FIRST INSTALLMENT OF THE RAPID-FIRE CHALLENGE (18 drabbles)
Author: me, aunt_zelda
Prompt #s: 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 16, 28, 31, 35, 40, 42, 43, 48, 49, 50 (that’s right EIGHTEEN!)
Pairings: Mylar, Plaude, Claude/Noah, Kiro, Claire/obscure-female-character
Ratings: PG - R
Warnings: Please watch every Heroes episode ever, I cover a lot of ground with these.
Summary: Kiro is depressing, Claire is a lesbian, Claude/Noah occurs once, Molly angsts on issues close to my heart, Plaude is speculative-future, and Mylar is just too confusing to get into here.
Word Count: I go over the drabble-limit once. Sorry.
A/N: I can’t do that cool: click-here-and-it-takes-you-to-the-fic, so I’m just posting ONE link and you’ll have to sift through, because I’m not cool and tech-savy like you guys.
It’s mostly Mylar, because it's from the huge, soul-sucking challenge over on Mylar fic. .
Prompt #: 01 Barefoot.
Pairing: Claire/Monica
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: my atrocious femslash.
Summary: Somebody’s got a secret …
Word Count: 129
Claire sighed slowly, keeping her eyes closed: for once, she wasn’t scared about waking up in a strange bed. She knew exactly where she was, and she wanted to savor this wonderful, fuzzy feeling of security.
“Morning sunshine …”
Claire grinned, eyes still shut: Monica always called her ‘sunshine’ because of her golden hair …
She shivered. Monica was running her hand down Claire’s leg, sending wonderful sensations up Claire’s body …
Suddenly Claire’s eyes snapped open. “No!” she sat up and jerked her legs to her chest.
Monica raised her eyebrows. “What?” her hand darted out lighting fast and danced across the sole of her girlfriend’s foot. “That?” she smirked.
Claire shrieked and scrambled out of reach.
Monica laughed so hard she fell out of bed:
“You’re ticklish!”
Prompt #: 02 Need.
Pairing: Mylar
Rating: PG-13 (to be safe)
Warnings: Death
Summary: Sylar gingerly runs a hand through Mohinder’s curly hair, glancing at the tombstone …
Word Count: 220
Breathless, heart pounding, clocks ticking in his head: found him.
He meant to say something sarcastic and teasing, to goad the other man, belittle him, perhaps something about his father or how idiotic he was for a genetics professor.
But the sight of him: sitting on the ground before a grave, beautiful face stained with tears, sobs wracking his body - is so jarring that all thoughts of murderous revenge are forgotten.
He can’t break this silence - one look at the tombstone tells him that speech is out of the question.
What should he do? He can’t leave Mohinder alone in this state …
Slowly, Sylar sinks down next to him, not daring to meet his eyes, terrified of making things worse.
After a few minutes, Mohinder leans slightly and rests his head on Sylar’s shoulder.
Feeling awkward, Sylar raises his arm and pats the other man on the shoulder.
And all of the sudden Mohinder is in his arms, sobbing onto his chest and clinging to his jacket like a drowning man to a life-preserver.
Sylar gingerly runs a hand through Mohinder’s curly hair, glancing at the tombstone:
Molly Evangeline Walker
1996 - 2008
Why, when he hadn’t killed the girl …
Why, when he hadn’t killed Mohinder as he had intended to …
Why did he suddenly feel …
Complete?
Prompt #: 04 Heal.
Pairing: Kiro
Rating: PG-13-sih
Warnings: I’ve never written Kiro before, please excuse me …
Summary: The blond man lies under the bed …
Word Count: 280 (sorry)
The blond man lies under the bed, arms wrapped around himself, taking in great gasps of air and keeping his eyes shut tight.
Hiro sighs. Kensai … Adam … has been like this since yesterday, since wondering how many times Kensai … Adam had died in that coffin from suffocation during the past three weeks had become too much to bear.
“Hi … ro?”
Hiro jumps slightly and ducks down, meeting Adam’s wide, terrified eyes.
“So … you’re actu-ally … going to … kill me out-right?” the ghost of a smile flits across his pale face before he spasms slightly and tears well up in his blue eyes.
“Kensai!” with a sickening jolt Hiro realizes that his eyes are beginning to blur.
Hiro crawls under the bed, drags Adam out into the middle of the room, and staggers to his feet. Adam forces himself to his knees and closes his eyes again as Hiro reaches for the sword.
The symbol leaps out at him accusingly. You were more than a friend to me …
He can’t do this: he’s not a killer … or is he? How many times did Adam die in that coffin?
Hiro kneels down in front of Adam and places his hands on the man’s shoulders. Adam opens his eyes, confused.
“You’ve suffered enough.” Hiro says. Then, surprising even himself, he plunges forward and kisses Adam’s dry, chapped lips.
Time doesn’t stop … and within seconds Hiro realizes that Adam might not feel like that and jerks backward: so embarrassed he wants nothing more than to teleport away.
Adam seizes Hiro’s shoulders and resumes the kiss, accidentally knocking them both to the floor.
Hiro doesn’t notice.
Prompt #: 05 Carpet.
Pairing: Plaude
Rating: PG
Warnings: none.
Summary: Yer all gonna die in a blaze of glory, so what’s the bloody point of sitting down fer tea?
Word Count: 220
Peter creeps out of his bedroom, fists clenched defensively, mentally gearing up telekinesis to ward off whoever is in his apartment at two in the morning.
He nearly jumps out of his skin. An all-too-familiar form wrapped in a grungy overcoat is lying on the living-room floor: asleep and snoring slightly.
Why is Claude here? Peter had tracked down the invisible man shortly after Nathan’s assassination. The invisible man had been reluctant, but now he’s passing information about the Company to Peter and his cohorts.
