Fic: Unsingable Name (Heroes)
They still seem foreign to him. Echoing tile, the hint of disinfectant pressing against the distant calls of the intercom for dominance of the air - Paging Dr. Lee. Paging Dr. Lee. A bored nurse taps her pencil against a clipboard.
Mohinder’s hand drifts; he settles it beneath his coat, near the pocket of his jeans.
“Gabriel Gray,” he says, breaking the nurse’s reverie.
“Um,” and she flips a few pieces of paper. “304.”
Mohinder nods, unwilling to speak. His tongue might twist out of control, telegraph his intentions, and that could only end in disaster.
This will be the sixth time Mohinder tries to kill Sylar. The sixth, and the last.
- - - -
The fourth time is the hardest.
Nothing works. Nothing works. Sylar beats him at every turn, anticipates the moves Mohinder barely dares to make with an effortless ease Mohinder can’t hope to match. Always one and a half steps ahead.
The only thing that keeps Mohinder going - the idea, the notion that someday, someday -
He backs Sylar to the edge of the skyscraper’s roof, the gun eager in his hand (five pounds of pressure and Sylar is dead), the thunderstorm howling and screaming in the sky above.
“It’s always drugs with you, Mohinder, isn’t it?” Sylar is haggard, and his form is spider-black against the night sky.
“That’s how I fight.” Mohinder levels the gun, straight at Sylar’s chest.
“You can’t win!” calls Sylar. “Even if you kill me, you lose. You’ve become what you hate.”
“I don’t care.”
“That would make it easier, wouldn’t it?”
Something in the eyes, Mohinder tells himself later. It was distracting, that’s all. He could have fired sooner.
As it was, by the time he pulled the trigger, Sylar had already vanished.
- - - -
It doesn’t take Sylar long to find where Mohinder is sensitive.
Emotionally, the same strings start to stretch, start to heal. Sylar needs a new tactic to bind Mohinder close, and he finds it.
The first kiss is war-torn, star-crossed. Doomed from the second they touch, and Sylar doesn’t want to pull away. He finds magic in Mohinder’s touch, a kind of redemption in the pliant tenderness just afterward.
When Sylar makes his escape, Mohinder’s cheeks are dotted with tears.
This is the aftermath of the third attempt.
- - - -
The second time is the first time Mohinder fights back.
A jab, quick and cruel, to the scar in Sylar’s chest. Sylar nearly doubles over in pain, and Mohinder slips past him, just an instant too slow. The vial is nearly in his hands (break it, break it over his skin, cut him open, hurt him) when Sylar slams him back against the desk, his eyes dark and clouded.
“Give me the list,” Sylar hisses, in fury.
“Never,” snaps Mohinder, and it strikes him, then, how evenly matched they are, in the ways that matter.
- - - -
The fifth time, it’s almost comfortable.
Mohinder tracks Sylar to Seattle, to a bloody apartment on the twenty-third floor. There’s no body that Mohinder can find, but the room speaks for itself.
Sylar pins Mohinder to the wall, cruel fingers cutting into softer flesh, tongue into a willing mouth, wild, but Mohinder surrounds it, tames it, makes the kiss his even as Sylar draws red-hot lines up Mohinder’s back, the blood welling slow and thick, even as Mohinder’s legs open under Sylar’s touch.
It spells need, simple and devastating. Need for the flex of Mohinder’s muscles against an invisible grip, need for the scrape of Sylar’s seldom-shaved cheek against chocolate skin.
Sylar knows how, by now. Mohinder doesn’t like pain, not where it counts. He demands a kind of respect for his body, in the reluctance of his submission. In the fire of his eyes. Sylar licks nipples just a shade too warm, catches protesting hands in his own. Doesn’t even use the edge of a nail, the hint of teeth. He just soothes the delicate flesh, and eventually Mohinder doesn’t fight him but sighs against it, limbs open in what Sylar chooses to see as welcome.
A whisper, an entreaty against Mohinder’s neck, but it isn’t heard - isn’t acknowledged. Sylar stretches Mohinder open, always just a little deeper, until Mohinder moans, squirms, presses against Sylar. His own signal for more.
Sylar will never have enough of being inside Mohinder. That first moment, the tremor of penetration, the desperation Mohinder chokes away - then the heat, the stark, bold feel of Mohinder’s lust, the sound of Mohinder’s heart thrumming through Sylar’s body.
And the feel of Mohinder’s orgasm, when he’s gasping, clutching at Sylar -
Sylar counts the minutes, after Mohinder curls into his arms. Ten minutes, forty-seven seconds, and the knife is in Mohinder’s hand.
