[Fan Fiction] Manifesting (Heroes)
Title: Manifesting
Category: Fan Fiction: Heroes (Matt/Mohinder)
Rating: R (language, sex, violence, a cheeky narrator)
Summary: Mohinder always thought that being a man of science meant that he was not necessarily a man of action. But then again, he had never cared about his family quite like this before.
Warnings: Spoilers through Powerless. And...uh. This is really dark.
Mohinder Suresh does not properly have an ability. But remember this: it will be important later, that after the incident with Maya and Sylar, after Sylar kidnapped him out of his own home, Mohinder is reminded (because apparently, he forgot) that life of a geneticist can be far more dangerous than he had ever imagined during grad school.
It wasn’t just his own life he feared for then, although that was certainly part of it. No, more than that he feared for Molly. Because hours before Sylar shoots Maya with the gun and Mohinder subsequently brings her back, Molly had cried black tears and Mohinder, feeling the same oily liquid streak down his down his face while his throat closed up and his head exploded and his skin screamed-Mohinder was unable to help her. Had even been unable to crawl to her side.
But then Sylar does shoot Maya with the gun and Mohinder does subsequently bring her back, and in that moment as Maya coughs air into lungs that had been empty moments before, Mohinder, just as Matt and Molly and Peter and Eden and Claire and Elle and Bob and yes, even Sylar have before him, manifests his ability.
It is called resurrection.
It comes in the form of a vial of blood.
It makes Mohinder feel powerful.
It reawakens in full force the feelings that he had had when he revived Bennet. He knows that he has to protect this power, to keep it safe. But that plan doesn’t work very well, things have gone to shit. Elle blasts with her electricity, and Sylar steals Mohinder’s power and runs off. Just like that. Just as if he has cut off Mohinder’s scalp and stolen the secrets within.
Mohinder is reeling. He feels dizzy, weak. Like he has come down with his own strain of the virus, his antibodies ceasing to hold the answer. He tries to reach for his power, but it is gone. Is this what Niki feels?
Elle is mumbling something about her father being mad, and even in his frenzied state, even though she has done practically nothing, Mohinder still thinks Must encourage this girl. Perhaps she’ll like the sound of hero in her ears, and so he tells her that she was good. So the spy-turned-traitor flips mirror-image and turns traitor again as he plants this little seed of destruction in the soil of the Company, this one little force for good. At least, for this one little force for maybe good.
And then there is no time to think because he is catching Molly up in his arms and she is crying but at least she isn’t bleeding, and Mohinder doesn’t swear much, at least not in English, but fuck, this little girl is going to need therapy until the day she dies, for all they’ve put her through.
But later things calm down. He puts Molly to bed and Matt walks in the door and they explore each other’s bodies with tongues and lips and hands, and Matt murmurs, Nathan’s dead, but what he means to say is I stood close to death today. Mohinder replies Sylar kidnapped Molly and me, but what he means to say is So did we.
There is blood on Matt’s shirt that night just as there is blood on Mohinder’s. And Mohinder has never been more aware of how he is one of the lone humans playing a game with gods, and even those other humans don’t play in a way that suits Mohinder. There’s Masahashi, sure, but he is a far less important player than Mohinder is, far more willing to stand in the wings. And on the other side there’s Bennet, but he’s unlike Mohinder too, for he’s grabbed gods by the hair and forced them to play by his rules, and that is not something that Mohinder can do. He only has his hands in the hair of one god, his Matt, and that is more for pleasure than it is for control.
So he is forced to consider the fact that he is perfectly normal Mohinder, that he stood by and watched, paralyzed, when his daughter cried black oily tears, that he could have done absolutely nothing when his partner stood a foot away from an assassination. And, considering this fact, he hates it, especially since hours before he, too, had been powerful.
So days later, after things have calmed down, he will go into the Company vaults and steal another vial of Claire’s blood. The blood is the cure for his virus because his virus took away the blood. This makes perfect symmetry to Mohinder’s scientist mind. He takes the vial in his hand and in that moment his ability is restored, this little one-use power than he can keep to protect his family if need be. Something pretty unthinkable would have to happen for him to need to use it, but there are Mayas and Sylars and unknown assassins that Matt is pretty sure are Bennets out there. And besides, they have teetered pretty close to the edge of unthinkable in these past few months, as far as they can go without falling off.
So Mohinder purchases a thermos. Stores his ability there, carries it on him always. Matt teases him lightly for taking that silly-looking backpack everywhere he goes, but Matt’s power is not so easily separated from his body as Mohinder’s is. Mohinder doesn’t tell him that he’s manifested. Matt never gives an indication that he knows.
So that is what you need to remember, for later. Not that Mohinder was afraid for his family, but rather, what that fear made him do. Mohinder Suresh is no Noah Bennet. He can’t force any gods to change their rules. But he can force his own divinity. He is not an evolved human, but he has a power all the same. And it is never more than an arm’s reach from his body.
***
But now perhaps we should go earlier. We find ourselves in a time when Matt and Mohinder were just roommates who privately lusted after each other until Mohinder’s thoughts accidentally, or-maybe-not-so-accidentally, strayed outside his head and they lusted after each other more publicly after that. In the darkness, a brown body entwined with a lighter one and for the first time in either of their lives, they each felt whole.
But no, I‘ve landed in the wrong spot in time. That story is not as relevant to the one that I am trying to tell, so we have found ourselves accidentally peeking into an intimate scene, ruining a private moment, all for no purpose at all. We should leave Matt and Mohinder now, let them be in peace, and go earlier, when Mohinder is still fractured, not yet whole.
Again, two bodies in the darkness. A different light body, the same brown one. Good, here we are in the right place. Mohinder moans a name. Zane. Zane fucked (the cursing, again? I wouldn’t use it if it weren’t the best word to describe what they do. I certainly won’t lie and say they made love) Mohinder hard, bit his neck, and they were both breathing so quickly that the world dizzily spun around their deoxygenated heads. There was something about this whole scene that is rough and aggressive, but at the same time gentle Mohinder Suresh took a risk for the first time in his life and God-help-him-he-loved-it.
Zane-No. Stop. I see though his mask, so I will not let him make pretenses in MY narrative. So I will not say Zane, I will say that Sylar loved it, too. Could Mohinder help him find his humanity? This was the question on his lips, on ours as we watch them. For a moment, the answer seemed to be yes, but then dawn broke and Sylar stole the brain of a woman who could hear murder.
Even after this happened, though, Mohinder was oblivious and they still met together every night. They fucked, and for an instant each day, maybe even several instants, Sylar thought that Mohinder had made him whole. That all of his little pieces had been glued together. But it wasn’t Sylar who was being healed, really, is it? Mohinder moaned Zane. He didn’t know what I do now, what he will learn later. As far as he knew then, he had never met Sylar, nor would he care to heal him if he did.
And then they get to New York. Mohinder figured it out there. When Sylar dropped to the floor under the influence of Chandra’s curare, he shattered, for his little pieces were held together by nothing more than spit and semen and lies. He learned what we did, that Mohinder never made him whole.
And then again, Sylar never made Mohinder whole, either.
***
Ah. So now we see the scene in Mohinder’s laboratory in an entirely different light, don’t we? There is more than one lens through which action and motives and meaning can be filmed, and when we watched all of it before, we paid far more attention to fatherhood and to abilities or the lack thereof.
It’s uncomfortable to watch this way, but we must do it because it will show us an important angle on each of their characters. See the ex-lover, trying in his own desperate way to win Mohinder back, not understanding that Mohinder is no longer floundering within himself.
With every move Sylar proves even more why Mohinder will never be with him again. Threatening Mohinder’s daughter, threatening Mohinder’s life, yet still making clear his arousal whenever Mohinder’s fingers brush against his skin. Mohinder has no patience for these games. He takes Sylar’s blood, he is curt. Sylar doesn’t seem to get it, that this is not about something between them, that this is about the sorts of things that fathers do. The lengths that Mohinder will go to protect his little girl.