Apart from tense meetings with Peter (alone, never anyone else) Claude has been keeping his distance as usual, insisting that “Yer all gonna die in a blaze of glory, so what’s the bloody point of sitting down fer tea?”
Peter cocks his head to the side, considering the sleeping Englishman. Claude knows that there’s a spare bedroom (“How’s a sodding hospice nurse afford a bloody mansion?”) and the couch isn’t exactly hiding sneakily in the shadows.
Then, it hits him: Claude doesn’t want to rely on Peter. He’s made that perfectly clear whenever Peter offers him food, or money, or the spare bedroom when it gets particularly chilly at night.
Sighing, Peter grabs the blanket from the glaringly-obvious couch and drapes it over the invisible man sleeping on his carpet before staggering back to bed.
Prompt #: 07 Shinbones.
Pairing: Claire/May
Rating: R (to be safe)
Warnings: my atrocious femslash.
Summary: You’ve got nice legs …
Word Count: 167
Claire traced a finger along her leg, recalling all the times she’d broken it. Mostly experiments, but sometimes running from the Company or Sylar.
She shivered. Sylar. He thought she was too well-protected and hadn’t come after her for a year, but still …
Claire tried to think of happier things. Like May, the Captain of the Squad.
“You’ve got nice legs …”
Claire smiled. Sweet May had a secret of her own, which she’d made very clear one afternoon in the locker rooms when everyone else had gone home.
“I really like you, Claire …”
Claire had gone out with Brody and West because that was what girls did in high-school. West was nice and all, but she’d made-out with him because it made her feel normal. It was just as easy to pretend she liked him as it was to pretend her last name was ‘Butler’ and she couldn’t regrow a toe.
“Have you come out to your parents yet?”
Claire snorted: lucky May …
Prompt #: 08 Undertones.
Pairing: Mylar
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: Molly angst. She’s my outlet, you see …
Summary: She wanted to be like other girls at school …
Word Count: 193
Molly concentrated on her drawing, trying to clear her head.
She wanted to be like other girls at school: giggling about boys, doing each other’s hair, worrying about homework, and getting iPhones.
Instead she worried about monster-men coming to kill her and a man who could explode, and if the kids at school would act like people in The 4400 if they found out about her ability.
Then there was the ‘big secret’ that she couldn’t talk to anyone but Mohinder about, and that usually led to terrible fights.
Why couldn’t Mohinder be like other dads? As if Molly needed one more issue to have roiling around in her head!
Well, Sarah at school had two dads … and Andy had two moms … but that was different. Sarah’s dad’s partner hadn’t killed Sarah’s mom, and ditto with Andy …
“Molly?”
Molly looked up. Mohinder was wearing a fancy suit and hovering in her doorway.
“I’m going out, Claire is going to watch you until I get back, ok?”
Molly smiled sunily. “Yeah, see you later!” she gave a little wave.
Mohinder smiled back and left.
The crayon in Molly’s hand snapped in two.
Prompt #: 11 Closet.
Pairing: any you want. Mylar could work …
Rating: PG I guess …
Warnings: Molly angst. She’s my outlet.
Summary: Molly wondered where this ‘closet’ was …
Word Count: 196
Molly wondered where this ‘closet’ was and why some people were hiding it in and some people burst out of it with lots of noise and fuss.
Someone at school had shown her a Chris Crocker video that talked about it, and that had made her laugh, but she didn’t understand some of the jokes. And wouldn’t it be really crowded and uncomfortable in that Closet? Particularly if all the guys in there were pretending that they didn’t like men and wouldn’t want to touch each other?
Molly sighed. Mohinder had explained to her that people in this Closet were very sad on the inside, so sad that they were sick. Molly knew what that felt like, after her parents were murdered her insides had ached, but then she’d talked to a nice lady in the afternoons, and after the ache was only there at certain times.
Molly wanted to knock on the door of this Closet and tell everyone in there that she didn’t care that they liked men and that they should all come outside and ignore the stupid people out here.
Molly also wanted to lock all the stupid people inside that Closet.
Prompt #: 12 Mirror.
Pairing: Kiro, Plaude, Adam/Claude (stop looking at me like that!)
Rating: R
Warnings: angst and depression.
Summary: Both have been betrayed by younger, idealistic, naive men …
Word Count: 201
Looking at this man is like looking into a mirror.
They’re both relatively attractive by society’s standards, both bear the scars of traumatic pasts (though on Adam’s part the scars are all on the inside), both were born in England and still retain their ‘accents,’ both are hunted by the Company and as a result have been living rough.
But, most importantly, both have been betrayed by younger, idealistic, naive men who thought they should be ‘heroes’ because of what they can do.
Eventually, as their ‘relationship’ grows deeper, Adam finds himself becoming jealous of Peter: more often than not it’s the youngest Petrelli’s name that is moaned in the night, not his own.
Then Adam reminds himself that he cries out the name of a certain time-traveler instead of the alias his lover has given him and sinks back into brooding stupor.
“If you could go back,” Adam says one day, looking up at Claude. “If you could go back and tell him, would you?”
Claude nods. “More’n anything. No offence ta you, mate,” he gives that broken smile that sloppily masks his shattered soul.
Adam wonders if he looks like that to Claude.
He wonders if he should care.
Prompt #: 16 Underneath.
Pairing: Kiro
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: Kiro. It’s depressing.
Summary: Three goes into sixty twenty times …
Word Count: 133
Every night Hiro turns off all the lights in his apartment, crawls under his bed, lies flat on his back, and sees how long he can hold his breath.
At first it’s not very long: less than a minute.
So he practices. Every night.
Eventually he can last almost three minutes.
Three minutes.
Three goes into sixty twenty times.
Twenty multiplied by twenty-four is four-hundred-and-eighty.
Taking into account the time it would take to die, and then regenerate, Adam Monroe dies roughly four-hundred times every day.
