(no subject)
Fic Title: The Wings are Wide
Author: clockstopper
Artist Credit(s): lostgirlslair
Art link:
Pairing: Matt/Mohinder
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 18,534
Warnings/Spoilers: This kind of re-writes most of season one, but there are spoilers for that season and maybe one or two things in season two. They're vague though
Summary: Instead of Matt being able to kind of control his powers and develop them naturally, he gets them full blown and really powerful. Like too powerful for himself and he ends up killing his wife and her boyfriend guy by accident. The Company gets a hold of him and keeps him locked up through season one as well as parts of season two until Mohinder finds him. Mohinder is working for the Company and he's starting to have doubts in them and what they're doing even though he's always had some. They're sort of keeping him hostage because of Molly. Obviously a few things happen a bit differently then the show because Matt isn't around. Mohinder decides to set Matt free and trigger a sequence of events that hopefully put everything back on the right course.
A/N: I really don't know how this fic came to be or how I even was able to pound it out in time for this. The whole fic was supposed to be a lot longer, but I decided to splice it into two separate stories. I really hope I can finish the other part of this, but, if I don't I really feel this is strong enough to stand on it's own.
Alright, to the story
He taps his pen down on his desk.
Consciously, he’s aware that it’s pretty late. Later than he usually like to stay, but the work isn’t done.
It’s never done when you run a whole medical facility on your own.
He usually brings his work home with him, but Molly’s a curious child and curious children get into things. He’s caught her looking through the papers on his desk a few times. It’s stuff that more than like go over her head, but there are a few things that she would be able to.
That he doesn’t want her to.
So he tries to finish his work at the office, but today had not been such a good day.
Today had been a day of tests going haywire and the Company continually not telling him anything at all.
Elle still creeps him out. Like really creeps him out. Bob has demanded that she stay around him though.
Mohinder doesn’t know why he needs to be watched. He thinks it may have something to do with the whole Noah Bennet thing, but Mohinder was never in contact with him.
Has never been in contact with him.
They haven’t been able to find him and, after another lead that had led nowhere, the higher ups in the Company are beginning to become leery.
There’s practically no one to test on. The people with abilities are hiding, according to Elle. Though Mohinder doesn’t know how much he believes her, but, considering the Company hasn’t brought in anyone new since Peter Petrelli, Mohinder’s inclined to at least give it a thought.
It’s part of the reason that days like this keep going bad.
The one or two people that they have to test on refuse to be tested on. Mohinder still doesn’t quite know what Angela Petrelli’s powers are and Bob’s powers are what keep the Company running.
Mohinder suspects they have others. You can’t have a facility as big as this one and not house people if you want.
He honestly doesn’t want to think about it.
Bob won’t let him near most patients. His work is meant to be mostly theoretical, Bob says. A means to an end if necessary.
Mostly, Mohinder works on the Shanti virus and finding a cure for it.
They won’t tell Mohinder why it’s so important, not that he minds much. On some level he knows they’re playing him, but his discovery made it possible for Molly to live.
His discovery may one day save innocent people from killers.
He knows about Sylar. Everyone in the Company knows about Sylar, though few people have actually come face to face with him and lived to tell the tale.
Mohinder has, though. Mohinder spent close to a week in the Company of Sylar.
Mohinder knows just how crazy the man is, how dangerous he can be.
They still don’t know what happened to him, though he’s sure the Company’s exhausted resources trying to find him. Him and a lot of the missing people that have special abilities. Claire Bennet is gone, missing without a trace since before the show down with Sylar.
Peter and Nathan Petrelli were there that night, at Kirby Plaza. Mohinder remembers seeing them as he ran out of the building with Molly. They’d taken one look at Hiro with a sword in Sylar’s chest and had taken off.
They haven’t been seen since either.
Mohinder knows, in a roundabout sort of way, that they’d all been expecting an explosion.
It had never happened.
He so lost in thought about the past year that he doesn’t hear the footsteps pounding toward his office, doesn’t realize someone’s calling his name.
“Doctor Suresh.”
He looks up, startled and he sees a nurse he’s passed by in the hallway many times, but hasn’t bothered to learn her name.
“Doctor Suresh,” she says again as though she doesn’t realize he’s staring at her now, that she has his attention.
Her voice is urgent, her face a mixture of panic and confusion.
“Yes?”
