AN: This was the first piece of Heroes fanfiction I wrote. I'd wanted a Sylar/Claire piece. I got more of a somewhat introspective character sketch for Claire. Takes place in Season 3, "The Second Coming." So, spoiler warning if you haven't seen that episode.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

The only sounds in the room are his deep sighs, the slick soft swish of fingers across moist tissues.

She can feel his breath trickle along her ear when he leans in close—lost in his examination—and smell the mellow scent of him: subtle spicy soap, ocean air, clean sweat. Mingling with that is the smell of bitter-copper, her blood on his hands.

When he speaks—words she has trouble focusing on—something deep inside her clenches; his voice seems meant for tangled sheets in warm dark rooms; her nipples harden beneath the thin fabric of her shirt and a hot tendril of shame curls around the fear in the pit of her belly, despite her telling herself it's purely involuntary (right up there with the twitching fingers and the nerves jumping in her right calf) caused by fear and forced stimulus.

She's no stranger to that kind of sensation... She's kissed boys before, of course. And participated in some strictly above the clothes, above the waist attention.

But she's never gone any further than that.

Not because of some misguided belief in love or romance or that stupid "save it for marriage" campaign they got at Union Hills.

But because she's always been slightly terrified at the thought of being that close to another person; stripped down to your most vulnerable, just a collection of human puzzle parts waiting to be fitted together in the right order.

And she knows, maybe not from personal experience, but from watching the relationships she's seen around her, that if someone knows you well enough, if they get close enough, they'll know just how to break you apart so that you'll never quite fit together again. Not like you used to.

And she's never found someone with whom she's been willing to take a chance on being that vulnerable, that exposed.

But now? Lying here, on her mother's coffee table, the top of her skull removed, and his fingers slipping across her brain, his voice causing an array of strange reactions in her body, she knows she can't possibly be more exposed, more broken apart than this.

And she regrets not finding someone to be vulnerable with. Regrets not taking West up on what he'd been offering.

At least that would have been her choice. Maybe that would have prepared her—

"There it is."

The triumphant lilt in his voice startles her, makes the twitching in her fingers, her eyelids, grow suddenly worse.

And she listens to him press his fingers once more against the meat of her brain; listens to his sigh of success, followed by the low, purring grunt as he pulls the knife from his chest and lets it clatter to the ground; listens to the swish of fabric as he steps around the table, cleaning his hands on one of her mother's best dish towels.

And she thinks this is it.

She doesn't expect him to lift the top of her skull from the floor where he'd let it fall, slide it gently back onto her head, fitting it into place as if she were a jack o'lantern.

Doesn't expect the almost tender response when she calls out to him, asks him if he isn't going to kill her.

(You are not like the others. You can never die.

And now, I guess...neither can I.)

Certainly doesn't expect the warm brush of air that strokes her cheek like a caress.

Or the still intense, still hungry look he brands her with before turning and walking out the door.

She doesn't know how long she sits there trying to piece herself back together.

~End~