He’s been down there for three weeks.
In the first day the deaths he’d died in that coffin amounted to more the years he’d lived.
Hiro thinks about this as he lies under his bed in his pitch-black apartment, holding his breath for less than three minutes.
Prompt #: 28 Death.
Pairing: Mylar
Rating: R I guess …
Warnings: crack?
Summary: Molly was buried in her Tarot card book.
Word Count: 162
“Hmmm …” Molly was buried in her Tarot card book. “Mohinder, what does ‘orgasm’ mean?”
Sylar nearly choked on his tea and stifled a grin as Mohinder became very flustered indeed.
Mohinder cleared his throat with difficultly. “Um … why … why do you ask, Molly?”
Molly held up her book. “It says here that the Death card is below The Lovers card, and that people in Shakespearian times called orgasm ‘the little death.’ So what does it mean?”
Mohinder was determinedly looking everywhere but at Molly or Sylar (who was no longer concealing his wolfish grin.)
“Erm … something we’ll talk about … when you’re older.” Mohinder finally finished.
Molly scowled and returned to her book. “Yeah, just like ‘oral sex.’ I had to ask Claire about that …”
Sylar could contain himself no longer. He spat tea all over the table, roaring with laughter.
“Oh shut up, you!” Mohinder snapped, grabbing Molly’s book and throwing it at the former serial-killer.
Prompt #: 35 Sensitivity.
Pairing: Plaude
Rating: PG-13 I suppose …
Warnings: English snark. I am not, never was, and never shall be English.
Summary: Peter had grown used to Claude’s snide comments and snarky attitude in the months they’d been together.
Word Count: 220
Peter had grown used to Claude’s snide comments and snarky attitude in the months they’d been together. He knew now that insults about his hair or appearance were just Claude’s way of saying he was looking at Peter with interest. Now, whenever Claude said something scathing, Peter beamed and snuggled up against his boyfriend, saying “awww!” Claude seemed to like this.
Of course, Claude’s remarks towards other people were meant to be sarcastic and/or cynical, not sweet-nothings. Claude reserved rather impressive, insulting speeches for certain individuals: Noah Bennet, for example. Peter understood their ‘morally gray’ past and let this slide, but sometimes he commented when he felt that his invisible man had gone a little too far.
“Claude …” he chastised as Matt stormed off in a huff. “You shouldn’t say stuff like that!”
“Why not?” Claude cocked his head to the side. “The man’s wife divorced him and then he shacked up with another bloke! What do ya expect me ta say?”
Peter made an exasperated noise. “You know what I mean! You’re just so …” he flailed for a word.
“Honest? Blunt?” Claude offered.
“Insensitive!” Peter yelped
Claude raised his eyebrows, then seized the empath and swung him down into an epic, passionate, romantic kiss.
When they came up for air, Claude smirked:
“Sensitive enough for ya, pup?”
Prompt #: 40 Faulty reasoning
Pairings: Kiro, Hando, Chiro.
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: angst and depressing stuff.
Summary: He’d long since given up on love.
Word Count: 184
He’d long since given up on love.
Ando was destined to die, thankfully the truck in the fifties had made it quick.
Charlie was surrounded by some kind of timeline-oddity: she had to die, there was simply no way to prevent it.
Adam … Kensai … if only Hiro had gone to the grave an hour earlier, then he could have beat that woman to it and there would have been no reason for all this death and destruction and now he’d never have a chance to tell Adam/Kensai …
No, it was too late.
Too late … impossible … destiny …
Now there was only him, and the sword, and more death.
During his journeys his faith in the stories his father had told him as a child had faded slightly, but he’d always thought that if he saved the world and killed the ‘bad guy’ and did the right thing, he’d have at least one ‘true love.’
Now he knew: the select few who attained ‘love’ seldom deserved it; everyone else got left in the dust.
He’d been stupid to believe otherwise.
Prompts: #42 Frankenstein
Pairing: vague Mylar
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: awesome teenage Gothic artist Molly.
Summary: Claire, Monica, Molly, and Micah were playing ‘Who’s your Hero?’ in the living room.
Word Count: 236
It was another late night at Petrelli Mansion and Claire, Monica, Molly, and Micah were playing ‘Who’s your Hero?’ in the living room.
“Mary Shelly.” Molly said, then considered. “Wait … her or Edgar Allen Poe …” she giggled and held up her sketchbook, displaying a page with an elaborate ink sketch of a raven perched atop a gallows.
Claire sighed and turned to the bespectacled boy sitting on the end of the sofa. “What about you, Micah?”
“Hana Giteleman.” he said automatically.
“Evermore …” Molly muttered, adding more detail to a drawing of Frankenstein’s monster (who looked an awful lot like Sylar) being brought to life by Dr. Frankenstein (who looked suspiciously like the man in the old photographs of Chandra Suresh.)
Sophie - Molly’s best friend - had convinced her to submit her comic book series to Ninth Wonders a few months ago. They’d accepted it and wanted more, already Molly was seeing copies of He Can See Me, the first in a series she was calling ‘Nightmare Land’ in newsstands around the city. The series was a gothic take on the events that had taken place since her parents had been murdered.
Molly smirked, finishing with Frankenstein and flipping the page to the cover of an upcoming issue: the villain of Nightmare Land - Mr. Rolex - was kissing the forehead of the wide-eyed scientist - Naveen Indras - while cockroaches carried off Naveen’s pale adopted daughter in the background.
Prompt #: 31 Rolex.