Things are profoundly different from the last time we saw them, in the hotel room, but there is something rough and aggressive about this scene, too.
***
After the kidnapping, after Nathan’s death, they are both a little bit different. Cautious. They both become more fearful for and protective of Molly. Matt because he had been half a country away when she and Mohinder needed him, and Mohinder because he had been right there and still she almost died.
But still they settle back into some form of normalcy. Whatever that means to their little alternative family unit. For several weeks, they love Molly and love each other and love the fact that they are alive if not entirely up to their own harsh standards of what capable means. Molly goes to school, they go to work, and on weekends they all sleep late except for Molly who watches cartoons and then once they all wake up they go to a bagel shop down the street, every week. The man behind the counter learns their names and Molly’s and every time they come he gives her a lollipop from behind the counter, a different color each time. There is laundry and television and homework and pizza on Thursdays and little girl-sized toe socks that Matt found in the store that are exactly the same pattern as a certain hideously ugly scarf. There is fatherly love and daughterly love and loverly love.
It is astonishingly lovely and well-adjusted. Domestic.
I wish that that is where my story ends.
It’s not. This is where it starts. The first time that something might be wrong:
“I want to find some of them,” Matt says. They are lying in bed one night after Molly has gone to sleep. Mohinder is enjoying the feeling of warmth radiating between them. “The people with abilities. We need to find them, tell them what they can do. Otherwise they might end up like Nathan.”
“That’s what I do for the Company, sometimes,” Mohinder answers.
“I want you to let me help.”
Mohinder raises an eyebrow. “This isn’t some buddy cop movie,” he replies. Matt’s made him watch enough of those that Mohinder hopes that it will provide some sort of reaction, but it falls flat. No laughter. “Besides,” Mohinder adds. “You don’t want to work with me full time. You love your job.”
“Right,” Matt says, and it sounds disturbingly like he’s trying to remind himself. He ducks his head down and kisses Mohinder fiercely. It takes the breath out of his lungs.
Matt drops the issue after that, but there are other weird things about Matt’s behavior. Mohinder barely notices them at first, but slowly they add up enough to come to his attention. Little oddities.
Like the way that he isn’t nearly so affectionate when he hugs Molly. The way that some of the things he used to love simply can’t hold his attention anymore. Mohinder considers talking to him about the possibility of post-traumatic stress, but as soon as these thoughts pile up enough in Mohinder’s head to make such a talk necessary, Matt’s behavior changes and he goes back to normal again.
But then one day, about two weeks after the first time Mohinder noticed anything odd, he gets a call at work, one night while he’s working late and the sun is already starting to lower itself onto the skyline. “Is this Dr. Suresh?” a woman asks. “Molly’s father?”
“Yes,” he says, and his heart goes into his throat.
“We were wondering if you were going to pick Molly up from school today,” she asks.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “But it’s my partner’s day to get her.”
“He’s an hour late, and we can’t get him on his cell.”
“I’m on my way.”
Matt comes home that night after Molly is already asleep and Mohinder in lying in his bed with the door open and a book open across his chest. Matt doesn’t go to check on Molly, just comes straight to their room. “Where have you been?” Mohinder asks, putting the book down and folding his arms. He feels like a hopeless cardboard character, but he can’t help it.
“I was...out,” Matt replies.
“Out? You left Molly at school.”
“I forgot,” he said. “I had other things to do.”
“Other things? Other things more important than the care of our daughter?”
“Yes!”
“What were they?”
Matt squints at Mohinder. “Do you ever feel like this life is choking you, Mohinder? Like Molly is holding us back?”
It’s like an explosion has gone off in Mohinder’s brain. “What?!” he screeches.
“I have this power, Mohinder, and you have your genius, and I can’t help but feel like it’s meant for something bigger than playing house with some orphan.”
“Our daughter is not some orphan, Matt. How could you ever say that?”
Matt doesn’t say anything, just tightens his jaw.
“I don’t want you in my bed tonight,” Mohinder says, his voice smooth but hostile, like blood slowly creeping across velvet. “I don’t know what’s going on in your head, but if being a good father to Molly isn’t one of your priorities, than being with you isn’t one of mine.”
Matt leaves the room. Mohinder turns out the light. The next morning, Matt hugs Molly goodbye before he goes to work, but it is only marginally affectionate. Mohinder ignores the fact that Matt is even there.
***
Mohinder is bent over the microscope later that day when he hears a knock at the door of his lab. Still fuming, by the way. He looks up and crosses the loft, slightly irritated with the interruption. He doesn’t get many door-to-door salesmen. Hopefully it isn’t the Jehovah’s Witnesses or something. He swings the door open.
He squints, with eyes adjusted to looking through an enlarging lens, at the two suited men on the other side of the door. “May I help you?” Mohinder asks.
“Is this Mohinder Suresh? Detective Matthew Parkman’s roommate?” The man on the left asks. If Mohinder hadn’t been mad at Matt at that particular moment, he probably wouldn’t have noticed their relationship being reduced to two very different syllables than the ones that Mohinder preferred. But he is, so he does.
“Yes,” Mohinder says evenly.
The man flashes a badge. An NYPD badge. “I’m Detective Weber, this is Detective Christopher. When was the last time you saw your roommate, Mr. Suresh?”
He doesn’t bother correcting the prefix. “This morning, before I left for work,” Mohinder replied. “Why?”
Weber stands firm, but Christopher takes a step backwards a bit. An expression of shock is on his face. “That’s not possible,” Christopher says.
“Excuse me?”
“Mr. Suresh, this morning someone called in a body that was found in an alley. We’ve identified it as Parkman’s. The coroner estimates that he’s been dead for at least two weeks. That’s actually as long as it’s been since anyone in the precinct has seen him, either.”
Mohinder covers his mouth. “I’m-I...” He can’t find any other words.
“So are you certain that you saw him this morning?”
“I’m positive,” Mohinder chokes out.
“Can you give us the name of anyone else who might have also seen him recently?”
“Our daughter.” Oh, God, Molly. What is going on? What is he going to tell Molly? “But-she’s at school. If Matt is really...if something’s terribly wrong...I’d like to speak to her first. She’s only eight, and we adopted her after her biological parents were killed in front of her. She’s...delicate about things like this, more so than other kids.”
Weber starts to say something in response, but Christopher just holds up a hand to silence the other. “That probably won’t be necessary. But we’ll be in contact if we need any more information, Mr. Suresh.”
They don’t need to take Mohinder in for any more questioning that day. They don’t suspect that he has done it, since the method of death matches a list of already open murder files, several of which occurred during a time that Suresh had been documented to have been in India (you didn’t think that they hadn’t done their homework before coming, did you? They even know that he is a doctor. They just use Mr. because they are having a spectacularly bad day. A co-worker has just died, after all). They don’t say any of this to him of course, have to keep the necessary details under wraps.
But they do turn around when they start to leave and Mohinder asks haltingly-“How did he die? If that’s him, I mean?” They tell him that.
Top of the head cut off. Brain removed. Nowhere to be found.
Mohinder can connect the dots. He’s a smart man.
Sylar.
***
I am sorry that I had to lie to you. Earlier I said that I wouldn’t let Sylar lie about who he was, that I wouldn’t let him wear a mask in my story. Well, as you can see, I just did. Maybe I could make this author/reader betrayal go down better, by saying that the stolen powers of persuasion that Sylar has entranced even me. Or maybe I could say that I didn’t know, that my characters ran away from me when I was trying to write a story about a fight between Mohinder and Matt and that I didn’t realize that Matt was actually Sylar until exactly this minute.
But that would be a lie, too. I knew all along, when this story was just the barest idea of a whisper floating around in my head. I planned my betrayal. We’re not so different, Mohinder and me. I going to betray you in the end, just like Mohinder, who shot Bennet.