“We… we have a patient… he’s… he’s very unstable.”
“I wasn’t aware that we were getting a new patient.”
“He’s not new,” she says.
She fidgets a bit like she wasn’t supposed to tell him that and Mohinder suspects she wasn’t.
“Why wasn’t I made aware of his existence?”
“Mister Bishop thought better of it, Doctor. This patient… he’s a lost cause.”
“And yet you’re continuing to treat him.”
“Only so he isn’t a threat to the rest of the population. You don’t understand, Doctor. This patient is extremely powerful.”
Mohinder frowns.
“I wasn’t aware we had such threats in this facility.”
It makes him uneasy, thinking of all the times he’s come into work like it’s a normal day, all the times he’s brought Molly in for check ups, to make sure that the virus hasn’t come back, that she hasn’t regressed. All those times and apparently there were dangerous men lurking behind the walls.
The nurse doesn’t answer him. She doesn’t even really look at him.
“What are you treating him with?”
“A basic sedative mostly. Regular shots every two hours.”
“Can I see his file?”
She looks hesitant for a second before taking a deep breath and nodding her head decisively.
“Follow me,” she says.
Mohinder nods and follows her through the corridors, through the winding hallways that he hasn’t explored for fear of what he might find there.
They walk for what seems like forever. Certainly the other side of the building at least and then some it feels like to Mohinder. She doesn’t say anything the entire trip there and Mohinder almost runs into her when she stops abruptly in front of a room.
There are loud banging noises coming from the other side of the door, hoarse shouts and cries and words that sound like nonsense.
“What’s going on in there?” Mohinder asks.
“Some of the orderlies are attempting to restrain him. I just… I just don’t understand it. We give him the same dose every two hours,” she says as she hurriedly takes the chart off of the door and nervously hands it to Mohinder.
“Perhaps he’s become immune.”
She bites her lip and shakes her head.
“I told Mister Bishop this, but he assured me that this drug would do the trick.”
“You don’t even know what it is?” Mohinder asks, tone incredulous.
He can’t believe she would just administer a drug without knowing what it was. Can’t believe that anyone would be so unethical.
He knows he should be used to it. These are the people that held him at gunpoint and told him to fix Molly or else.
These are the people he works for and Mohinder hasn’t ever felt this wrong in his entire life.
“Mister Bishop said…”
“Mister Bishop isn’t a doctor. Whatever he gave you to give to this patient…”
He looks over the chart. Most of it isn’t written down. Just a marker to administer the drug locked in cabinet B in subsection 22 and Mohinder doesn’t even know where that is, much less what kind of drug it could be.
Mohinder shakes his head.
“Go back to my office. There are some animal tranquilizers in the locked cage. I trust you know what those look like.”
He doesn’t mean to sound rude, but the whole thing is completely absurd to begin with and he can’t believe he’s being dragged into it.
“Doctor Suresh, I’m not sure that mixing medications…”
“I don’t even know what medications he’s on. You say it’s a basic sedative. If that’s so that giving him a tranquillizer is just upping the dosage. He’ll be fine.”
“And if it isn’t?” She asks.
Mohinder frowns.
“We’ll deal with that when we get there. Hopeful what you people are doing isn’t that unethical.”
He wonders if she wants to glare at him. Her lips purse and she nods, makes her way back toward his office.
He takes a deep shuddering breath. The sounds from the room get louder, less muffled but the words still don’t make any sense. He knows he’s going to have to go in there.
Sucking in another breath he nods and grabs the door handle. He spares a second to think this is crazy before he opens it and walks in.
What he sees is kind of eerie.
There are the orderlies, all sort of standing in a row, tall and straight, but Mohinder can see that they’re all shaking quite a bit.
And there’s the patient.
He’s sitting at the edge of his bed, whispering hurriedly to himself. Every once in a while he’ll shout something. His hair is greasy, slightly long, but it looks like someone comes in and cuts it to keep it from getting to out of hand.
His face is pale and his eyes have dark, smudged circles around them like he hasn’t slept in forever.
He looks dangerous. He looks crazy.
He also looks terrified and completely lost.
“You’re new,” he says.
Mohinder’s shocked that the patient seems to be talking to him directly.
“Not really. My name is Mohinder Suresh. I’m a doctor here.”
The patient snorts.
“No ones actually a doctor here.”