Pairing: Mylar (funky Mylar)
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: Inside Nightmare Land …
Summary: Rolex Man, Rolex Man, doing the things that a Rolex can …
Word Count: 233
Mr. Rolex paused atop the building, listening to the city: thrums of shadow-taxis, wolf-whistles and catcalls from the clubs down the road, sounds of the typical gang-wars in the alleys …
There! That heartbeat … that distinct heartbeat …
Mr. Rolex leapt off the building and landed lightly thirty-stories down. He hurried down the road, turned a corner, and sped up. Not running, never running, he was always precisely on time, right on schedule.
His mother’s nursery rhyme suddenly drifted though his constantly ticking brain. Tick-tock man, in a tick-tock-house …
Mr. Rolex shook his head sharply and rounded the last corner. There was the owner of the heartbeat that Mr. Rolex had memorized on the spot: Naveen Indras.
He hadn’t noticed Mr. Rolex yet - lurking in the shadows, eyes glinting with anticipation - but soon he would.
Mr. Rolex was still not quite sure what he was going to do with Naveen Indras yet, but he was certain the idea would arrive right on schedule …
***
“Molly!”
Molly jumped. Thankfully her pencil was no longer touching the page, or she would have cut a jagged scar across the page. She turned to the doorway. “Yeah, dad?”
“Dinner with the Petrellis in half an hour!”
“Right!” Molly called back, eagerly turning back to her drawing. Mr. Rolex had plans for Naveen Indras, plans that would take a lot longer than half and hour.
Prompt #: 43 Obscurity.
Pairing: Plaude
Rating: PG-13 for English swears.
Warnings: English snark. I am not, never was, and never shall be English.
Summary: Claude liked his power …
Word Count: 208
Claude liked his power. He hated dealing with the monotonous, never-ending encounters with people. They all wanted to use you, they all wanted something from you. If you didn’t want to give it to them, they took it anyway. Life was better alone, far, far better, and much less painful.
That is, until he came along.
Puppy-eyes, crooked mouth, naiveté bent on setting a record: the perfect recipe for sodding trouble with a capital ‘T’ and underlined twice in red.
The kid insisted that ‘they’ had to stop the explosion ‘together,’ not realizing that Claude hadn’t used those terms since a certain man with horn-rimmed glasses invited him over for Sunday dinner.
Still, Claude had tried to ‘help’ by knocking some sense into the boy. This had actually gone pretty well until that man-with-the-horn-rimmed-glasses and his new sidekick ‘Silent Man’ showed up and everything went to hell in a hand-basket.
In the following months Claude skulked around, trying to resume his old life, but it wasn’t working. Sometimes he forgot to stay invisible and was nearly arrested. It was that damn kid with the puppy-eyes, he’d done something to Claude, and Claude wanted him to un-do it.
He couldn’t fade back into obscurity, Peter Petrelli wouldn’t let him.
Prompt #: 48 Zombiepocalypse.
Pairing: Mylar, perhaps Noah/Claude if ya squint.
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: Zombies.
Summary: Sylar, Mohinder, and Molly were running through a world of chaos …
Word Count: 212
Sylar, Mohinder, and Molly were running through a world of chaos:
Down a corridor Claire the cheerleader was struggling with three zombies while her foster-father stood back-to-back with his former partner, the invisible man, shooting at random with stolen Company guns.
A few halls down they found Lyle, Claire’s brother, wildly swinging a machete - where did he get that? - while Nathan crouched behind a barricade, firing a shotgun into the groaning mass of living dead.
Peter Petrelli was smack in the middle of a horde, slicing and burning and … electrifying?
Mohinder gasped and saw Elle: streaked with blood and giggling psychotically - fighting side by side with Peter: Bob - or, pieces of Bob - lay at her feet.
Mohinder started for them but Sylar held him back.
“No,” Sylar glared. “We’re getting out of here as soon as possible, no more stopping.” he held up his left hand - still clutching little Molly’s sweaty hand. (She was no longer frightened of him: a man who stole your brain was better than a corpse who stole your brain.)
Mohinder sighed, reloading his gun. “Fine, we’re nearly to the staircase, the helicopters are up on the roof.”
Sylar smiled, slicing open the skulls of three zombies who were blocking their path. “Lead the way, doctor …”
Prompt #: 49 Teddy bears.
Pairing: Claude/Noah
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: depressing stuff.
Summary: It was Claude who had started it …
Word Count: 167
A/N: Tim Kring intended for Claude to have started the bear-thing, says so in the commentary of Episode 17, S1 …
It was Claude who had started it.
Noah had been trying to keep himself distant from little Claire, in case she ever manifested, and Claude had called him a coward and begun spending almost as much time at the Bennet household as Noah did, eating dinner with them at least twice a week and buying Claire teddy bears whenever he had a second on a Company trip.
Eventually Sandra’s queries and Claire asking “Where’s Uncle Claude?” at dinner-time became too much and Noah called the Haitian boy over.
The questions stopped. Claire thought the man who’d swung her up into a bone-crushing hug and called her ‘Claire bear’ as a little kid was her father.
Every time Noah brought Claire a bear from his ‘business trip’ he thought of Claude. A sinister secret lurked behind those adorable fuzzy faces, but even the echoing laugh of his former partner couldn’t force Noah to get rid of the bears.
Completely wiping Claude away was something too awful to consider.
Prompt #: (50 Writer's Choice) Dance.
Pairing: Mylar
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: none.
Summary: It’s all a dance to Sylar …
Word Count: 119
It’s all a dance to Sylar.
Knife … gun (because rock beats scissors) … T-A-N-G-O …
Usually he leads, and Mohinder has no choice but to follow: glaring but submissive - a wallflower no longer - but sometimes Mohinder surprises him, takes the lead, and Sylar lets himself be pushed and prodded and swung about, all the while laughing inside, knowing he can regain command at any time and reveling in the illusion he’s providing Mohinder with.
Even in the early days Sylar was too captivated by the motions to dwell upon Mohinder’s death; and now the mere thought of killing the geneticist - his dance partner - is ridiculous.