Will I, too, end up reviving you? Unfortunately, I have no abilities, not even stolen ones. So this is where Mohinder and I part. He aided the man he betrayed, after death and back into life, but I fear that things are growing out of my hands now. I can’t offer you any similar protection because this is as far as I’ve planned. So I’ll slip you back into the story now, back with Mohinder and Molly and Sylar and the found corpse but missing brain of Matt Parkman. It’s up to them to take care of you now.
***
When Mohinder goes home, he plans everything carefully. Makes arrangements for Molly to spend the night with a friend. Just before Matt-no, Sylar, is supposed to get home, Mohinder changes into his tightest pair of jeans, puts on a shirt but doesn’t button it. When the door opens, Mohinder moves towards it with muscles coiled.
Sylar is in the doorway, Sylar as Matt, and God it looks so convincing. Mohinder bites his lip as he worries that he won’t be able to go through with it, but then he surges forward, catches Sylar’s lips in his and slips hands down Sylar’s back and under his waistband.
They kiss for a long moment and Sylar moves back, breathless and surprised. “What was that for?” he asks.
“I’m so sorry,” Mohinder says. “About how I reacted last night. The more I think about it, the more I think you’re right.”
“But you’ve been so-”
“I know. But that’s changed now. We should have something amazing ahead of us, not this boring little life. Besides, I hate it when you’re mad at me. I can’t live without you, Matt,” Mohinder says, and it is a little over the top but Sylar seemed to buy it.
Sylar takes Mohinder in for another kiss. “I’m sorry, too,” he murmurs into Mohinder’s mouth.
They stumble towards the bedroom like some four-legged creature whose limbs aren’t entirely under its full control. Mohinder’s fingers rove over Sylar’s clothing, unbuttoning every button on the uniform that used to belong to Matt. Still does, according to Mohinder’s eyes. And it isn’t difficult to encourage Mohinder’s shirt to fall off of his shoulders, to ease the pressure in his jeans by unbuttoning them.
As they press together in their nakedness, Mohinder is amazed again at how complete the illusion is. How perfectly everything looks Matt. But-there are hands and mouths-and now that Mohinder is feeling for it, he can notice the differences in touch, in style. Sylar can look like Matt, act and speak and seem like Matt, but here in these unguarded moments there is something between them that is not like MohinderandMatt at all. It is like MohinderandZane, actually, or rather, MohinderandSylar.
Sylar’s hands, already low, drift further back, and Mohinder chokes back a gasp. “No,” he says. “Tonight I want to be inside of you. Lie on your stomach. I’ll take care of everything.”
Sylar does as he was asked. Perfect. Mohinder straddles him, one leg on either side, and reaches for the drawer in the bedside table. But he doesn’t grab what Sylar thinks that he is grabbing. He wraps dark fingers around the handle of his gun and swings it so that the cool circle of metal is pressing against the back of Sylar’s neck.
“Are you faster than my finger on the trigger?” Mohinder asks savagely. “Can you stop a bullet while it’s thundering down the barrel?”
“What are you doing, Mohinder?” Sylar asks, his voice rising. A perfect imitation of the way that Matt would ask it.
“I know who you are, Sylar,” Mohinder says. He doesn’t have any fear. Sylar is far too fond of monologing to kill Mohinder before he has boasted, which might just give Mohinder enough time to react. Just enough time to take this scum of the earth down for good. And besides, even if Mohinder is wrong about this, the worst has already happened to him. What is death, now? The man he loves is dead, and he has been sleeping with the enemy. “I know what you did.”
“Mohinder, I-“
“Where the FUCK is Matt Parkman’s brain?” Mohinder demands, pushing the gun harder against Sylar’s neck. He can feel the ridge of spine beneath it.
Mohinder can feel the tendril of a something wafting into his brain, and he almost pulls the trigger, worrying that it is going to be some method of persuasion. But no, it is a memory. A monologue. Mohinder had been right.
The scene envelopes them. Two weeks ago, Sylar's memory.
Mohinder is watching as if he is a bystander to Sylar’s movie. Sylar, lying in an alley with a can of spinach. Sylar, realizing that even with his powers gone, he HAD been able to acquire Candice’s power of illusion. So he bided his time, giving himself different faces, different bodies. Weeks passed this way, and no one knew that this killer, this special man lived among them.
Until he saw the cop. The fucking fat cop who tried to shoot him in Kirby Plaza.
Mohinder watches the meeting occur as Sylar and Matt passed each other on the street. He sees the look on Sylar’s face when he recognized Matt, the look of revulsion when Matt intercepted Sylar’s thoughts.
“Sylar,” Matt said through gritted teeth. He said it under his breath, but amplified through the memory of Sylar’s enhanced hearing, Mohinder can hear it from some distance away. Sylar spun around and darted into a nearby alley, Matt drew his gun and crept after Sylar, but as he peeked around the corner Sylar reached out with a hand and flew Matt telekinetically down the alley, slamming him with a crushing thud against a far wall. Matt’s gun clattered to the ground but Matt stayed pinned where he had hit and Mohinder runs down the alley to him and reaches out a hand to help Matt, but he can do nothing to change the scene.
“Who are you?” Sylar demanded. “Why were you at Kirby Plaza that night?”
Matt said nothing, but the whites all around his eyes were showing. He coughed and gasped against the pressure on his throat.
“I asked you a question,” Sylar said as he walked towards Matt’s pinned form, and then he began using his powers to riffle through Matt’s pockets until he found Matt’s wallet. Sylar pulled out a driver’s license and looked at it. “Matthew Parkman?” he asked, and narrowed his eyes. “You have an ability. You were on Mohinder’s list.”
At the mention of Mohinder’s name, Matt thrashed a little harder, spoke for the first time. “If you’ve done-“ He gasped, sputtered, “--done anything to Mohinder Suresh or Molly Walker, if you do anything, I-I-I swear to God, I’ll-“
“You’ll what?” Sylar asked savagely. “It doesn’t look like you’re in a position to do anything to me.”
Matt’s voice was more acidic than anything that Mohinder has ever heard him say. “I swear to God, I’ll make you regret every last second of your goddamned pathetic little life.”
Sylar rolled his eyes. “Good try,” he said and extended a finger.
Matt screamed as his skull was being broken, a terrible noise. Mohinder wants to put his hands to his ears to block it out even as he tries to pull Matt down, stop the bleeding, do something, but his hands just go right through Matt, touch nothing. And then-
The scene shifted slightly. The screams changed in tone and voice. Mohinder’s head snaps up to look towards at the man pinned to the wall, and through the curtain of blood he almost doesn’t recognize the face.
Which was almost funny, really, because it is a face that Mohinder knows very well. His own.
And that’s when oh: our Mohinder realizes. Matt had his own defenses, his own illusions, too. The look of shock and horror on Sylar’s face was clear: the Nightmare Man’s son had dredged up a nightmare.
“Mohinder?” Sylar asked. “What are you-?”
The blood cleared away from the fake Mohinder’s face like magic, the wound closed itself up. “Doing this will get you nowhere, Sylar,” Mohinder hears himself say. “You’ll never be special. Special enough for anyone, but particularly for me. I hate you.”
“Mohinder-“
“You did nothing for my research. Contributed nothing. It was a waste of time, all of it. And most of all, you meant nothing to me.” Then the other Mohinder started laughing manically and the top of his head split open as watches ticked and blood flowed out and there was no brain inside the fake Mohinder’s head, just a river a torrent of blood and all the while the fake Mohinder kept laughing...
Sylar made a choking noise, almost a sob, but then suddenly something shifted in his face. He looked up, stared straight at the image and narrowed his eyes. “I’d dealt with illusionists before, Parkman,” he said and lifted his finger back up. There were screams again, but this time they were Matt’s once more.
And suddenly the entire scene was wiped clean. It was Matt’s body on the ground, his scalp resting separate from his body. Mohinder collapses to the ground next to him.
“No, no, no nonononono....!!!”
Any other brain-stealing villain might have left it at that. Brushed Matt’s power off as one he already had. But, Mohinder realizes with a start, Sylar knew otherwise. There must be something more to his powers, something that Candice didn’t have. How else would this random cop have known about Mohinder and the research and the watches? Sylar pulled Matt’s brain out of his head with all of the form of one well-practiced in the art of stealing brains.
