an alley and Sylar remembered the overwhelming smell of pancakes.

They were lying amidst the remains of their clothing until she left. One moment they were alone and a Peter with slicked back hair and a harsh scar gracing his face was there in the next. Peter held his body more stiffly, like barbed wire wrapped around his bones. He moved his arms to slip his black coat around Claire's bare shoulders as they blinked out of time.

~//~

"You only want something when someone else has it." Claire spat the words out of her mouth like they had a bad taste.

"That is not true."

"You can't love me. Not when you can't even love your own mother." Claire whispered the words, wishing they didn't hurt her tongue. A sudden pain blossomed across her jaw from a slap she hadn't seen coming.

"You shut your mouth, Claire, you don't know anything about me or her." Sylar yelled, even as Claire's fist slammed into his left cheekbone. He made no movements to stop her, instead letting her rain punches down on him. He must have passed out because he woke up alone in what looked like a lake of blood and broken teeth.

~//~

"Stop treating me like some cardboard Cinderella and fuck me." Claire ground out from behind her clenched teeth. He wrapped his arms around her rib cage, lifted her off the countertop like she was a small teacup, and slammed her into the cold plastic of the refridgerator. They still had all their clothes on, so she barely felt the coolness against her skin through her sweater as the front of her body cames into contact with the faux metallic surface. She felt the harsh lines of Sylar's body pressing up against her back for a brief few seconds, as if she were anything but a fragile teacup.

"Anything you say, princess." Sylar whispered into the shell of her ear before he pulled her away from the refridgerator and back onto the island in the middle of the kitchen. He roughly tossed her onto the countertop and began to grasp at her jeans in a careless effort to take them off. His fingers dug into the still soft flesh of her hips, leaving angry bruises that rose up and disapate within seconds.

Claire laughed, her newly darkened hair flowing with the sound as she twisted around and swiftly reached for the long knife in the wooden holder. She ran it across Sylar's throat like she was slicing birthday cake. His eyes widened almost comically as his throat poured blood onto her lap. She left him bleeding in what used to her kitchen for the new residents to find unless he recovered from the blood loss before they returned.

~//~

They ate pasta in Italy. He silently lamented that it was never his heritage, while the connection hadn't dawned on her until she asked for Parmesan cheese to sprinkle on top. The server stared at her with his mouth agape and Sylar laughed from deep within his throat, admonishing her lack of cultural understanding when it came to her own neglected history. She stubbornly refused to finish her dish, crossing her arms over his chest. When Sylar had wiped his mouth and drank the last gulp of his red wine, she stood and walked out. She didn't see him for three years until she found him living on anovernight trains running through Europe.

~//~

They'd been living in Paris for nearly two years before things had started to crumble again. They had been living in the 20th district in an apartment on the top floor of a glorious white corner building. It had no working elevator at the time, but they hadn't minded taking the stairs until the second year when everything had become an irritation between them.

"We never have to grow old, Claire, we're going to be this young forever." Sylar declared, his face brightening like he was lit from the inside.

He wrapped his arms around her waist, feeling the faint beat of a third heartbeat between them. It was so quiet that it sounded like the flapping of insect wings, only days old. Claire hadn't known and he hadn't been sure how to tell her yet. Any words he formed in his mind sounded like an invasion of privacy forged from the power he had stolen from Dale the mechanic, so he settled on letting her find out in her own time.

"You just don't want to see me get old and wrinkly." Claire countered as she turned her head to the side and batted her eyelashes like a starlet over her shoulder. She had continued stirring the batter of whatever she was making for dinner. Sylar smiled serenely after having a brief flash of eating pancakes with chopped pecans.

"Perhaps," Sylar admitted, no longer trying to pretend that wasn't a reason. Their conversation was becoming another variation on an argument they had been having for decades. Claire would play at acting upset over how she thought Sylar was only with her because her skin would never sag and her hair would never turn grey. Sylar would feign disinterest, as if the whole thing was beneath him.

"How can you say that? Huh? Why would you say something like that to me? You know who we are- what we are." Claire was yelling, her face became red and her mouth twisted into a snarl.