By now, Mohinder must know that this is all a dance …
Right?
Prompt #s: 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 16, 28, 31, 35, 40, 42, 43, 48, 49, 50 (that’s right EIGHTEEN!)
Pairings: Mylar, Plaude, Claude/Noah, Kiro, Claire/obscure-female-character
Ratings: PG - R
Warnings: Please watch every Heroes episode ever, I cover a lot of ground with these.
Summary: Kiro is depressing, Claire is a lesbian, Claude/Noah occurs once, Molly angsts on issues close to my heart, Plaude is speculative-future, and Mylar is just too confusing to get into here.
Word Count: I go over the drabble-limit once. Sorry.
A/N: I can’t do that cool: click-here-and-it-takes-you-to-the-fic, so I’m just posting ONE link and you’ll have to sift through, because I’m not cool and tech-savy like you guys.
It’s mostly Mylar, because it's from the huge, soul-sucking challenge over on Mylar fic. .
Prompt #: 01 Barefoot.
Pairing: Claire/Monica
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: my atrocious femslash.
Summary: Somebody’s got a secret …
Word Count: 129
Claire sighed slowly, keeping her eyes closed: for once, she wasn’t scared about waking up in a strange bed. She knew exactly where she was, and she wanted to savor this wonderful, fuzzy feeling of security.
“Morning sunshine …”
Claire grinned, eyes still shut: Monica always called her ‘sunshine’ because of her golden hair …
She shivered. Monica was running her hand down Claire’s leg, sending wonderful sensations up Claire’s body …
Suddenly Claire’s eyes snapped open. “No!” she sat up and jerked her legs to her chest.
Monica raised her eyebrows. “What?” her hand darted out lighting fast and danced across the sole of her girlfriend’s foot. “That?” she smirked.
Claire shrieked and scrambled out of reach.
Monica laughed so hard she fell out of bed:
“You’re ticklish!”
Prompt #: 02 Need.
Pairing: Mylar
Rating: PG-13 (to be safe)
Warnings: Death
Summary: Sylar gingerly runs a hand through Mohinder’s curly hair, glancing at the tombstone …
Word Count: 220
Breathless, heart pounding, clocks ticking in his head: found him.
He meant to say something sarcastic and teasing, to goad the other man, belittle him, perhaps something about his father or how idiotic he was for a genetics professor.
But the sight of him: sitting on the ground before a grave, beautiful face stained with tears, sobs wracking his body - is so jarring that all thoughts of murderous revenge are forgotten.
He can’t break this silence - one look at the tombstone tells him that speech is out of the question.
What should he do? He can’t leave Mohinder alone in this state …
Slowly, Sylar sinks down next to him, not daring to meet his eyes, terrified of making things worse.
After a few minutes, Mohinder leans slightly and rests his head on Sylar’s shoulder.
Feeling awkward, Sylar raises his arm and pats the other man on the shoulder.
And all of the sudden Mohinder is in his arms, sobbing onto his chest and clinging to his jacket like a drowning man to a life-preserver.
Sylar gingerly runs a hand through Mohinder’s curly hair, glancing at the tombstone:
Molly Evangeline Walker
1996 - 2008
Why, when he hadn’t killed the girl …
Why, when he hadn’t killed Mohinder as he had intended to …
Why did he suddenly feel …
Complete?
Prompt #: 04 Heal.
Pairing: Kiro
Rating: PG-13-sih
Warnings: I’ve never written Kiro before, please excuse me …
Summary: The blond man lies under the bed …
Word Count: 280 (sorry)
The blond man lies under the bed, arms wrapped around himself, taking in great gasps of air and keeping his eyes shut tight.
Hiro sighs. Kensai … Adam … has been like this since yesterday, since wondering how many times Kensai … Adam had died in that coffin from suffocation during the past three weeks had become too much to bear.
“Hi … ro?”
Hiro jumps slightly and ducks down, meeting Adam’s wide, terrified eyes.
“So … you’re actu-ally … going to … kill me out-right?” the ghost of a smile flits across his pale face before he spasms slightly and tears well up in his blue eyes.
“Kensai!” with a sickening jolt Hiro realizes that his eyes are beginning to blur.
Hiro crawls under the bed, drags Adam out into the middle of the room, and staggers to his feet. Adam forces himself to his knees and closes his eyes again as Hiro reaches for the sword.
The symbol leaps out at him accusingly. You were more than a friend to me …
He can’t do this: he’s not a killer … or is he? How many times did Adam die in that coffin?
Hiro kneels down in front of Adam and places his hands on the man’s shoulders. Adam opens his eyes, confused.
“You’ve suffered enough.” Hiro says. Then, surprising even himself, he plunges forward and kisses Adam’s dry, chapped lips.
Time doesn’t stop … and within seconds Hiro realizes that Adam might not feel like that and jerks backward: so embarrassed he wants nothing more than to teleport away.
Adam seizes Hiro’s shoulders and resumes the kiss, accidentally knocking them both to the floor.
Hiro doesn’t notice.
Prompt #: 05 Carpet.
Pairing: Plaude
Rating: PG
Warnings: none.
Summary: Yer all gonna die in a blaze of glory, so what’s the bloody point of sitting down fer tea?
Word Count: 220
Peter creeps out of his bedroom, fists clenched defensively, mentally gearing up telekinesis to ward off whoever is in his apartment at two in the morning.
He nearly jumps out of his skin. An all-too-familiar form wrapped in a grungy overcoat is lying on the living-room floor: asleep and snoring slightly.
Why is Claude here? Peter had tracked down the invisible man shortly after Nathan’s assassination. The invisible man had been reluctant, but now he’s passing information about the Company to Peter and his cohorts.
Apart from tense meetings with Peter (alone, never anyone else) Claude has been keeping his distance as usual, insisting that “Yer all gonna die in a blaze of glory, so what’s the bloody point of sitting down fer tea?”
