last snowfall
I searched the landscape for you. There were fields, rocks, trees but they all looked like paper cut outs, white on white. I looked for you for hours. I followed a trail of your blood but the snow was falling so fast that it started to disappear. I turned around in the centre of a field, edged by woods, and I saw you. I didn’t want it to be true, so I turned around again. My heart froze.
Sylar ran towards the brown and black shape, leaning awkwardly against a drystone wall. He called his name but the shape didn’t move. As he grew closer the pieces of the puzzle came into focus, the deep red patch of blood, the spasmodic puffs of air from his slackened mouth, the unnatural milky hue of his frozen fingertips, making holes in the snow.
He sank to his knees and put an arm around his shoulder, and one round his waist. There was a heat rising from Mohinder’s stomach, where Sylar could see nothing but blood, tiny black clots and the odd raw pink of his insides. “Mohinder! Please, open your eyes. Mohinder!”
Mohinder’s eyelids fluttered open and a look of relief came over him. “Don’t talk Mohinder, just…” Just what? Sylar knew he was dying, there was too much blood, too much trauma. He looked into Mohinder’s still sparkling eyes. “Are you in pain?”
The corners of Mohinder’s mouth twitched up into what almost passed for a smile. “I’m cold.” His voice was nothing more than a whisper, almost drowned out by the insistent wind.
Sylar took off his jacket and threw it over Mohinder, holding him closer. He wanted so much to know what to say. Mohinder had been running for so long, but that’s all you did when they were after you. You ran, and then you got caught. It might take years, but it always seemed to happen. Parkman, Nathan Petrelli, even Claire. When she had died Sylar had sought Mohinder out. He had followed at a distance, saving his life three, four times when the doctor was blissfully unaware that he was seconds from death. But Mohinder never took him up on the offer of a partnership. He always left on his own, to keep running. This time, they ran after him faster than Sylar.
“It’s beautiful. It’s just like it was.” Mohinder was looking at the snowy landscape. “Just like it was.”
“Just like what was?” Sylar tried to keep the tremble out of his voice. If only his blood could…but with no needle, no IV, it was useless. All this power, all these abilities and the one thing he wanted, the one thing he needed to do, he couldn’t.
“Just like it was, in Montana.” Mohinder’s lip trembled and Sylar held him closer still, feeling the insistent heat and wetness from his friend’s stomach.
“I wish I could…I wish I could help you Mohinder. Isn’t there anything…?”
Mohinder looked at him, breathing in deep through his nose. “Let me see him. Let me see him one last time.”
It took a second for Sylar to realise. He set his jaw against the tears and nodded. “Close your eyes for a second.”
Mohinder closed his eyes, looking so peaceful. Sylar had taken the power to make up for his earlier failure, and it had saved Mohinder’s life once. A mirage, of his prone, dead body that stopped them in their tracks. Until Mohinder surfaced again a few months later, and the chase resumed.
Sylar couldn’t decide how to feel about Mohinder’s request. He just knew he couldn’t refuse it. He took a last look at him. The snow was falling, leaving flakes on Mohinder’s dark curls and on his eyelashes. Sylar looked around them. It was beautiful, and just like it was. “You can open your eyes now Mohinder.”
Mohinder’s vision slowly adjusted. He saw the soft, dark hair first, slightly spiked at the front. He saw those deep, brown eyes that remained the same, and the Ramones logo, now looking abstract in his dying eyesight. “Zane…” he breathed, and suddenly it was easier to smile. “I’ve missed you.”
You died at 4.23pm. I kissed you, and when I opened my eyes you were gone. I don’t know how long it was before I followed, but I couldn’t let you go alone. I don’t know what happens next, whether I will be able to follow you all the way, to wherever you’re headed. But I’ll follow for as long as I can, and I will never give up.