Sylar stood there, staring. He had known what was going to happen next. He pictured it in his head, her screaming that she would rather cut it out herself than have something inside her that was any part of him. Sylar closed his eyes and listened to her.

~//~

Claire had rearranged the furniture in their apartment for the seventh time that afternoon. Sylar had found it cute the first three times, but had progressively gotten more annoyed with every scrap of wooden legs on hard wood flooring.

"I'm bored," whined Claire. She tried to wiggle into Sylar's lap.

"It'd be endearing if you were a child Claire, but you've passed that age centuries ago." Sylar was beyond caring about the conversation, opting to read his book instead.

Even though neither of them left until weeks later, they both knew it was over and they stayed together out of misplaced fear.

~//~

Things had steadily become intolerable in Prague. The poor waged war with the less poor in all the Czech Republic. Before Claire and Sylar had a chance to leave, a series of bombs destroyed bridges and diverted rivers, making it impossible to escape safely to a neighboring country. Rebels had taken control of all means of escape to trap the villagers within the boarders. They denied the poorest villages food, water, and other supplies in the hopes of the populations dying.

Claire and Sylar had made it to Pruhonice before they had no other choice than to turn around. Once they had returned to their house they set about boarding up the windows and reinforcing it with the metal sheeting they had peeled from a crashed plane they came upon while returning home. The plane had been more like a tin can with a thin shell protecting the passengers.

Claire hadn't blinked an eye as they worked quickly and efficiently to gather the materials. Sylar stood for the first few moments, staring at the mangled bodies and contorted faces, as Claire ripped at the hull. Her fingers had been broken and mended a dozen times before Sylar took steps forward to help. The look on his face could have been mistaken for bittersweet longing, if Claire had bothered to look.

Months were spent hiding away in their reinforced home. They fought and fucked as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening outside. Claire tore away a square of the covering to look at the sky one day. There was a little girl, who looked barely six, sitting on the ground. Her arms were wrapped around her knees as she rocked back and forth. Claire stared at the girl for a few moments before motioning her over with exaggerated arms. Sylar walked behind Claire, already knowing what was going on. The girl was so tiny that the blood soaked white dress shirt that she wore fell below her knees when she stood. Sylar lifted the girl through the opening in the window as if she were nothing more than a handful of flowers. The shirt belonged to her obviously dead father, but no one mentioned it as they ushered her into their hovel of a home.

Sylar's arms formed a protective cage around the girl, who shied away from Claire's inquistive gaze. Feeling unneeded, Claire went to heat water for a bath to wash away the layers of ash and dirt from the girl. Claire wanted to get away from the girl's flat, empty eyes and the way they pleaded for help more than anything.

They rarely ate by then, not needing it and forgetting the urge. It was the first time in a long time that they stocked their cupboards full of food to satisfy a hungry little girl. Sylar took to scavenging through the desolate landscape, coming back with dead Western Roe deer and elk, which tasted far richer than any meat Claire had eaten. The girl kept quiet for the most part. The loudest sound she made was when she chewed on a piece of well cooked leg.

The girl continued to refuse any other clothes than the ones she came to them in. Claire thought it was sad and rather disgusting that the girl walked around in a shirt covered in her father's blood, but Sylar didn't mind. It was months before the girl would write her name out in the dirt near the side of their home. Claire thought she was drawing pictures until Sylar sat beside her and said that Milena was a beautiful name for a beautiful girl. The sound of a machine guns had Sylar carrying the child into the house, leaving Claire to indulge in what little time they spent outside. The sounds of fighting and murder could be heard almost constantly, keeping them inside.

The outside was quiet for more than two days before they ventured more than a few feet from the house. Two days after that they were half way into Poland before the heavy air of war lifted. Sylar uncurled Milena from Claire's arms and continued walking forward with the small girl asleep in his arms. Claire stood there, staring up at the bright sky. Sylar kept walking, knowing that Claire would follow him eventually. It didn't matter if it took minutes or decades because it would happen.