Peter cocks his head to the side, considering the sleeping Englishman. Claude knows that there’s a spare bedroom (“How’s a sodding hospice nurse afford a bloody mansion?”) and the couch isn’t exactly hiding sneakily in the shadows.
Then, it hits him: Claude doesn’t want to rely on Peter. He’s made that perfectly clear whenever Peter offers him food, or money, or the spare bedroom when it gets particularly chilly at night.
Sighing, Peter grabs the blanket from the glaringly-obvious couch and drapes it over the invisible man sleeping on his carpet before staggering back to bed.
Prompt #: 07 Shinbones.
Pairing: Claire/May
Rating: R (to be safe)
Warnings: my atrocious femslash.
Summary: You’ve got nice legs …
Word Count: 167
Claire traced a finger along her leg, recalling all the times she’d broken it. Mostly experiments, but sometimes running from the Company or Sylar.
She shivered. Sylar. He thought she was too well-protected and hadn’t come after her for a year, but still …
Claire tried to think of happier things. Like May, the Captain of the Squad.
“You’ve got nice legs …”
Claire smiled. Sweet May had a secret of her own, which she’d made very clear one afternoon in the locker rooms when everyone else had gone home.
“I really like you, Claire …”
Claire had gone out with Brody and West because that was what girls did in high-school. West was nice and all, but she’d made-out with him because it made her feel normal. It was just as easy to pretend she liked him as it was to pretend her last name was ‘Butler’ and she couldn’t regrow a toe.
“Have you come out to your parents yet?”
Claire snorted: lucky May …
Prompt #: 08 Undertones.
Pairing: Mylar
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: Molly angst. She’s my outlet, you see …
Summary: She wanted to be like other girls at school …
Word Count: 193
Molly concentrated on her drawing, trying to clear her head.
She wanted to be like other girls at school: giggling about boys, doing each other’s hair, worrying about homework, and getting iPhones.
Instead she worried about monster-men coming to kill her and a man who could explode, and if the kids at school would act like people in The 4400 if they found out about her ability.
Then there was the ‘big secret’ that she couldn’t talk to anyone but Mohinder about, and that usually led to terrible fights.
Why couldn’t Mohinder be like other dads? As if Molly needed one more issue to have roiling around in her head!
Well, Sarah at school had two dads … and Andy had two moms … but that was different. Sarah’s dad’s partner hadn’t killed Sarah’s mom, and ditto with Andy …
“Molly?”
Molly looked up. Mohinder was wearing a fancy suit and hovering in her doorway.
“I’m going out, Claire is going to watch you until I get back, ok?”
Molly smiled sunily. “Yeah, see you later!” she gave a little wave.
Mohinder smiled back and left.
The crayon in Molly’s hand snapped in two.
Prompt #: 11 Closet.
Pairing: any you want. Mylar could work …
Rating: PG I guess …
Warnings: Molly angst. She’s my outlet.
Summary: Molly wondered where this ‘closet’ was …
Word Count: 196
Molly wondered where this ‘closet’ was and why some people were hiding it in and some people burst out of it with lots of noise and fuss.
Someone at school had shown her a Chris Crocker video that talked about it, and that had made her laugh, but she didn’t understand some of the jokes. And wouldn’t it be really crowded and uncomfortable in that Closet? Particularly if all the guys in there were pretending that they didn’t like men and wouldn’t want to touch each other?
Molly sighed. Mohinder had explained to her that people in this Closet were very sad on the inside, so sad that they were sick. Molly knew what that felt like, after her parents were murdered her insides had ached, but then she’d talked to a nice lady in the afternoons, and after the ache was only there at certain times.
Molly wanted to knock on the door of this Closet and tell everyone in there that she didn’t care that they liked men and that they should all come outside and ignore the stupid people out here.
Molly also wanted to lock all the stupid people inside that Closet.
Prompt #: 12 Mirror.
Pairing: Kiro, Plaude, Adam/Claude (stop looking at me like that!)
Rating: R
Warnings: angst and depression.
Summary: Both have been betrayed by younger, idealistic, naive men …
Word Count: 201
Looking at this man is like looking into a mirror.
They’re both relatively attractive by society’s standards, both bear the scars of traumatic pasts (though on Adam’s part the scars are all on the inside), both were born in England and still retain their ‘accents,’ both are hunted by the Company and as a result have been living rough.
But, most importantly, both have been betrayed by younger, idealistic, naive men who thought they should be ‘heroes’ because of what they can do.
Eventually, as their ‘relationship’ grows deeper, Adam finds himself becoming jealous of Peter: more often than not it’s the youngest Petrelli’s name that is moaned in the night, not his own.
Then Adam reminds himself that he cries out the name of a certain time-traveler instead of the alias his lover has given him and sinks back into brooding stupor.
“If you could go back,” Adam says one day, looking up at Claude. “If you could go back and tell him, would you?”
Claude nods. “More’n anything. No offence ta you, mate,” he gives that broken smile that sloppily masks his shattered soul.
Adam wonders if he looks like that to Claude.
He wonders if he should care.
Prompt #: 16 Underneath.
Pairing: Kiro
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: Kiro. It’s depressing.
Summary: Three goes into sixty twenty times …
Word Count: 133
Every night Hiro turns off all the lights in his apartment, crawls under his bed, lies flat on his back, and sees how long he can hold his breath.
At first it’s not very long: less than a minute.
So he practices. Every night.
Eventually he can last almost three minutes.
Three minutes.
Three goes into sixty twenty times.
Twenty multiplied by twenty-four is four-hundred-and-eighty.
Taking into account the time it would take to die, and then regenerate, Adam Monroe dies roughly four-hundred times every day.
He’s been down there for three weeks.