“Well I assure you I am actually a doctor here. I’m a geneticist. I have a PhD and everything.”
The patient laughs.
“Don’t get so defensive.”
Mohinder takes a step forward. There’s enough of a gap between the orderlies for him to get close to the patient, but Mohinder’s hesitant to get any closer.
He doesn’t know what this man is capable of, even if he doesn’t exactly look all that dangerous.
“I am, you know. Everything they’ve told you about me. Or haven’t told you, I guess. I’m a bad man.”
The patient starts laughing again, hysterically and the orderlies take a few steps back, their faces twisted and contorted like they’re fighting it.
“The miracle drug must not be working as well as they thought. It’s getting easier to make those guys act like tin soldiers. Though it makes medicine time a lot more entertaining.”
Mohinder frowns and stops in his tracks. He watches as the orderlies start to slap themselves in the face and he feels horrified at what he’s witnessing.
“Oh come on Mohinder Suresh PhD. This is funny. Better than the Three Stooges.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“It’s better than being drugged up to the eyeballs, staring at the ceiling catching the spare though flittering through.”
Mohinder’s mind races. He doesn’t know what to do. Its obvious this man is a psychic and he’s only encountered a few of those in his time.
Sylar being one of them.
He’s not sure what to do, he’s not sure how to act. He doesn’t have any sort of weapon or drug to make him stop and he doesn’t…
“God, stop.”
Mohinder feels his throat seize up and his whole body feels like its tightening and he doesn’t know what’s going on, but he feels surprisingly limp, like he could fall to the floor and he doesn’t know what’s keeping him up.
“God, I didn’t mean… yeah of course the fun never lasts. Don’t… don’t stop okay. Continue.”
And suddenly he can breathe. He can feel and his hands feel tingly, his whole body feels tingly and he stares at the patient in horror.
“It’s Matt, okay. My name is Matt. Stop… stop calling me the patient okay? It’s unnerving.”
“That’s unnerving?”
The orderlies have stopped now. They’re just standing like they had been when Mohinder had opened the door.
“You gonna stop me?” Matt asks.
“I… I have something that might work.”
“Tranqs? Hmm… maybe I’ll actually be able to get some sleep.”
“When’s the last time you slept?” Mohinder asks.
It’s easier to slip into doctor mode, even though he’s not a really medical doctor. He walks over to where Matt is sitting and kneels down, looks up at him and frowns.
“When’s the last time you ate?”
It’s not that Matt is super thin or anything. Just overly pale and haunted looking, but he has a slightly malnourished look to him.
“They bring stuff, but they’re all so fucking loud or I’m a vegetable. Once they had to hook me up to an IV and the guy was new and he’d never done that or he was shit at it and he kept poking me, but not getting a vein and he kept thinking sorry and how he was a fucking idiot at the top of his lungs.”
Mohinder smiles.
“Lucky for you I’m quite competent with needles.”
Matt nods.
“I… I just want to not think, you know. Not to hear all these thoughts that aren’t mine. I just… whatever they got me on doesn’t help with that, you know.”
“I don’t actually.”
Matt nods.
“They’ve kept you out of the loop. It’s because I’m a very powerful person Mohinder Suresh PhD. Dangerous too.”
“Is that why they keep you all the way over here? To keep you away from people?”
“Might’ve been my suggestion too. Less noise, you know. Sometimes I can actually sleep.”
Mohinder nods and pats Matt’s hand sympathetically.
“Doctor Suresh.”
Mohinder turns a bit and sees the nurse with a needle and vile in hand. Her eyes are wide and she’s staring at Matt like he’s a caged lion. Mohinder motions for her to come and give him the drug, but she frowns and doesn’t move.
“He said come over here,” Matt says.
Her eyes widen some more and she walks, jerky and unstable, over to where Mohinder is kneeling.
“You shouldn’t do that.”
“She’s being stupid. The sooner you knock me out, the sooner all of you can get the hell out of here.”
Mohinder nods. He takes the drug from the nurse’s tight grasp and shakes his head.
“Tell them all to leave,” Mohinder says.
“I thought you didn’t want me controlling them?”
“I don’t, but they seem to be under a trance and I’m pretty sure they’ll only leave if you tell them too.”
Matt nods and his face scrunches up a bit. Mohinder watches as the nurse and the orderlies leave the room, all jerky motions and they don’t look like they’re fighting it that much.