He tucked it under an arm and ran down the street, leaving Matt’s body where it lay, leaving behind an alley that might soon have attention called to it by the screams. Or, as Mohinder knows, maybe not. Mohinder wants to stay behind, keep pressing his hands to Matt’s still warm body for a few seconds more, but he is pulled along after Sylar. Into another alley, about a mile away, where Sylar inspected the creases and whirls of Matt’s brain. The power flowed into him, and as it does so he found himself able to use a combination of his original power and this new one to read new things, to go deeper. Access memories.
“Mohinder’s lover?” he asked aloud into the empty alley. “That could be fun.”
Sylar put Matt’s brain behind a dumpster. His body filled out, his hair changed, his face shifted. He stood up, and in a second the illusion was complete. Sylar had become Matt Parkman.
With the confirmation of this, watching this transformation occur before him, it all becomes too much for Mohinder. Vomit rises from the depths of his body up his esophagus, and Mohinder raises a hand to his mouth to choke it back. But then, in his other hand, he feels the warm handle of the gun. It’s still there. He remembers that even as he is standing watching Sylar with blood and brains on his hands, Mohinder is still straddling Sylar on his bed, still has a gun in his hands.
Mohinder concentrates every bit of effort he has on that hand. He squeezes the trigger. There is a loud bang, and then Mohinder is jolted back into reality. In this post-vision state, Mohinder can barely even recognize these surroundings, so dark, as his own room. But then he realizes how much blood there is everywhere, and now in death Sylar’s body is laid clean of illusions as his own. Sylar can no longer lie. With shaking hands, Mohinder raises the gun a little bit higher and shoots again, straight into the base of Sylar’s head. As he does so, he gives a deep, guttural cry like some sort of wounded and deranged bear. His whole body recoils with the shot as blood and brains and flesh splatter against his bare chest, a messy, demonic finger painting. He shoots three more times until the whole of Sylar’s head is laid open.
He takes a shower before doing anything else. He doesn’t want any trace of Sylar on him anymore, ever again. The blood washes off before it has time to dry on his skin, but it stains the tile of the shower a pale pink. Mohinder scrubs until every faint wisp is sufficiently gone. He doesn’t shake at all, he is coiled, every move precise. He dresses now, pulls on his pack, and takes the subway to the station nearest to the alley Sylar examined Matt’s head like a Rubix Cube. He finds it there, under some newspaper, slightly decayed but still mostly whole. He cradles it as carefully as he would a baby’s. This is all the hope that he and Matt have now.
He allows himself the luxury of half a second’s worth of a choked sob before he wraps Matt’s brain in a grocery bag and slides it into his backpack. The plastic bag makes a shushing noise as he does so. Mohinder has always said that the soul must reside in the brain. Is Matt’s still there? We and Mohinder can only hope.
***
It has been difficult to break into the morgue, but he has managed to slip into the room where Matt is lying unobserved. No one notices that he is there. Mohinder holds the scissors in his hand, slides the blades under the nearly invisible stitching and cuts the threads. Once he has gone all the way around, he puts the scissors down and carefully lays his hands on the top of Matt’s head, letting his fingers entwine a little in the hair. And then he pulls-so gently, yes, but there is still a sucking sound, a pop as the seal breaks and air rushes into the empty cavern. Mohinder places the top of Matt’s head aside and removes Matt’s brain from his pack.
Will this work? We can wonder this, but Mohinder does not. He is too focused on the details at hand, the bumpy patterns whorls of brain through the plastic, the heavy way his arms feel as he lifts the matter to the table, the crinkling of the bag as he unwraps. He is even more likely to notice the whiteness of the sheet or the mosquito humming of the half-on fluorescent light. He allows these insignificant details to crowd his head so that he does not have room for thoughts.
With more precision than an artist sculpting a to-scale replica of the Titanic out of a single grain of rice, Mohinder places Matt’s brain inside his head. He places Matt’s scalp back on his head and is careful to line these two back together to the molecule. Then he withdraws the thermos from his backpack (one way or another, Matt will never poke fun at it again), and screws off the lid.
This moment is why I wanted you to remember Mohinder’s ability. When he sees the syringe, Mohinder nearly staggers backwards with the effect of his power. He takes it out, his hands nearly shaking now, and grips it in his left hand, his thumb on the plunger.
Then he slides it into one of the cracks in Matt’s head, scraping the needle against bone on either side. It bites deep into Matt’s brain, Mohinder pushes it as far as it will go. And then when the thick part of the syringe is flush against Matt’s skin, Mohinder pushes the plunger down in one smooth motion.
Nothing happens. Mohinder withdraws the needle and sways. He has to put both hands on the table to keep himself from falling over, and now the dam of his thought breaks. He can no longer crowd his own thoughts out and they rush into his head overflowing his petty observances. What is he was wrong? What if this was too grave an injury? What if his power has failed him? He considers Life Without Matt in a way that he could not when he still had a plan to support his grief. What will he tell Molly?
And Oh God, I killed a man. Another man, one that I can-not-do-not want to bring back.
He is so absorbed in his own head that he nearly does not see it when it starts to happen. The red line across Matt’s forehead begins to disappear from left to right. Mohinder says a thousand silent prayers in the span of an instant, closes his eyes as he imagines things reconnecting inside of Matt’s head like plugs fitting into a wall. There is silence as Mohinder holds his breath and then-
Matt inhales a large gasp. Coughs. Mohinder jumps up onto the table so fast that the tray resting against it lets out a loud rattle. When Matt opens his eyes, Mohinder is there, hovering over his face. “Mohinder?” Matt asks. “Where am-“
There is no more room for words as Mohinder kisses Matt so deeply that there is barely any breath in either of their lungs by the time that they are finished. Now that he has the real thing, even in as feeble a state as Matt is now, Mohinder wonders how he could have ever been fooled by an imitation.
Their lips break apart, but Mohinder’s face is still bare inches from Matt’s. “Where am I?” Matt asks.
His bewilderment is so comic, and Mohinder feels so manic, that he has to choke back an urge to laugh. “The morgue,” Mohinder whispers.
“The morgue?”
“Oh, God-Matt, you were dead. For two weeks.”
“The last thing I remember was-Sylar.”
“He killed you. I killed him.”
Matt lifts a hand up to Mohinder’s face, traces his cheekbone. Mohinder is no mind reader, but he can see a thousand things in Matt’s eyes, feel a thousand things under his touch. Things like Thankyou and I’msorry and Iloveyou and even Youdidnothingwrongbykilling. But also things that can’t quite be put into words right now, things about family and comfort and home and relief and fear. But best of all, most importantly, there’s life.
They kiss one more time and then roll off of the table. There will be a lot more explaining to do, a lot of burying, a lot of convincing. They will burn the bloody bed sheets just outside the city, scatter the ashes in the water. The body will be somewhat harder to hide, but they manage it. When they finally put down their paired shovels, Mohinder spits on the upturned pile of grass and sod. Matt puts a dirty hand to the small of Mohinder’s back, a sign of reassurance. Before they go, Matt spits, too.
Even though Matt had sworn to never use his persuasion powers again, they will be pressed into service to convince nearly every single police officer in town that they never found a body that looked like him and all of the workers at the morgue that no downed police officer was ever brought in and all of the other people in their apartment complex that they never heard any gunshots.
But the next morning when they will go to pick Molly up at her friend’s house, Matt will not need to persuade her that her father was ever missing. He will hug her more affectionately than he ever has before. They will walk down the street, each holding one of her smaller hands in one of theirs, and she will smile, just the same as always. They will go to the bagel shop just outside of their apartment, and she will be given a lollipop by the man behind the counter.
She never knew, will never know. That is one thing that they can spare her. Mohinder still has a gun. And he knows where more handheld manifestations of his power, more syringes are. He will do anything to protect his family.
