Claire Winchester (née Bennet) (regenerating) wrote in parabolical, @ 2009-10-01 05:23:00 |
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Entry tags: | claire bennet (future), dean winchester |
WHO: Claire Bennet, Dean Winchester.
WHERE: various places; Winchester & co
WHEN: Saturday, September 30, 2006/Sunday, October 1, 2006; late night through the next morning
WHAT: Claire finally finds out how many times she really can break before she shatters.
RATING: R, for violence and disturbing themes
STATUS: narrative/thread; COMPLETE
She'd taken it all, up until now. The future Anya told about, Claire's worst nightmare, had been taken and processed with a hollow, numbed stance, once that had held all night two nights ago, until she'd finally cracked and let go over everything against Dean's chest. The possibility of future children, something that should have been so joyous, only terrified her with all the painful what ifs of what she could have passed on if Ben was hiding something other than a father-daughter secret, and eventually that too had been shared with Dean last night. Neither event had crippled her, and each had made her stronger with her resolve. The first, that the future would never come to pass. The second, that she would find the truth and she would face it. But with Sylar's arrival, the moment she'd seen on the boards that it was Sylar and not Gabriel, she snapped. It should have been white-hot rage, that passionate, argumentative, combative fury that burned so hot in her so often, the proof that as freakish as she felt sometimes, there was still the well of humanity in her that other people had. But it hadn't been that. It had been cold, calm, calculated anger and thoughts of torture and all the nightmares she woke up screaming from now reshaping themselves in her mind as a means to an end. The nightmares were of what Alastair had done, not Sylar, but now it was no longer so separate when one could be the means for punishing the other. Her pain could be her weapon, her experiences her guide, and the torture she'd lived through the torture she'd inflict. Sylar would pay, in all the ways and tricks she'd use for herself, then in all the ways and tricks she'd give to her sister to add to her own, so they would both have their pound of flesh. And it hadn't even scared her, thinking that. It was only a voice in her head saying she should find this wrong and too painful to do and a hundred other reasons to not contemplate what she was indeed contemplating that had send her fleeing from her own house, out into the night, out into the city that Sylar was now inhabiting. She hadn't told Dean, nothing more than a brief text to say she was going out before putting her phone on silent and jamming it into a back pocket. He'd be angry, he'd be upset, and later she'd do everything to get him to forgive her going off like this, but right now, all she could think about was the change inside her, that with a few moments' feeling that she shouldn't be near anyone, not her family, not her friends, not the people from the future and, most of all, not near Dean. Not near him where what was in her would taint his progress. A few short comments on the boards had told her what this was waking up in him. She wouldn't let it. She left the house on foot, ignoring any other forms of transportation. She'd walk, just walk and walk, quite and alone. But the solitude and silence outside her was no reflection of the noise within her. She felt so cold. It wasn't winter cold in the city and she was dressed warmly; the cold wasn't on the outside. It was inside, deep down, wrapping itself around her stomach and heart. She couldn't feel anything from the inside to her skin, but she could feel the cold of the wind on her cheek, a feeling that would be a stinging cold to someone else. Was this the reverse of what her sister felt? No pain to the skin, but pain of the non-physical kind from there to her core? Claire didn't know. Normally, she felt some pain – less now than years ago – outside and felt emotions inside, sometimes the feelings inside so big that they were painful. But numb inside, that was rare. And it was all Sylar's fault. Her motives for wanting Sylar to suffer weren't pure and unselfish. She could tell the world that she wanted Sylar to pay for all the lives he'd taken, and she could mean it, but it was more true that she meant the lives of those she loved and could have loved. Her family, her friends, her life, their lives. It was most true, though, that she wanted him to pay for her pain. He'd not only taken away what she'd had, he'd killed the potential for all the relationships she'd once had or still had with those people here. Sylar had pretended to be Nathan and gained Parkman's loyalty and then sent Parkman to her father to find her. Sylar had murdered her father. She wanted him to pay for that pain too, individually and deeply, because it was one that would never again ease, not with Noah not here. That this wasn't even the Sylar of her future didn't matter. Even if he hadn't arrived and announced he'd murdered Nathan, she still would have felt this way. That he'd killed Nathan just gave her more proof in her mind that he would have made her future, even without the explosion. He was a monster and there was nothing that changed that. She wandered the city, following no path, crossing over patrol lines that weren't hers, and even stopped to take care of a vampire or two. She might have left the house with no vehicle, but she hadn't left unprepared. Not that it mattered, since she'd heal from anything that happened to her, and thoughts of the things that could happen besides a vampire bite didn't even enter her head. She knew she shouldn't be patrolling solo. Faith would be pissed. Dean would be pissed. She just couldn't find the feeling that would make her turn around and go home. The third vampire she encountered, she didn't immediately fight off. She let it bite, let it feed until it let go of her sharply and that was when she drove, not a stake, but a knife into the gut of the creature. The now human-ish creature, her blood racing through its deadened body, giving it a heartbeat for just a short time more. It was human, but souless. It was alive, but it was dead inside, except for what her ability was animating. It was Sylar. It took a minute and a half to gut it while it screamed, then three seconds to kill it completely with the knife through the heart, moving the knife in the way Alastair had done to her. He hadn't wanted to teach her to become a student; the lesson he'd tried to teach was one she hadn't accepted, to make her desert the Winchesters, but she had learned, because she could never forget every last thing she'd been conscious for, what Hell's worst tricks were. It deserved to die. Sylar deserved to die. But killing a human-turned vampire had been a swift mercy in the past, a means to an end with the bands of dracu-vamps. It wasn't the routine of a patrol, because vamps turned to dust easily after the fight that wasn't so easy. The were dangerous creatures, creatures to be feared for the murders they committed, creatures with abilities beyond the human extent of speed and strength and more. They were Sylar. But it wasn't Sylar's blood on her hands when she pushed the dead body away and it fell to the ground. Are wiping her knife on the dead human-vampire's pantleg, she looked at her hands. Why had she done it? It wasn't necessary. In fact, killing a human was harder, messier, more difficult to walk away from because there was a body. Once, she'd thrown up about killing a person, and even then, that shot had been fired in defense of a child. There had been no need to let it bite her. Because dusting was too quick, too painless. And the thought was right. It wasn't Sylar. But it was only the start of what she wanted to do to Sylar. She didn't care what it said about her that she would be the torturer and executioner. That not caring was her fuel as she walked away from the alley after setting fire to the corpse, kept her moving as she found a place to wipe the blood off her hands and went in a direction to which she didn't even pay attention. That not caring didn't stop her from eventually sliding to the ground to sob, but the sobs didn't even make the feeling to go home come back, because they were dry and shallow, not deep and tearful. He'd broken her. She didn't want to be that way, she wanted to shake it off. But she still wanted him held down and feeling the pain for all of it, by her hand. He was a monster, and monsters didn't deserve a clean kill. The moral high ground was to give them one, to be a better person, but she didn't want the fucking moral high ground. She wanted that worthless excuse for life to pay. Sylar had broken her life for five years, had broken her sister, and now, without even touching her, just by being here too soon atop all the rest, he'd shattered something in Claire that she had no idea how to heal. |