Sorry for the delayed update, guys. I've been caught up with RL stuff (and going back to school never brings a good feeling after a three-month holiday). This is it. The final chapter. Yup.
Chapter 15
"I won!" Claire's arms lifted in the air as soon as she finished rounding up her Scrabble scores.
"Indeed you did," came the misleadingly solemn reply. "Felicitations," he added in sincerity, before carelessly letting his head hit the pillows and looked up at Claire. She set the paper and pencil on the nightstand before crawling back on the bed next to Gabriel, hovering over him with a cynical expression etched on her face. "You didn't let me win on purpose, did you?"
He lifted one arm above his head and reached out with another to touch Claire's face. "Why would I?" he snickered. "You've proven to be the better player. I did not see 'crwth' coming. That word won the game for you."
Strands of Claire's hair fell from her face, the tips tickling Gabriel's cheeks. "You know what this means, right?" she raised one eyebrow, which caused him to do the same. "Yes, I do. I will have to make breakfast tomorrow. Waffles for Wednesdays," he grinned sheepishly, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He closed his eyes then, letting his vision fade to black, with occasional stripes of green and circles of yellow popping by to say hello. He did not see Claire studying his serene features while he drifted to a light sleep. A question from Claire made his eyelids flutter open.
"Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?"
His surprise was obvious. In his eyes, on his face, from his body language. "Are you feverish?"
She immediately threw her head back and laughed. "No. No I'm not," she shook her head as she wiped unexpected tears pooling in her eyes. "I just can't believe that this is really, really happening, you know? Me, you, this baby in my belly..."
He slid up and rested his back on the headboard, chuckling. "You mean, Noah."
Claire giggled again, just when she thought she had stopped laughing. "Yeah," she sniffed. "Noah. I can't believe that you agreed with that name. I'm barely into my second trimester." There was invisible weight in her words, like the toll of a thousand bells, perceptively reminding them of their future responsibilities.
The laughter and sheepish grins were gone now, leaving an air of heavy anticipation.
"I just can't help but think about how lucky we are, you know? I mean, look at where we started five years ago. You were a Research Director at MIT. I was a Harvard law student," Claire reminisced, sliding her fingers between his, completing a perfect puzzle. "Look at where we're now. We're a pair of secret agents, trying to find people like us. Saving them from themselves, saving lives...saving the world."
He brought their joined hands to his mouth, his thumb toying with the cold metal encircling her ring finger and fiddled with the rock connected to it. "For a second there you sound exactly like Peter," he kissed the back of her hand. "Your fathers. Nathan and Noah. They are doing wonderfully at keeping the peace between people like us and the normal people out there. The social stigma will remain for now and that is inevitable, but in time, who knows. Maybe you and I? We will live long enough to see a change," he declared before unclasping their hands, only to pepper more kisses on the pads of her fingers, on the crease of her palm. "But it has to begin here. Who else could move it forward if not the President himself?"
She drew in a deep breath, both from his words and from the attention he was giving to her small, but highly sensitive hand. "My dad," she gulped as his mouth moved southwards to her wrist and sucked the skin where her radial pulse was located.
"I can't stop thinking about Stephen Canfield," she blurted suddenly. Talk about timing and turn-offs. Flabbergasted, Gabriel lifted his head up and perplexedly stared at her. "The man we brought in today for vacuuming his neighbour into a vortex after a fight over a lawnmower," he summarised, without even stopping for breath.
"He didn't mean to do it," she defended. "It was an accident. He didn't know how to control his ability yet."
"I know."
"Do you think they'll let him go?"
"It's up to Noah and or Angela now, is it not?"
"Do you think we can convince them to let him go? Stephen Canfield is not a murderer," she argued, her eyes widened with hope.
Gabriel bit his lip. "Technically he is a murderer, but I see your point."
"It's just that he's got no one to talk it through with. He's alone and confused and shunned...he doesn't have what we have. He deserves better, a family who understands," Claire's back straightened, driving her point home with full focus.
Gabriel mulled over a new train of thought, one that had been clawing at him since the Canfield takeout. "When I grabbed him; touched him, I could feel his sorrow..." he confessed, "...his regret after killing an innocent man. Somehow that feeling was oddly familiar to me, although I have never experienced it directly." His gaze was so intense; it could set her off on a blaze of wildfire.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked.
"Claire," he ran a hand through his hair, "If I were a murderer with that same amount of regret and shame and guilt...if not more, would you still accept me? Would you forgive me the way you forgave Stephen Canfield?"
"Well, have you murdered someone?" Even Claire was surprised at her own nonchalance, but Gabriel's 'what the heck?' look negated it all.
A big, fat, no.
She had never missed seeing Gabriel in action – she was his partner, and he had never taken a life in front of her. Various villainous, uncooperative fugitives who had misused their abilities for vice were tossed to the walls like flies, before being left in a locked-in state – all thanks to Gabriel's overpowering telekinetic ability. There was always a hunger in him to figure out how different abilities work, but that was always obtained without shedding any blood. Even then, he rarely ever did it unless he really needed to.