Killers beware.
Category: Fan Fiction: Heroes (Matt/Mohinder)
Rating: R (language, sex, violence, a cheeky narrator)
Summary: Mohinder always thought that being a man of science meant that he was not necessarily a man of action. But then again, he had never cared about his family quite like this before.
Warnings: Spoilers through Powerless. And...uh. This is really dark.
Mohinder Suresh does not properly have an ability. But remember this: it will be important later, that after the incident with Maya and Sylar, after Sylar kidnapped him out of his own home, Mohinder is reminded (because apparently, he forgot) that life of a geneticist can be far more dangerous than he had ever imagined during grad school.
It wasn’t just his own life he feared for then, although that was certainly part of it. No, more than that he feared for Molly. Because hours before Sylar shoots Maya with the gun and Mohinder subsequently brings her back, Molly had cried black tears and Mohinder, feeling the same oily liquid streak down his down his face while his throat closed up and his head exploded and his skin screamed-Mohinder was unable to help her. Had even been unable to crawl to her side.
But then Sylar does shoot Maya with the gun and Mohinder does subsequently bring her back, and in that moment as Maya coughs air into lungs that had been empty moments before, Mohinder, just as Matt and Molly and Peter and Eden and Claire and Elle and Bob and yes, even Sylar have before him, manifests his ability.
It is called resurrection.
It comes in the form of a vial of blood.
It makes Mohinder feel powerful.
It reawakens in full force the feelings that he had had when he revived Bennet. He knows that he has to protect this power, to keep it safe. But that plan doesn’t work very well, things have gone to shit. Elle blasts with her electricity, and Sylar steals Mohinder’s power and runs off. Just like that. Just as if he has cut off Mohinder’s scalp and stolen the secrets within.
Mohinder is reeling. He feels dizzy, weak. Like he has come down with his own strain of the virus, his antibodies ceasing to hold the answer. He tries to reach for his power, but it is gone. Is this what Niki feels?
Elle is mumbling something about her father being mad, and even in his frenzied state, even though she has done practically nothing, Mohinder still thinks Must encourage this girl. Perhaps she’ll like the sound of hero in her ears, and so he tells her that she was good. So the spy-turned-traitor flips mirror-image and turns traitor again as he plants this little seed of destruction in the soil of the Company, this one little force for good. At least, for this one little force for maybe good.
And then there is no time to think because he is catching Molly up in his arms and she is crying but at least she isn’t bleeding, and Mohinder doesn’t swear much, at least not in English, but fuck, this little girl is going to need therapy until the day she dies, for all they’ve put her through.
But later things calm down. He puts Molly to bed and Matt walks in the door and they explore each other’s bodies with tongues and lips and hands, and Matt murmurs, Nathan’s dead, but what he means to say is I stood close to death today. Mohinder replies Sylar kidnapped Molly and me, but what he means to say is So did we.
There is blood on Matt’s shirt that night just as there is blood on Mohinder’s. And Mohinder has never been more aware of how he is one of the lone humans playing a game with gods, and even those other humans don’t play in a way that suits Mohinder. There’s Masahashi, sure, but he is a far less important player than Mohinder is, far more willing to stand in the wings. And on the other side there’s Bennet, but he’s unlike Mohinder too, for he’s grabbed gods by the hair and forced them to play by his rules, and that is not something that Mohinder can do. He only has his hands in the hair of one god, his Matt, and that is more for pleasure than it is for control.
So he is forced to consider the fact that he is perfectly normal Mohinder, that he stood by and watched, paralyzed, when his daughter cried black oily tears, that he could have done absolutely nothing when his partner stood a foot away from an assassination. And, considering this fact, he hates it, especially since hours before he, too, had been powerful.
So days later, after things have calmed down, he will go into the Company vaults and steal another vial of Claire’s blood. The blood is the cure for his virus because his virus took away the blood. This makes perfect symmetry to Mohinder’s scientist mind. He takes the vial in his hand and in that moment his ability is restored, this little one-use power than he can keep to protect his family if need be. Something pretty unthinkable would have to happen for him to need to use it, but there are Mayas and Sylars and unknown assassins that Matt is pretty sure are Bennets out there. And besides, they have teetered pretty close to the edge of unthinkable in these past few months, as far as they can go without falling off.
So Mohinder purchases a thermos. Stores his ability there, carries it on him always. Matt teases him lightly for taking that silly-looking backpack everywhere he goes, but Matt’s power is not so easily separated from his body as Mohinder’s is. Mohinder doesn’t tell him that he’s manifested. Matt never gives an indication that he knows.
So that is what you need to remember, for later. Not that Mohinder was afraid for his family, but rather, what that fear made him do. Mohinder Suresh is no Noah Bennet. He can’t force any gods to change their rules. But he can force his own divinity. He is not an evolved human, but he has a power all the same. And it is never more than an arm’s reach from his body.
***
But now perhaps we should go earlier. We find ourselves in a time when Matt and Mohinder were just roommates who privately lusted after each other until Mohinder’s thoughts accidentally, or-maybe-not-so-accidentally, strayed outside his head and they lusted after each other more publicly after that. In the darkness, a brown body entwined with a lighter one and for the first time in either of their lives, they each felt whole.
But no, I‘ve landed in the wrong spot in time. That story is not as relevant to the one that I am trying to tell, so we have found ourselves accidentally peeking into an intimate scene, ruining a private moment, all for no purpose at all. We should leave Matt and Mohinder now, let them be in peace, and go earlier, when Mohinder is still fractured, not yet whole.
Again, two bodies in the darkness. A different light body, the same brown one. Good, here we are in the right place. Mohinder moans a name. Zane. Zane fucked (the cursing, again? I wouldn’t use it if it weren’t the best word to describe what they do. I certainly won’t lie and say they made love) Mohinder hard, bit his neck, and they were both breathing so quickly that the world dizzily spun around their deoxygenated heads. There was something about this whole scene that is rough and aggressive, but at the same time gentle Mohinder Suresh took a risk for the first time in his life and God-help-him-he-loved-it.
Zane-No. Stop. I see though his mask, so I will not let him make pretenses in MY narrative. So I will not say Zane, I will say that Sylar loved it, too. Could Mohinder help him find his humanity? This was the question on his lips, on ours as we watch them. For a moment, the answer seemed to be yes, but then dawn broke and Sylar stole the brain of a woman who could hear murder.
Even after this happened, though, Mohinder was oblivious and they still met together every night. They fucked, and for an instant each day, maybe even several instants, Sylar thought that Mohinder had made him whole. That all of his little pieces had been glued together. But it wasn’t Sylar who was being healed, really, is it? Mohinder moaned Zane. He didn’t know what I do now, what he will learn later. As far as he knew then, he had never met Sylar, nor would he care to heal him if he did.
And then they get to New York. Mohinder figured it out there. When Sylar dropped to the floor under the influence of Chandra’s curare, he shattered, for his little pieces were held together by nothing more than spit and semen and lies. He learned what we did, that Mohinder never made him whole.
And then again, Sylar never made Mohinder whole, either.
***
Ah. So now we see the scene in Mohinder’s laboratory in an entirely different light, don’t we? There is more than one lens through which action and motives and meaning can be filmed, and when we watched all of it before, we paid far more attention to fatherhood and to abilities or the lack thereof.
It’s uncomfortable to watch this way, but we must do it because it will show us an important angle on each of their characters. See the ex-lover, trying in his own desperate way to win Mohinder back, not understanding that Mohinder is no longer floundering within himself.
With every move Sylar proves even more why Mohinder will never be with him again. Threatening Mohinder’s daughter, threatening Mohinder’s life, yet still making clear his arousal whenever Mohinder’s fingers brush against his skin. Mohinder has no patience for these games. He takes Sylar’s blood, he is curt. Sylar doesn’t seem to get it, that this is not about something between them, that this is about the sorts of things that fathers do. The lengths that Mohinder will go to protect his little girl.
