Savior.

PG-13. AU. Sylar/Claire.

A man ten times her size would be dead with her blood alcohol level, yet she was still alive, her heart beating fast and strong.

This was her fifteenth suicide attempt and she was running out of ideas. Downing another shot, she decided she needed to visit somebody who wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.

Somebody like Sylar.

She laid down a hundred dollar bill - Angela always gave her too much of an allowance - and staggered to the door of the bar.

“Hey little lady, what are you doing later?”

She ignored the question and made her way out of the bar. The man followed her and grabbed her arms, throwing her against the wall too hard and too fast. He ran off when she slid down, a large blood stain left where her head had hit.

She felt the pain, felt her head putting itself back together. She was helped up and led to a car that she got into without hesitation, she didn’t have to look over at her rescuer to know who it was.

She wondered briefly if Matt was dead.

---

For her thirtieth attempt at suicide, she stepped on a railroad track.

Peter wasn’t there to stop her this time.

Her arms were spread apart and she looked up at the bright New York sky, wondering if this would be the last time she would see it. Her body had to be losing the ability to heal itself by now after so many attempts at death.

She closed her eyes as the train came closer, nobody was going to save her this time, nobody knew she was here. She was supposedly staying late at work, but she’d quit weeks ago when she realized that she’d never age again.

She was forever young, immortal - having a job didn‘t seem all that important any more.

Claire inhaled as the rattling tracks announced the coming of the train; she exhaled when she heard a crash and felt herself being pushed to the ground by an invisible force. On her hands and knees, she watched the train spin in a circle in the air and fall, the oil it was carrying spilling out.

Tearful green eyes watched the process, cursing the man standing on the other side of the tracks, his arms above him like a superhero as he made sure the crashing train didn’t hit her.

He doesn’t look any older than he did five years ago.

She gets into his car silently and they drive for hours, stopping in a field once the gas is gone. They stare in silence, each trying to read the other’s thoughts.

Claire is the first to step out of the car and she is sitting on the hill once he steps out to join her on the windy October morning.

“Stop saving me.”

Her words are lost in the wind.

Their clothes are soon to follow.

---

Leaving wasn’t an option; it was the only thing she could do.

The train wreck made the U.S. government suspicious and they immediately told America that terrorists were among them. Nathan - her own father - began to sell out her people, his people, to be quarantined until further notice.

The rest of America wouldn’t know the goddamned difference, but those with special abilities knew what it meant. They had to kill or be killed; innocence had to be destroyed before it could be taken, enemies had to fight together to stop the government from getting rid of those with special powers for good.

Her family would be safe, she’d been assured, before Nathan - trying to make nice with her - whisked her out of the country and into Paris where she would be staying with Angela.

Her only thought was, ‘I wonder what it’s like to jump off the Eiffel Tower’.

Following the news in the U.S. disgusted her to the point where she eventually just gave up and got herself a tutor.

The man she’d hired had the uncanny ability to transform objects into other objects, such as a pencil into a glass.

When she learned the basics, she fired him. She didn’t want anything to remind her of the past she was trying to forget.

That night, she went to the Eiffel Tower. She climbed fearlessly to the top, telling herself that she had nothing to fear because nothing could ever kill her, she didn’t want to admit to herself that she feared she would stop feeling the pain.

Falling down was wonderful. Her face was numb with a stupid smile that seemed to be painted on. She watched the ground become closer and closer, waiting for the impact.

She saw a man running out of a nearby building when she was yards away from the ground and her smile grew wider.

Waking up, Claire found him standing over her in her bedroom; he held a baseball cap in his hand and with a smile, turned it into a rose. She smiled, the memory of her tutor not coming to her until the next morning.

As she stared at the rose, she realized that she didn’t care.

---

Running away wasn’t hard in a foreign country, especially when nobody knows your name or face. It’s an added bonus that you can’t speak the language, which means you can simply ignore whatever people are saying with the excuse of “I don’t understand you”.

Angela had a small safe in the living room, with the key always left on top of it. It was as if she wanted Claire to run away, and knowing her, she probably did.

Claire wrote her a quick note saying that she loved her and her family before leaving her old life to start a new one.

Alone and unafraid she walked the streets of Paris, unsure of what she would do now. She could go back to America, where it was easy to hide from everyone, or go to England where anybody could hide in the rolling plains.

Stopping in a coffee shop, she sat down and started planning it all out. He sat down next to her, a fake passport and tickets in his hands.

“Let’s go somewhere they can’t find us.”

He doesn’t seem to have any objections to it. Smiling, she picks up her things and walks alongside him in silence. She changes her hair color at a salon to brown. He tells her it makes her look more mature and she gladly accepts the compliment.

When they reach the airport, Claire throws her real passport away and takes the new one, glancing at the name.

She was Regina Taylor now.

“Ready to go?” He asks her as the other passengers start to get on the plane.

She nods, knowing that once she stepped onto the plane there was no turning back, only second chances.

He deserved that, at least. After all, he had saved her life three times.

Well, four if you counted this time.