"Probably I would. But only if you don't try to kill me first," she finally answered, earning her a weak smile from him. It was her turn to stare. "Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked back.
She shrugged. "No, it's just that...ever since my grandma fed you with that woman's ability – what's her name?"
"Bridget?"
"Bridget's ability–"
"Clairsentience—," he offered, before she snorted –
"I like the way the word feels on my tongue. Sorry," he forced himself not to leer lasciviously.
"Too bad the word is too long for Scrabble?"
"Yes. Um," he awkwardly gazed skywards, before losing himself in an unassailable grin. "You were saying?"
Claire chortled again, breathing hard and becoming red-faced before she could convey her thoughts eloquently. Once she pulled herself together, they became gravely serious again. "You've become more sensitive to everything that you touch," she sighed. "To your environment...and it isn't just some cerebral process anymore, it's...something else."
"You do not like it," he attested.
"No. I love it! I do. I just wonder what's going in your head when you touch stuff. You become so absorbed and intent and full of concentration."
"I'm touching your shirt now," Gabriel told her as a hand slid up her clothed back, caressing down her spine, giving her a delicious chill. "Do you want to know what's going on in my head?"
Her breath caught. She didn't expect him to be sneakily subversive in a split second. "Yes, please."
"A myriad of salacious, indecent things involving you and me. I do not even know where to begin," he groaned and nipped at the tip of her ear.
"I can imagine," was all she could manage, albeit shakily. His hand slid under her shirt to finally connect with her skin, and he gasped. "What's that telling you?"
"It remembers the first time I touched you here," he replied hazily, his fingertips tracing – no, counting her ribs from the bottom up. Then a pause, when he succeeded in palpating her apex beat under the swell of her right breast. "Here it yearns to be touched again," he quipped, while his left hand travelled to her the flat of her stomach.
"Oh," he breathed.
"What? Why?" she panicked.
"I think little Noah here is impatient to wait for another five months," he smirked as he continued to rub her tummy in circles, feeling bold enough to dip one, maybe two teasing fingers under the waistband of her sweatpants.
"Really?"
"Have I ever lied to you, Claire?"
She shook her head diffidently before his fingers reached up to her chin, gently parting her lips with his thumb. By instinct, she closed her mouth around his thumb as her tongue flicked across the pad of his thumb, biting slightly with her teeth and sucked fervently on the digit as if she was a toddler. Her lips parted again as she drew in breath, while Gabriel finally found his voice.
"So many others had kissed you here. But those were all faint, irrelevant memories," he growled as she began to kiss the tips of each finger, deliberately taking her time with each one. "There's only–,"
"...you," she finished for him. No tingle. He didn't need the lie-detecting ability to know it was true. He could feel it crawling under his skin, and the sensation was not a negative one. When his lips touched hers, it sealed everything.
As long as we stay together, we're untouchable. You and I.
"Hey, Claire. Look at where we are now," he murmured between kisses. "We're together."
Us.
--
Gabriel woke up particularly early the next morning, all because of the waffles. Claire was still sound asleep when he finished showering and today was their day off. Life was certainly different after leaving Massachusetts. From a 9-to-5 man at MIT, he was now one of the Company's top agents – up there along with Peter and Claire – because they were simply indispensable.
It was rather jocular that he and Peter were indeed destined to become interrogators for the Company.
Months after leaving MIT, Suresh followed suit. Not recruited as a field agent per se, but as a scientist who was given the primary responsibility to find a cure to eliminate abilities from those who didn't want them. His resolve was probably strengthened by the fact that Maya Herrera was one of those people.
Then there had been the Noah Bennet conundrum three years ago. Noah's confession that he had known all along about people with abilities and Claire's imminent 'immortality' was not received well. "That was how you survived the fire," Noah had said. He had kept it a secret because Angela had asked him to. Claire went on a rebellious rampage for a while, which was also the crucial event that had determined her career path – she was done with being led around like a dumb sheep; that for once she wanted to be a wolf. Go straight in for the kill.
It was her idea of getting back at Angela and Noah, whose initial intentions were only to protect her. Claire had declared an ultimatum – one which was delivered with such rampant tenacity that neither Noah nor Angela could rebuff. Claire wanted to leave her mundane life as a mundane attorney and join Peter and Gabriel. Either that, or join Hiro and Ando in Japan, running off across Asia like some kind of a reckless renegade.
Claire had sported a brunette look for two months just to distinguish herself from Elle. She dyed her hair back to blonde after her third assignment; after her anger had dissipated. Seeing other people with abilities had that effect on her - making her sit down and think and not make rash decisions. A most recent example would be the Stephen Canfield case, of course.
Gabriel walked downstairs to the kitchen, catching a glimpse of a framed photo – the one where he yawned at the Petrelli Christmas event. He chuckled at it still, even now. The photo he took of Claire with the squirrels was framed next to it. How apt.