Things are profoundly different from the last time we saw them, in the hotel room, but there is something rough and aggressive about this scene, too.
***
After the kidnapping, after Nathan’s death, they are both a little bit different. Cautious. They both become more fearful for and protective of Molly. Matt because he had been half a country away when she and Mohinder needed him, and Mohinder because he had been right there and still she almost died.
But still they settle back into some form of normalcy. Whatever that means to their little alternative family unit. For several weeks, they love Molly and love each other and love the fact that they are alive if not entirely up to their own harsh standards of what capable means. Molly goes to school, they go to work, and on weekends they all sleep late except for Molly who watches cartoons and then once they all wake up they go to a bagel shop down the street, every week. The man behind the counter learns their names and Molly’s and every time they come he gives her a lollipop from behind the counter, a different color each time. There is laundry and television and homework and pizza on Thursdays and little girl-sized toe socks that Matt found in the store that are exactly the same pattern as a certain hideously ugly scarf. There is fatherly love and daughterly love and loverly love.
It is astonishingly lovely and well-adjusted. Domestic.
I wish that that is where my story ends.
It’s not. This is where it starts. The first time that something might be wrong:
“I want to find some of them,” Matt says. They are lying in bed one night after Molly has gone to sleep. Mohinder is enjoying the feeling of warmth radiating between them. “The people with abilities. We need to find them, tell them what they can do. Otherwise they might end up like Nathan.”
“That’s what I do for the Company, sometimes,” Mohinder answers.
“I want you to let me help.”
Mohinder raises an eyebrow. “This isn’t some buddy cop movie,” he replies. Matt’s made him watch enough of those that Mohinder hopes that it will provide some sort of reaction, but it falls flat. No laughter. “Besides,” Mohinder adds. “You don’t want to work with me full time. You love your job.”
“Right,” Matt says, and it sounds disturbingly like he’s trying to remind himself. He ducks his head down and kisses Mohinder fiercely. It takes the breath out of his lungs.
Matt drops the issue after that, but there are other weird things about Matt’s behavior. Mohinder barely notices them at first, but slowly they add up enough to come to his attention. Little oddities.
Like the way that he isn’t nearly so affectionate when he hugs Molly. The way that some of the things he used to love simply can’t hold his attention anymore. Mohinder considers talking to him about the possibility of post-traumatic stress, but as soon as these thoughts pile up enough in Mohinder’s head to make such a talk necessary, Matt’s behavior changes and he goes back to normal again.
But then one day, about two weeks after the first time Mohinder noticed anything odd, he gets a call at work, one night while he’s working late and the sun is already starting to lower itself onto the skyline. “Is this Dr. Suresh?” a woman asks. “Molly’s father?”
“Yes,” he says, and his heart goes into his throat.
“We were wondering if you were going to pick Molly up from school today,” she asks.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “But it’s my partner’s day to get her.”
“He’s an hour late, and we can’t get him on his cell.”
“I’m on my way.”
Matt comes home that night after Molly is already asleep and Mohinder in lying in his bed with the door open and a book open across his chest. Matt doesn’t go to check on Molly, just comes straight to their room. “Where have you been?” Mohinder asks, putting the book down and folding his arms. He feels like a hopeless cardboard character, but he can’t help it.
“I was...out,” Matt replies.
“Out? You left Molly at school.”
“I forgot,” he said. “I had other things to do.”
“Other things? Other things more important than the care of our daughter?”
“Yes!”
“What were they?”
Matt squints at Mohinder. “Do you ever feel like this life is choking you, Mohinder? Like Molly is holding us back?”
It’s like an explosion has gone off in Mohinder’s brain. “What?!” he screeches.
“I have this power, Mohinder, and you have your genius, and I can’t help but feel like it’s meant for something bigger than playing house with some orphan.”
“Our daughter is not some orphan, Matt. How could you ever say that?”
Matt doesn’t say anything, just tightens his jaw.
“I don’t want you in my bed tonight,” Mohinder says, his voice smooth but hostile, like blood slowly creeping across velvet. “I don’t know what’s going on in your head, but if being a good father to Molly isn’t one of your priorities, than being with you isn’t one of mine.”
Matt leaves the room. Mohinder turns out the light. The next morning, Matt hugs Molly goodbye before he goes to work, but it is only marginally affectionate. Mohinder ignores the fact that Matt is even there.
***
Mohinder is bent over the microscope later that day when he hears a knock at the door of his lab. Still fuming, by the way. He looks up and crosses the loft, slightly irritated with the interruption. He doesn’t get many door-to-door salesmen. Hopefully it isn’t the Jehovah’s Witnesses or something. He swings the door open.
He squints, with eyes adjusted to looking through an enlarging lens, at the two suited men on the other side of the door. “May I help you?” Mohinder asks.
“Is this Mohinder Suresh? Detective Matthew Parkman’s roommate?” The man on the left asks. If Mohinder hadn’t been mad at Matt at that particular moment, he probably wouldn’t have noticed their relationship being reduced to two very different syllables than the ones that Mohinder preferred. But he is, so he does.
“Yes,” Mohinder says evenly.
The man flashes a badge. An NYPD badge. “I’m Detective Weber, this is Detective Christopher. When was the last time you saw your roommate, Mr. Suresh?”
He doesn’t bother correcting the prefix. “This morning, before I left for work,” Mohinder replied. “Why?”
Weber stands firm, but Christopher takes a step backwards a bit. An expression of shock is on his face. “That’s not possible,” Christopher says.
“Excuse me?”
“Mr. Suresh, this morning someone called in a body that was found in an alley. We’ve identified it as Parkman’s. The coroner estimates that he’s been dead for at least two weeks. That’s actually as long as it’s been since anyone in the precinct has seen him, either.”
Mohinder covers his mouth. “I’m-I...” He can’t find any other words.
“So are you certain that you saw him this morning?”
“I’m positive,” Mohinder chokes out.
“Can you give us the name of anyone else who might have also seen him recently?”
“Our daughter.” Oh, God, Molly. What is going on? What is he going to tell Molly? “But-she’s at school. If Matt is really...if something’s terribly wrong...I’d like to speak to her first. She’s only eight, and we adopted her after her biological parents were killed in front of her. She’s...delicate about things like this, more so than other kids.”
Weber starts to say something in response, but Christopher just holds up a hand to silence the other. “That probably won’t be necessary. But we’ll be in contact if we need any more information, Mr. Suresh.”
They don’t need to take Mohinder in for any more questioning that day. They don’t suspect that he has done it, since the method of death matches a list of already open murder files, several of which occurred during a time that Suresh had been documented to have been in India (you didn’t think that they hadn’t done their homework before coming, did you? They even know that he is a doctor. They just use Mr. because they are having a spectacularly bad day. A co-worker has just died, after all). They don’t say any of this to him of course, have to keep the necessary details under wraps.
But they do turn around when they start to leave and Mohinder asks haltingly-“How did he die? If that’s him, I mean?” They tell him that.
Top of the head cut off. Brain removed. Nowhere to be found.
Mohinder can connect the dots. He’s a smart man.
Sylar.
***
I am sorry that I had to lie to you. Earlier I said that I wouldn’t let Sylar lie about who he was, that I wouldn’t let him wear a mask in my story. Well, as you can see, I just did. Maybe I could make this author/reader betrayal go down better, by saying that the stolen powers of persuasion that Sylar has entranced even me. Or maybe I could say that I didn’t know, that my characters ran away from me when I was trying to write a story about a fight between Mohinder and Matt and that I didn’t realize that Matt was actually Sylar until exactly this minute.
But that would be a lie, too. I knew all along, when this story was just the barest idea of a whisper floating around in my head. I planned my betrayal. We’re not so different, Mohinder and me. I going to betray you in the end, just like Mohinder, who shot Bennet.