Just barely enough time to catch it, twist Mohinder’s wrist, but it scores along Sylar’s chest anyhow, shallow and long.
Mohinder doesn’t strike as fast as he could have; he expects Sylar to stop him, and Sylar comforts himself with that. The knowledge that Mohinder only fights because he believes he should.
- - - -
“I’ve found you.”
Sylar stirs sleepily, against the straps clasping his wrists to the hospital bed. He jerks awake when he sees the syringe in Mohinder’s hand.
“You always do,” says Sylar. His heart thuds in his chest, and he thinks maybe - maybe there’s no way out, this time.
- - - -
The first time, there’s something so human between them, something deep and lasting and so foreign to Sylar, to Gabriel Gray, that he doesn’t know enough to see it when it happens.
He gloats, when he stops the bullet. A defeat of cleverness against overconfidence. And he resolves to kill Mohinder.
It’s only later that he’s hopelessly, helplessly grateful that he never got the chance.
- - - -
The third time, Mohinder brings an entire building down on Sylar.
Well-placed explosives, an elaborate trap. Sylar is sealed in the basement, crushed under the rubble. It’s all so impersonal, and Mohinder breaks, a little, when the stone and brick and concrete collapse. He stares at the building site for long minutes, the only sound in his ears the ticking of his watch.
At his apartment, afterwards, Sylar slips out of the shadows and kisses Mohinder, swift and long and all Mohinder can think is alive, he’s alive. At that moment, the scales are even. Mohinder’s betrayal against Sylar’s betrayal, Mohinder’s revenge against Sylar’s crimes - so very equal that it’s not so hard to accept the touch he knows he shouldn’t want.
Mohinder sleeps alone. He wakes up alone.
Next time, he resolves, Sylar will die.
- - - -
When the tip of the syringe brushes against Sylar’s skin, he flinches away, in reflex. But he doesn’t fight.
Mohinder hesitates, torn.
Sylar lifts his eyes. “What is it?”
“I suppose,” and Mohinder stops. “I keep expecting you to stop me.”
“Maybe I don’t want to stop you anymore.”
- - - -
Sylar leaves Mohinder bound against the headboard of the bed. The knife, on the sheets beside him, is still beaded with a trace of Sylar’s blood. Mohinder wriggles free, eventually, and he wonders if he should regret.
- - - -
It’s almost a routine. Sylar finds it easier and easier to dodge Mohinder’s attempts at killing him, every time. Sickening, almost, the frailty of Mohinder’s efforts. He’s clever, intelligent, but he’s not used to this, and it shows. He’s not ruthless enough.
And so Sylar wins, every time.
- - - -
“There’s no forgiveness for what you’ve done.”
Sylar turns his head into the pillow. “I know,” he breathes.
Mohinder’s hand cups Sylar’s cheek, and it burns, sharper than a brand. “I could never love you,” Mohinder manages, a tremor in his voice. “I need you and I hate you and it’s killing me.”
“I know,” Sylar repeats, because he does. He does. And he’s fought it, with everything he has, but it’s not enough. “I just want to know,” he says, “where it was that I went wrong.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mohinder whispers.
“I don’t want to die alone,” pleads Sylar. “Please don’t make me die alone.”
Mohinder closes his eyes.
The needle makes Sylar jerk, a useless twitch against the inevitability of his own fate. He fancies that he can feel the fluid sliding between vein and muscle, lighting him up, spreading death with every heartbeat.
Mohinder’s fingers entwine with his, and Sylar realizes the pillow is damp, under his eyes.
He doesn’t fight it when his breathing slows, when his muscles grow sluggish and cold. Not until -
“I’ll do better,” he slurs, in a last rally against the oncoming darkness.
“What?”
“In the next life.” His eyes are so heavy, he could just sleep, right now. “I’ll do better.”
“Me too,” murmurs Mohinder. He makes a strange, choked kind of noise. “I’ll see you there.”
- - - -
Mohinder can’t see straight. He doesn’t try, after a while, just lets his eyes blur, lets his surroundings blend into a whirl of black and white. What does he care? The most important part of his life is gone.
He doesn’t know how far he walks, how many streets. He’s aimless, wandering.
Eventually, he stops, on cold, stone steps. The second syringe feels too warm in his pocket. Why did he have two? It only takes one…
I’ll do better.
The metal tip gets cold fast, when Mohinder exposes it to the air. He finds the vein quick and true - maybe it’s the cold, maybe it’s just that he’s numb already, but the needle doesn’t hurt as much as it should.
I don’t want to die alone.
Mohinder curls against brick and stone, more alone than he’s ever been in his life.