Harold was already up at such an ungodly hour, which was a curious behaviour. Nuzzling his nose at Gabriel's feet, the cat looked up at him as though he was confused. And then Harold sped off frantically out from the kitchen, probably to go hide under the sofa somewhere in the living room. He even knocked down his milk bowl, bless his soul.
Gabriel twirled around to the counter.
And then he saw it.
A broken watch on the kitchen top.
Sylar.
Instinctively, Gabriel closed his eyes and clenched his fists in a self-punishing grip. He opened his eyes again and saw the timepiece still sitting stubbornly, as dead as the clock hands were too paralysed to move.
This would be the final test then, if he were really to be tested. Everything he had been through, it was for this moment. It would be the final answer that he needed to resolve his inner turmoil. So he reached out and touched it without hesitance.
As simple as that.
The images that were strewn on the floor of his mind were nothing like he'd ever seen before. He had imagined it before, in Technicolor, but the visual feed received from his clairsentience ability was more vivid.
Blood. Brains.
The Oval Office.
Torture. Screams.
Mohinder on the ceiling.
Peter going nuclear at Kirby Plaza.
Angela Petrelli claiming to be his mother.
The noise Nathan made when his throat was slit.
Noah Bennet standing against a wall with a large '5' painted on it.
Claire in a cheerleader outfit, running for her life on her homecoming night.
Claire on the carpeted floor, her skull cap gone. A pair of hands – his hands, probing her exposed brain.
Claire next to him as he enjoyed a glass of pinot; sharing an insightful conversation about what they'd like to do to each other.
Claire hated him.
But that was another life.
"Gabriel?" Her voice gave him a startle. It seemed that she just came out from the shower. Her wet hair was plastered on the sides of her face, making her look as if someone had just poured golden syrup over her head. Clutching the broken watch in his fist, he managed a smile. "Good morning, Claire."
"Morning. How are the waffles coming?" she winked.
"Just about to make them," he replied. "You are proving to be rather impatient."
Claire made a face as if she was hurt, before responding with an "I'm curious about your masterful culinary skills, Mr Gray."
This time, Gabriel's smile was genuine. "Would you like to see the chef at work then, Mrs Gray?" he asked as he began to put on his apron.
"Yes please, Mr Gray," she grinned as she took a seat at the counter. Gabriel did not move an inch from where he was standing. Instead, he stood there in that apron and gazed at her, a quaint smile decorating his face.
"Claire, I have something to tell you."
She stared back, worried.
"I love you, Claire." It was easier this time around. Natural. He meant every word. Spoken with real emotion.
Claire blinked. Several congruent heartbeats shared between the two of them before she finally spoke. "I love you too, Gabriel. I want to spend forever with you."
That was all he needed to hear before crushing the watch in a merciless grip, destroying every last memory it held of Sylar. It was the best decision he'd ever made.
In another life, in another time, Sylar may exist. In this one, he was nothing but Gabriel Gray.
But he had everything.
Thank you, Sylar. Wherever you are.
--
Sylar touched his now naked wrist; a distinct, paler stripe was visible on an otherwise pale-enough left arm. "Don't thank me," he shrugged. "Thank yourself," he murmured to himself, before kneeling down to coax a creature from hiding under the table. "Right, Mr. Muggles?" The fuzzy dog barked in agreement. Harold rumbled from underneath the Pomeranian, clawing at the larger mammal in a sense of camaraderie.
Claire was all smiles and sweet, with a sunny disposition -- a far cry from the Claire he left in the other future. A fair-haired boy held her hand as they made their way down the stairs, enthusiastically screaming, "Dad! You're home!"
"Where'd you go, Gabriel?" she asked worriedly. "We missed you."
Something tugged in Sylar's heart, an intangible feeling he had never experienced before. But it felt oddly familiar. As if he had harboured this feeling for years, although it was his first chance at living in this new reality.
Love.
He knelt down to hug Noah and received a surprise kiss on his cheek, before ruffling the boy's hair. Even these movements were perfectly coordinated; part of an everyday routine he would never be bored of. Overwhelmed, he stood up again and pulled Claire tenderly into his arms, breathing in the soft scent of her hair.
"I've always been here, Claire," he murmured. "Always will be."
Claire hugged him back, before pulling him down for a kiss.
His life was finally complete, this way.
Love will stay.
-end-
A/N: Yes, folks. That's the end of this fic. Thank you for your support for all this while. I wouldn't have been able to finish this without you cheering me on. I hope I'll be able to write more Sylar/Claire or Gabriel/Claire from now on. I've got a plot bunny in mind (which could be pretty much a sequel to a one-shot fic of mine, titled The Fatal Flaw), but RL stuff always gets in the way and it depresses me.
Anyway. Enough with the rant. I hope you'll like this ending. Um. Yeah. It's a bit short (the shortest chapter in the whole fic, in fact), but, eh. I think it's about the right length. :)
See you next time, then?