Will I, too, end up reviving you? Unfortunately, I have no abilities, not even stolen ones. So this is where Mohinder and I part. He aided the man he betrayed, after death and back into life, but I fear that things are growing out of my hands now. I can’t offer you any similar protection because this is as far as I’ve planned. So I’ll slip you back into the story now, back with Mohinder and Molly and Sylar and the found corpse but missing brain of Matt Parkman. It’s up to them to take care of you now.
***
When Mohinder goes home, he plans everything carefully. Makes arrangements for Molly to spend the night with a friend. Just before Matt-no, Sylar, is supposed to get home, Mohinder changes into his tightest pair of jeans, puts on a shirt but doesn’t button it. When the door opens, Mohinder moves towards it with muscles coiled.
Sylar is in the doorway, Sylar as Matt, and God it looks so convincing. Mohinder bites his lip as he worries that he won’t be able to go through with it, but then he surges forward, catches Sylar’s lips in his and slips hands down Sylar’s back and under his waistband.
They kiss for a long moment and Sylar moves back, breathless and surprised. “What was that for?” he asks.
“I’m so sorry,” Mohinder says. “About how I reacted last night. The more I think about it, the more I think you’re right.”
“But you’ve been so-”
“I know. But that’s changed now. We should have something amazing ahead of us, not this boring little life. Besides, I hate it when you’re mad at me. I can’t live without you, Matt,” Mohinder says, and it is a little over the top but Sylar seemed to buy it.
Sylar takes Mohinder in for another kiss. “I’m sorry, too,” he murmurs into Mohinder’s mouth.
They stumble towards the bedroom like some four-legged creature whose limbs aren’t entirely under its full control. Mohinder’s fingers rove over Sylar’s clothing, unbuttoning every button on the uniform that used to belong to Matt. Still does, according to Mohinder’s eyes. And it isn’t difficult to encourage Mohinder’s shirt to fall off of his shoulders, to ease the pressure in his jeans by unbuttoning them.
As they press together in their nakedness, Mohinder is amazed again at how complete the illusion is. How perfectly everything looks Matt. But-there are hands and mouths-and now that Mohinder is feeling for it, he can notice the differences in touch, in style. Sylar can look like Matt, act and speak and seem like Matt, but here in these unguarded moments there is something between them that is not like MohinderandMatt at all. It is like MohinderandZane, actually, or rather, MohinderandSylar.
Sylar’s hands, already low, drift further back, and Mohinder chokes back a gasp. “No,” he says. “Tonight I want to be inside of you. Lie on your stomach. I’ll take care of everything.”
Sylar does as he was asked. Perfect. Mohinder straddles him, one leg on either side, and reaches for the drawer in the bedside table. But he doesn’t grab what Sylar thinks that he is grabbing. He wraps dark fingers around the handle of his gun and swings it so that the cool circle of metal is pressing against the back of Sylar’s neck.
“Are you faster than my finger on the trigger?” Mohinder asks savagely. “Can you stop a bullet while it’s thundering down the barrel?”
“What are you doing, Mohinder?” Sylar asks, his voice rising. A perfect imitation of the way that Matt would ask it.
“I know who you are, Sylar,” Mohinder says. He doesn’t have any fear. Sylar is far too fond of monologing to kill Mohinder before he has boasted, which might just give Mohinder enough time to react. Just enough time to take this scum of the earth down for good. And besides, even if Mohinder is wrong about this, the worst has already happened to him. What is death, now? The man he loves is dead, and he has been sleeping with the enemy. “I know what you did.”
“Mohinder, I-“
“Where the FUCK is Matt Parkman’s brain?” Mohinder demands, pushing the gun harder against Sylar’s neck. He can feel the ridge of spine beneath it.
Mohinder can feel the tendril of a something wafting into his brain, and he almost pulls the trigger, worrying that it is going to be some method of persuasion. But no, it is a memory. A monologue. Mohinder had been right.
The scene envelopes them. Two weeks ago, Sylar's memory.
Mohinder is watching as if he is a bystander to Sylar’s movie. Sylar, lying in an alley with a can of spinach. Sylar, realizing that even with his powers gone, he HAD been able to acquire Candice’s power of illusion. So he bided his time, giving himself different faces, different bodies. Weeks passed this way, and no one knew that this killer, this special man lived among them.
Until he saw the cop. The fucking fat cop who tried to shoot him in Kirby Plaza.
Mohinder watches the meeting occur as Sylar and Matt passed each other on the street. He sees the look on Sylar’s face when he recognized Matt, the look of revulsion when Matt intercepted Sylar’s thoughts.
“Sylar,” Matt said through gritted teeth. He said it under his breath, but amplified through the memory of Sylar’s enhanced hearing, Mohinder can hear it from some distance away. Sylar spun around and darted into a nearby alley, Matt drew his gun and crept after Sylar, but as he peeked around the corner Sylar reached out with a hand and flew Matt telekinetically down the alley, slamming him with a crushing thud against a far wall. Matt’s gun clattered to the ground but Matt stayed pinned where he had hit and Mohinder runs down the alley to him and reaches out a hand to help Matt, but he can do nothing to change the scene.
“Who are you?” Sylar demanded. “Why were you at Kirby Plaza that night?”
Matt said nothing, but the whites all around his eyes were showing. He coughed and gasped against the pressure on his throat.
“I asked you a question,” Sylar said as he walked towards Matt’s pinned form, and then he began using his powers to riffle through Matt’s pockets until he found Matt’s wallet. Sylar pulled out a driver’s license and looked at it. “Matthew Parkman?” he asked, and narrowed his eyes. “You have an ability. You were on Mohinder’s list.”
At the mention of Mohinder’s name, Matt thrashed a little harder, spoke for the first time. “If you’ve done-“ He gasped, sputtered, “--done anything to Mohinder Suresh or Molly Walker, if you do anything, I-I-I swear to God, I’ll-“
“You’ll what?” Sylar asked savagely. “It doesn’t look like you’re in a position to do anything to me.”
Matt’s voice was more acidic than anything that Mohinder has ever heard him say. “I swear to God, I’ll make you regret every last second of your goddamned pathetic little life.”
Sylar rolled his eyes. “Good try,” he said and extended a finger.
Matt screamed as his skull was being broken, a terrible noise. Mohinder wants to put his hands to his ears to block it out even as he tries to pull Matt down, stop the bleeding, do something, but his hands just go right through Matt, touch nothing. And then-
The scene shifted slightly. The screams changed in tone and voice. Mohinder’s head snaps up to look towards at the man pinned to the wall, and through the curtain of blood he almost doesn’t recognize the face.
Which was almost funny, really, because it is a face that Mohinder knows very well. His own.
And that’s when oh: our Mohinder realizes. Matt had his own defenses, his own illusions, too. The look of shock and horror on Sylar’s face was clear: the Nightmare Man’s son had dredged up a nightmare.
“Mohinder?” Sylar asked. “What are you-?”
The blood cleared away from the fake Mohinder’s face like magic, the wound closed itself up. “Doing this will get you nowhere, Sylar,” Mohinder hears himself say. “You’ll never be special. Special enough for anyone, but particularly for me. I hate you.”
“Mohinder-“
“You did nothing for my research. Contributed nothing. It was a waste of time, all of it. And most of all, you meant nothing to me.” Then the other Mohinder started laughing manically and the top of his head split open as watches ticked and blood flowed out and there was no brain inside the fake Mohinder’s head, just a river a torrent of blood and all the while the fake Mohinder kept laughing...
Sylar made a choking noise, almost a sob, but then suddenly something shifted in his face. He looked up, stared straight at the image and narrowed his eyes. “I’d dealt with illusionists before, Parkman,” he said and lifted his finger back up. There were screams again, but this time they were Matt’s once more.
And suddenly the entire scene was wiped clean. It was Matt’s body on the ground, his scalp resting separate from his body. Mohinder collapses to the ground next to him.
“No, no, no nonononono....!!!”
Any other brain-stealing villain might have left it at that. Brushed Matt’s power off as one he already had. But, Mohinder realizes with a start, Sylar knew otherwise. There must be something more to his powers, something that Candice didn’t have. How else would this random cop have known about Mohinder and the research and the watches? Sylar pulled Matt’s brain out of his head with all of the form of one well-practiced in the art of stealing brains.