Next time, he promises himself, I won’t die alone. He thinks of Sylar, and he hopes.
They find his body the next morning, the syringe empty and abandoned on the frozen ground.
Mohinder’s hand drifts; he settles it beneath his coat, near the pocket of his jeans.
“Gabriel Gray,” he says, breaking the nurse’s reverie.
“Um,” and she flips a few pieces of paper. “304.”
Mohinder nods, unwilling to speak. His tongue might twist out of control, telegraph his intentions, and that could only end in disaster.
This will be the sixth time Mohinder tries to kill Sylar. The sixth, and the last.
- - - -
The fourth time is the hardest.
Nothing works. Nothing works. Sylar beats him at every turn, anticipates the moves Mohinder barely dares to make with an effortless ease Mohinder can’t hope to match. Always one and a half steps ahead.
The only thing that keeps Mohinder going - the idea, the notion that someday, someday -
He backs Sylar to the edge of the skyscraper’s roof, the gun eager in his hand (five pounds of pressure and Sylar is dead), the thunderstorm howling and screaming in the sky above.
“It’s always drugs with you, Mohinder, isn’t it?” Sylar is haggard, and his form is spider-black against the night sky.
“That’s how I fight.” Mohinder levels the gun, straight at Sylar’s chest.
“You can’t win!” calls Sylar. “Even if you kill me, you lose. You’ve become what you hate.”
“I don’t care.”
“That would make it easier, wouldn’t it?”
Something in the eyes, Mohinder tells himself later. It was distracting, that’s all. He could have fired sooner.
As it was, by the time he pulled the trigger, Sylar had already vanished.
- - - -
It doesn’t take Sylar long to find where Mohinder is sensitive.
Emotionally, the same strings start to stretch, start to heal. Sylar needs a new tactic to bind Mohinder close, and he finds it.
The first kiss is war-torn, star-crossed. Doomed from the second they touch, and Sylar doesn’t want to pull away. He finds magic in Mohinder’s touch, a kind of redemption in the pliant tenderness just afterward.
When Sylar makes his escape, Mohinder’s cheeks are dotted with tears.
This is the aftermath of the third attempt.
- - - -
The second time is the first time Mohinder fights back.
A jab, quick and cruel, to the scar in Sylar’s chest. Sylar nearly doubles over in pain, and Mohinder slips past him, just an instant too slow. The vial is nearly in his hands (break it, break it over his skin, cut him open, hurt him) when Sylar slams him back against the desk, his eyes dark and clouded.
“Give me the list,” Sylar hisses, in fury.
“Never,” snaps Mohinder, and it strikes him, then, how evenly matched they are, in the ways that matter.
- - - -
The fifth time, it’s almost comfortable.
Mohinder tracks Sylar to Seattle, to a bloody apartment on the twenty-third floor. There’s no body that Mohinder can find, but the room speaks for itself.
Sylar pins Mohinder to the wall, cruel fingers cutting into softer flesh, tongue into a willing mouth, wild, but Mohinder surrounds it, tames it, makes the kiss his even as Sylar draws red-hot lines up Mohinder’s back, the blood welling slow and thick, even as Mohinder’s legs open under Sylar’s touch.
It spells need, simple and devastating. Need for the flex of Mohinder’s muscles against an invisible grip, need for the scrape of Sylar’s seldom-shaved cheek against chocolate skin.
Sylar knows how, by now. Mohinder doesn’t like pain, not where it counts. He demands a kind of respect for his body, in the reluctance of his submission. In the fire of his eyes. Sylar licks nipples just a shade too warm, catches protesting hands in his own. Doesn’t even use the edge of a nail, the hint of teeth. He just soothes the delicate flesh, and eventually Mohinder doesn’t fight him but sighs against it, limbs open in what Sylar chooses to see as welcome.
A whisper, an entreaty against Mohinder’s neck, but it isn’t heard - isn’t acknowledged. Sylar stretches Mohinder open, always just a little deeper, until Mohinder moans, squirms, presses against Sylar. His own signal for more.
Sylar will never have enough of being inside Mohinder. That first moment, the tremor of penetration, the desperation Mohinder chokes away - then the heat, the stark, bold feel of Mohinder’s lust, the sound of Mohinder’s heart thrumming through Sylar’s body.
And the feel of Mohinder’s orgasm, when he’s gasping, clutching at Sylar -
Sylar counts the minutes, after Mohinder curls into his arms. Ten minutes, forty-seven seconds, and the knife is in Mohinder’s hand.
Just barely enough time to catch it, twist Mohinder’s wrist, but it scores along Sylar’s chest anyhow, shallow and long.