In the first day the deaths he’d died in that coffin amounted to more the years he’d lived.
Hiro thinks about this as he lies under his bed in his pitch-black apartment, holding his breath for less than three minutes.
Prompt #: 28 Death.
Pairing: Mylar
Rating: R I guess …
Warnings: crack?
Summary: Molly was buried in her Tarot card book.
Word Count: 162
“Hmmm …” Molly was buried in her Tarot card book. “Mohinder, what does ‘orgasm’ mean?”
Sylar nearly choked on his tea and stifled a grin as Mohinder became very flustered indeed.
Mohinder cleared his throat with difficultly. “Um … why … why do you ask, Molly?”
Molly held up her book. “It says here that the Death card is below The Lovers card, and that people in Shakespearian times called orgasm ‘the little death.’ So what does it mean?”
Mohinder was determinedly looking everywhere but at Molly or Sylar (who was no longer concealing his wolfish grin.)
“Erm … something we’ll talk about … when you’re older.” Mohinder finally finished.
Molly scowled and returned to her book. “Yeah, just like ‘oral sex.’ I had to ask Claire about that …”
Sylar could contain himself no longer. He spat tea all over the table, roaring with laughter.
“Oh shut up, you!” Mohinder snapped, grabbing Molly’s book and throwing it at the former serial-killer.
Prompt #: 35 Sensitivity.
Pairing: Plaude
Rating: PG-13 I suppose …
Warnings: English snark. I am not, never was, and never shall be English.
Summary: Peter had grown used to Claude’s snide comments and snarky attitude in the months they’d been together.
Word Count: 220
Peter had grown used to Claude’s snide comments and snarky attitude in the months they’d been together. He knew now that insults about his hair or appearance were just Claude’s way of saying he was looking at Peter with interest. Now, whenever Claude said something scathing, Peter beamed and snuggled up against his boyfriend, saying “awww!” Claude seemed to like this.
Of course, Claude’s remarks towards other people were meant to be sarcastic and/or cynical, not sweet-nothings. Claude reserved rather impressive, insulting speeches for certain individuals: Noah Bennet, for example. Peter understood their ‘morally gray’ past and let this slide, but sometimes he commented when he felt that his invisible man had gone a little too far.
“Claude …” he chastised as Matt stormed off in a huff. “You shouldn’t say stuff like that!”
“Why not?” Claude cocked his head to the side. “The man’s wife divorced him and then he shacked up with another bloke! What do ya expect me ta say?”
Peter made an exasperated noise. “You know what I mean! You’re just so …” he flailed for a word.
“Honest? Blunt?” Claude offered.
“Insensitive!” Peter yelped
Claude raised his eyebrows, then seized the empath and swung him down into an epic, passionate, romantic kiss.
When they came up for air, Claude smirked:
“Sensitive enough for ya, pup?”
Prompt #: 40 Faulty reasoning
Pairings: Kiro, Hando, Chiro.
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: angst and depressing stuff.
Summary: He’d long since given up on love.
Word Count: 184
He’d long since given up on love.
Ando was destined to die, thankfully the truck in the fifties had made it quick.
Charlie was surrounded by some kind of timeline-oddity: she had to die, there was simply no way to prevent it.
Adam … Kensai … if only Hiro had gone to the grave an hour earlier, then he could have beat that woman to it and there would have been no reason for all this death and destruction and now he’d never have a chance to tell Adam/Kensai …
No, it was too late.
Too late … impossible … destiny …
Now there was only him, and the sword, and more death.
During his journeys his faith in the stories his father had told him as a child had faded slightly, but he’d always thought that if he saved the world and killed the ‘bad guy’ and did the right thing, he’d have at least one ‘true love.’
Now he knew: the select few who attained ‘love’ seldom deserved it; everyone else got left in the dust.
He’d been stupid to believe otherwise.
Prompts: #42 Frankenstein
Pairing: vague Mylar
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: awesome teenage Gothic artist Molly.
Summary: Claire, Monica, Molly, and Micah were playing ‘Who’s your Hero?’ in the living room.
Word Count: 236
It was another late night at Petrelli Mansion and Claire, Monica, Molly, and Micah were playing ‘Who’s your Hero?’ in the living room.
“Mary Shelly.” Molly said, then considered. “Wait … her or Edgar Allen Poe …” she giggled and held up her sketchbook, displaying a page with an elaborate ink sketch of a raven perched atop a gallows.
Claire sighed and turned to the bespectacled boy sitting on the end of the sofa. “What about you, Micah?”
“Hana Giteleman.” he said automatically.
“Evermore …” Molly muttered, adding more detail to a drawing of Frankenstein’s monster (who looked an awful lot like Sylar) being brought to life by Dr. Frankenstein (who looked suspiciously like the man in the old photographs of Chandra Suresh.)
Sophie - Molly’s best friend - had convinced her to submit her comic book series to Ninth Wonders a few months ago. They’d accepted it and wanted more, already Molly was seeing copies of He Can See Me, the first in a series she was calling ‘Nightmare Land’ in newsstands around the city. The series was a gothic take on the events that had taken place since her parents had been murdered.
Molly smirked, finishing with Frankenstein and flipping the page to the cover of an upcoming issue: the villain of Nightmare Land - Mr. Rolex - was kissing the forehead of the wide-eyed scientist - Naveen Indras - while cockroaches carried off Naveen’s pale adopted daughter in the background.
Prompt #: 31 Rolex.
Pairing: Mylar (funky Mylar)
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: Inside Nightmare Land …
Summary: Rolex Man, Rolex Man, doing the things that a Rolex can …
Word Count: 233
Mr. Rolex paused atop the building, listening to the city: thrums of shadow-taxis, wolf-whistles and catcalls from the clubs down the road, sounds of the typical gang-wars in the alleys …
There! That heartbeat … that distinct heartbeat …
Mr. Rolex leapt off the building and landed lightly thirty-stories down. He hurried down the road, turned a corner, and sped up. Not running, never running, he was always precisely on time, right on schedule.