He tucked it under an arm and ran down the street, leaving Matt’s body where it lay, leaving behind an alley that might soon have attention called to it by the screams. Or, as Mohinder knows, maybe not. Mohinder wants to stay behind, keep pressing his hands to Matt’s still warm body for a few seconds more, but he is pulled along after Sylar. Into another alley, about a mile away, where Sylar inspected the creases and whirls of Matt’s brain. The power flowed into him, and as it does so he found himself able to use a combination of his original power and this new one to read new things, to go deeper. Access memories.
“Mohinder’s lover?” he asked aloud into the empty alley. “That could be fun.”
Sylar put Matt’s brain behind a dumpster. His body filled out, his hair changed, his face shifted. He stood up, and in a second the illusion was complete. Sylar had become Matt Parkman.
With the confirmation of this, watching this transformation occur before him, it all becomes too much for Mohinder. Vomit rises from the depths of his body up his esophagus, and Mohinder raises a hand to his mouth to choke it back. But then, in his other hand, he feels the warm handle of the gun. It’s still there. He remembers that even as he is standing watching Sylar with blood and brains on his hands, Mohinder is still straddling Sylar on his bed, still has a gun in his hands.
Mohinder concentrates every bit of effort he has on that hand. He squeezes the trigger. There is a loud bang, and then Mohinder is jolted back into reality. In this post-vision state, Mohinder can barely even recognize these surroundings, so dark, as his own room. But then he realizes how much blood there is everywhere, and now in death Sylar’s body is laid clean of illusions as his own. Sylar can no longer lie. With shaking hands, Mohinder raises the gun a little bit higher and shoots again, straight into the base of Sylar’s head. As he does so, he gives a deep, guttural cry like some sort of wounded and deranged bear. His whole body recoils with the shot as blood and brains and flesh splatter against his bare chest, a messy, demonic finger painting. He shoots three more times until the whole of Sylar’s head is laid open.
He takes a shower before doing anything else. He doesn’t want any trace of Sylar on him anymore, ever again. The blood washes off before it has time to dry on his skin, but it stains the tile of the shower a pale pink. Mohinder scrubs until every faint wisp is sufficiently gone. He doesn’t shake at all, he is coiled, every move precise. He dresses now, pulls on his pack, and takes the subway to the station nearest to the alley Sylar examined Matt’s head like a Rubix Cube. He finds it there, under some newspaper, slightly decayed but still mostly whole. He cradles it as carefully as he would a baby’s. This is all the hope that he and Matt have now.
He allows himself the luxury of half a second’s worth of a choked sob before he wraps Matt’s brain in a grocery bag and slides it into his backpack. The plastic bag makes a shushing noise as he does so. Mohinder has always said that the soul must reside in the brain. Is Matt’s still there? We and Mohinder can only hope.
***
It has been difficult to break into the morgue, but he has managed to slip into the room where Matt is lying unobserved. No one notices that he is there. Mohinder holds the scissors in his hand, slides the blades under the nearly invisible stitching and cuts the threads. Once he has gone all the way around, he puts the scissors down and carefully lays his hands on the top of Matt’s head, letting his fingers entwine a little in the hair. And then he pulls-so gently, yes, but there is still a sucking sound, a pop as the seal breaks and air rushes into the empty cavern. Mohinder places the top of Matt’s head aside and removes Matt’s brain from his pack.
Will this work? We can wonder this, but Mohinder does not. He is too focused on the details at hand, the bumpy patterns whorls of brain through the plastic, the heavy way his arms feel as he lifts the matter to the table, the crinkling of the bag as he unwraps. He is even more likely to notice the whiteness of the sheet or the mosquito humming of the half-on fluorescent light. He allows these insignificant details to crowd his head so that he does not have room for thoughts.
With more precision than an artist sculpting a to-scale replica of the Titanic out of a single grain of rice, Mohinder places Matt’s brain inside his head. He places Matt’s scalp back on his head and is careful to line these two back together to the molecule. Then he withdraws the thermos from his backpack (one way or another, Matt will never poke fun at it again), and screws off the lid.
This moment is why I wanted you to remember Mohinder’s ability. When he sees the syringe, Mohinder nearly staggers backwards with the effect of his power. He takes it out, his hands nearly shaking now, and grips it in his left hand, his thumb on the plunger.
Then he slides it into one of the cracks in Matt’s head, scraping the needle against bone on either side. It bites deep into Matt’s brain, Mohinder pushes it as far as it will go. And then when the thick part of the syringe is flush against Matt’s skin, Mohinder pushes the plunger down in one smooth motion.
Nothing happens. Mohinder withdraws the needle and sways. He has to put both hands on the table to keep himself from falling over, and now the dam of his thought breaks. He can no longer crowd his own thoughts out and they rush into his head overflowing his petty observances. What is he was wrong? What if this was too grave an injury? What if his power has failed him? He considers Life Without Matt in a way that he could not when he still had a plan to support his grief. What will he tell Molly?
And Oh God, I killed a man. Another man, one that I can-not-do-not want to bring back.
He is so absorbed in his own head that he nearly does not see it when it starts to happen. The red line across Matt’s forehead begins to disappear from left to right. Mohinder says a thousand silent prayers in the span of an instant, closes his eyes as he imagines things reconnecting inside of Matt’s head like plugs fitting into a wall. There is silence as Mohinder holds his breath and then-
Matt inhales a large gasp. Coughs. Mohinder jumps up onto the table so fast that the tray resting against it lets out a loud rattle. When Matt opens his eyes, Mohinder is there, hovering over his face. “Mohinder?” Matt asks. “Where am-“
There is no more room for words as Mohinder kisses Matt so deeply that there is barely any breath in either of their lungs by the time that they are finished. Now that he has the real thing, even in as feeble a state as Matt is now, Mohinder wonders how he could have ever been fooled by an imitation.
Their lips break apart, but Mohinder’s face is still bare inches from Matt’s. “Where am I?” Matt asks.
His bewilderment is so comic, and Mohinder feels so manic, that he has to choke back an urge to laugh. “The morgue,” Mohinder whispers.
“The morgue?”
“Oh, God-Matt, you were dead. For two weeks.”
“The last thing I remember was-Sylar.”
“He killed you. I killed him.”
Matt lifts a hand up to Mohinder’s face, traces his cheekbone. Mohinder is no mind reader, but he can see a thousand things in Matt’s eyes, feel a thousand things under his touch. Things like Thankyou and I’msorry and Iloveyou and even Youdidnothingwrongbykilling. But also things that can’t quite be put into words right now, things about family and comfort and home and relief and fear. But best of all, most importantly, there’s life.
They kiss one more time and then roll off of the table. There will be a lot more explaining to do, a lot of burying, a lot of convincing. They will burn the bloody bed sheets just outside the city, scatter the ashes in the water. The body will be somewhat harder to hide, but they manage it. When they finally put down their paired shovels, Mohinder spits on the upturned pile of grass and sod. Matt puts a dirty hand to the small of Mohinder’s back, a sign of reassurance. Before they go, Matt spits, too.
Even though Matt had sworn to never use his persuasion powers again, they will be pressed into service to convince nearly every single police officer in town that they never found a body that looked like him and all of the workers at the morgue that no downed police officer was ever brought in and all of the other people in their apartment complex that they never heard any gunshots.
But the next morning when they will go to pick Molly up at her friend’s house, Matt will not need to persuade her that her father was ever missing. He will hug her more affectionately than he ever has before. They will walk down the street, each holding one of her smaller hands in one of theirs, and she will smile, just the same as always. They will go to the bagel shop just outside of their apartment, and she will be given a lollipop by the man behind the counter.
She never knew, will never know. That is one thing that they can spare her. Mohinder still has a gun. And he knows where more handheld manifestations of his power, more syringes are. He will do anything to protect his family.
Killers beware.