Mohinder doesn’t strike as fast as he could have; he expects Sylar to stop him, and Sylar comforts himself with that. The knowledge that Mohinder only fights because he believes he should.
- - - -
“I’ve found you.”
Sylar stirs sleepily, against the straps clasping his wrists to the hospital bed. He jerks awake when he sees the syringe in Mohinder’s hand.
“You always do,” says Sylar. His heart thuds in his chest, and he thinks maybe - maybe there’s no way out, this time.
- - - -
The first time, there’s something so human between them, something deep and lasting and so foreign to Sylar, to Gabriel Gray, that he doesn’t know enough to see it when it happens.
He gloats, when he stops the bullet. A defeat of cleverness against overconfidence. And he resolves to kill Mohinder.
It’s only later that he’s hopelessly, helplessly grateful that he never got the chance.
- - - -
The third time, Mohinder brings an entire building down on Sylar.
Well-placed explosives, an elaborate trap. Sylar is sealed in the basement, crushed under the rubble. It’s all so impersonal, and Mohinder breaks, a little, when the stone and brick and concrete collapse. He stares at the building site for long minutes, the only sound in his ears the ticking of his watch.
At his apartment, afterwards, Sylar slips out of the shadows and kisses Mohinder, swift and long and all Mohinder can think is alive, he’s alive. At that moment, the scales are even. Mohinder’s betrayal against Sylar’s betrayal, Mohinder’s revenge against Sylar’s crimes - so very equal that it’s not so hard to accept the touch he knows he shouldn’t want.
Mohinder sleeps alone. He wakes up alone.
Next time, he resolves, Sylar will die.
- - - -
When the tip of the syringe brushes against Sylar’s skin, he flinches away, in reflex. But he doesn’t fight.
Mohinder hesitates, torn.
Sylar lifts his eyes. “What is it?”
“I suppose,” and Mohinder stops. “I keep expecting you to stop me.”
“Maybe I don’t want to stop you anymore.”
- - - -
Sylar leaves Mohinder bound against the headboard of the bed. The knife, on the sheets beside him, is still beaded with a trace of Sylar’s blood. Mohinder wriggles free, eventually, and he wonders if he should regret.
- - - -
It’s almost a routine. Sylar finds it easier and easier to dodge Mohinder’s attempts at killing him, every time. Sickening, almost, the frailty of Mohinder’s efforts. He’s clever, intelligent, but he’s not used to this, and it shows. He’s not ruthless enough.
And so Sylar wins, every time.
- - - -
“There’s no forgiveness for what you’ve done.”
Sylar turns his head into the pillow. “I know,” he breathes.
Mohinder’s hand cups Sylar’s cheek, and it burns, sharper than a brand. “I could never love you,” Mohinder manages, a tremor in his voice. “I need you and I hate you and it’s killing me.”
“I know,” Sylar repeats, because he does. He does. And he’s fought it, with everything he has, but it’s not enough. “I just want to know,” he says, “where it was that I went wrong.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mohinder whispers.
“I don’t want to die alone,” pleads Sylar. “Please don’t make me die alone.”
Mohinder closes his eyes.
The needle makes Sylar jerk, a useless twitch against the inevitability of his own fate. He fancies that he can feel the fluid sliding between vein and muscle, lighting him up, spreading death with every heartbeat.
Mohinder’s fingers entwine with his, and Sylar realizes the pillow is damp, under his eyes.
He doesn’t fight it when his breathing slows, when his muscles grow sluggish and cold. Not until -
“I’ll do better,” he slurs, in a last rally against the oncoming darkness.
“What?”
“In the next life.” His eyes are so heavy, he could just sleep, right now. “I’ll do better.”
“Me too,” murmurs Mohinder. He makes a strange, choked kind of noise. “I’ll see you there.”
- - - -
Mohinder can’t see straight. He doesn’t try, after a while, just lets his eyes blur, lets his surroundings blend into a whirl of black and white. What does he care? The most important part of his life is gone.
He doesn’t know how far he walks, how many streets. He’s aimless, wandering.
Eventually, he stops, on cold, stone steps. The second syringe feels too warm in his pocket. Why did he have two? It only takes one…
I’ll do better.
The metal tip gets cold fast, when Mohinder exposes it to the air. He finds the vein quick and true - maybe it’s the cold, maybe it’s just that he’s numb already, but the needle doesn’t hurt as much as it should.
I don’t want to die alone.
Mohinder curls against brick and stone, more alone than he’s ever been in his life.
Next time, he promises himself, I won’t die alone. He thinks of Sylar, and he hopes.
They find his body the next morning, the syringe empty and abandoned on the frozen ground.