His mother’s nursery rhyme suddenly drifted though his constantly ticking brain. Tick-tock man, in a tick-tock-house …
Mr. Rolex shook his head sharply and rounded the last corner. There was the owner of the heartbeat that Mr. Rolex had memorized on the spot: Naveen Indras.
He hadn’t noticed Mr. Rolex yet - lurking in the shadows, eyes glinting with anticipation - but soon he would.
Mr. Rolex was still not quite sure what he was going to do with Naveen Indras yet, but he was certain the idea would arrive right on schedule …
***
“Molly!”
Molly jumped. Thankfully her pencil was no longer touching the page, or she would have cut a jagged scar across the page. She turned to the doorway. “Yeah, dad?”
“Dinner with the Petrellis in half an hour!”
“Right!” Molly called back, eagerly turning back to her drawing. Mr. Rolex had plans for Naveen Indras, plans that would take a lot longer than half and hour.
Prompt #: 43 Obscurity.
Pairing: Plaude
Rating: PG-13 for English swears.
Warnings: English snark. I am not, never was, and never shall be English.
Summary: Claude liked his power …
Word Count: 208
Claude liked his power. He hated dealing with the monotonous, never-ending encounters with people. They all wanted to use you, they all wanted something from you. If you didn’t want to give it to them, they took it anyway. Life was better alone, far, far better, and much less painful.
That is, until he came along.
Puppy-eyes, crooked mouth, naiveté bent on setting a record: the perfect recipe for sodding trouble with a capital ‘T’ and underlined twice in red.
The kid insisted that ‘they’ had to stop the explosion ‘together,’ not realizing that Claude hadn’t used those terms since a certain man with horn-rimmed glasses invited him over for Sunday dinner.
Still, Claude had tried to ‘help’ by knocking some sense into the boy. This had actually gone pretty well until that man-with-the-horn-rimmed-glasses and his new sidekick ‘Silent Man’ showed up and everything went to hell in a hand-basket.
In the following months Claude skulked around, trying to resume his old life, but it wasn’t working. Sometimes he forgot to stay invisible and was nearly arrested. It was that damn kid with the puppy-eyes, he’d done something to Claude, and Claude wanted him to un-do it.
He couldn’t fade back into obscurity, Peter Petrelli wouldn’t let him.
Prompt #: 48 Zombiepocalypse.
Pairing: Mylar, perhaps Noah/Claude if ya squint.
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: Zombies.
Summary: Sylar, Mohinder, and Molly were running through a world of chaos …
Word Count: 212
Sylar, Mohinder, and Molly were running through a world of chaos:
Down a corridor Claire the cheerleader was struggling with three zombies while her foster-father stood back-to-back with his former partner, the invisible man, shooting at random with stolen Company guns.
A few halls down they found Lyle, Claire’s brother, wildly swinging a machete - where did he get that? - while Nathan crouched behind a barricade, firing a shotgun into the groaning mass of living dead.
Peter Petrelli was smack in the middle of a horde, slicing and burning and … electrifying?
Mohinder gasped and saw Elle: streaked with blood and giggling psychotically - fighting side by side with Peter: Bob - or, pieces of Bob - lay at her feet.
Mohinder started for them but Sylar held him back.
“No,” Sylar glared. “We’re getting out of here as soon as possible, no more stopping.” he held up his left hand - still clutching little Molly’s sweaty hand. (She was no longer frightened of him: a man who stole your brain was better than a corpse who stole your brain.)
Mohinder sighed, reloading his gun. “Fine, we’re nearly to the staircase, the helicopters are up on the roof.”
Sylar smiled, slicing open the skulls of three zombies who were blocking their path. “Lead the way, doctor …”
Prompt #: 49 Teddy bears.
Pairing: Claude/Noah
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: depressing stuff.
Summary: It was Claude who had started it …
Word Count: 167
A/N: Tim Kring intended for Claude to have started the bear-thing, says so in the commentary of Episode 17, S1 …
It was Claude who had started it.
Noah had been trying to keep himself distant from little Claire, in case she ever manifested, and Claude had called him a coward and begun spending almost as much time at the Bennet household as Noah did, eating dinner with them at least twice a week and buying Claire teddy bears whenever he had a second on a Company trip.
Eventually Sandra’s queries and Claire asking “Where’s Uncle Claude?” at dinner-time became too much and Noah called the Haitian boy over.
The questions stopped. Claire thought the man who’d swung her up into a bone-crushing hug and called her ‘Claire bear’ as a little kid was her father.
Every time Noah brought Claire a bear from his ‘business trip’ he thought of Claude. A sinister secret lurked behind those adorable fuzzy faces, but even the echoing laugh of his former partner couldn’t force Noah to get rid of the bears.
Completely wiping Claude away was something too awful to consider.
Prompt #: (50 Writer's Choice) Dance.
Pairing: Mylar
Rating: PG-13-ish
Warnings: none.
Summary: It’s all a dance to Sylar …
Word Count: 119
It’s all a dance to Sylar.
Knife … gun (because rock beats scissors) … T-A-N-G-O …
Usually he leads, and Mohinder has no choice but to follow: glaring but submissive - a wallflower no longer - but sometimes Mohinder surprises him, takes the lead, and Sylar lets himself be pushed and prodded and swung about, all the while laughing inside, knowing he can regain command at any time and reveling in the illusion he’s providing Mohinder with.
Even in the early days Sylar was too captivated by the motions to dwell upon Mohinder’s death; and now the mere thought of killing the geneticist - his dance partner - is ridiculous.
By now, Mohinder must know that this is all a dance …
Right?