Mohinder hurriedly fills the needle with the clear liquid and looks over at Matt.
“Do it,” Matt says.
It’s weird because Mohinder doesn’t feel any compulsion to do it when everything Matt had said before had made others do things.
“Stop thinking about it so hard okay. I’m not even sure how it works. Just… it’s easier to control when there are so many people around.”
Mohinder nods.
“I… you’re sure…”
“Look, you’ve seen what I can do. Obviously you can’t let me escape and I don’t… I wasn’t lying okay. I am dangerous. I’ve… I’ve hurt people. So just give me the damn tranquillizer and maybe I can get some sleep.”
Mohinder opens his mouth again, but doesn’t say anything.
He grabs Matt’s arm and focuses on finding a vein. It’s not hard. Matt most not have been kidding about needing IVs. He’s scarred up pretty bad in some places and Mohinder has no problem finding a vein, piercing skin and injecting Matt with the drug.
Matt sighs.
“That feels better.”
“I… I don’t know what they have you own. Or if it’s going to have any adverse effects. I should… I’m going to stay to monitor you for a bit,” Mohinder says.
Matt doesn’t appear to be listening to him. He lies down and closes his eyes.
“So I’ll just…”
“Think of something happy.”
“What?”
“Something happy. Before I pass out. I can…”
“I…”
He hurriedly thinks about Molly and the last time he was able to take her to the park. How they spent the day together and he’d bought her a hot dog at one of the street vendors and how she had smiled more that day then she had in all the time since he’s adopted her.
Matt passes out with a faint smile on his face.
~*~
He doesn’t get home until almost midnight.
He’d had to. Just when he’d thought that Matt was going to stay asleep for good, he’d woken up again.
This time it had been screams. Just screams, no trace of the somewhat funny man he’d seen before.
Mohinder still wonders how he it’s possibly that he hadn’t known.
He’d upped the dosage despite the nurses looking at him with weary, distrustful eyes. He couldn’t care though. He ordered them to do what he’d said and hadn’t given them a second glance.
When he’d finally realized what time it was, he’d left them strict instructions to call him if there were any problems.
They had just nodded.
They hadn’t called him.
He’d been anxious about it before he’d gotten home, awful thoughts running through his head about Matt Parkman and what they could have possibly done to him to make him the way he had been.
What he’d done to himself.
But once he’d gotten home, he’d had to push those thoughts to the back of his brain. Molly had been asleep, luckily. Mohinder’s sure he couldn’t have handled it if she had been awake, answering all her questions about where he’d been and why he hadn’t called, staring up at him with those big eyes until he felt like buying her a pony just so she wouldn’t look at him like that anymore.
The babysitter looks at him as though he’s the worst parent in the world. Mohinder knew she would just by the tone in her voice when he’d called to beg her to stay later than usual. She tells Mohinder how Molly won the spelling bee and how she’d been asking for Mohinder all night.
Mohinder knows all this. He’d talked with her briefly when he’d called to say he was going to be late. He could hear the excitement in her voice and he already feels guilty enough without having a babysitter point out his obvious flaws as a parent figure.
One time, she’d made dinner for them, without Mohinder asking, and Mohinder had protested because he’d planned to take Molly out for pizza and shopping for new clothes. It had been something Molly had been looking forward to for quite some time and Mohinder didn’t want to disappoint.
She’d looked at him like he was the worst example of parenting in the world, like choosing fast food over home cooked was a sin.
She’d ask, she’d always asked, how some sweet and kind child could end up in his care. The stock answer is always Molly’s parents had made him her guardian. That’s what the Company had said to go with and Mohinder doesn’t want to think about the real person they had made guardian and what could have possibly happened to them.
Of course, Molly’s parents had been young. Mohinder deludes himself into thinking that they hadn’t thought that far ahead.
She’d just looked at him like everyone hadn’t deserved someone as special as Molly.
He can’t quite argue with that.
He’s sure to be up with her when she wakes up for school though, makes her pancakes and smiles at her until his face hurts.
“It’s okay that you didn’t get home until late,” she says.
“No, it’s not.”
“Sure it is. You’re doing stuff, right? Important stuff.”
“You’re important.”
She rolls her eyes at him.
“I know that. I just… You don’t have to feel guilty,” she says.
He wishes it were that simple, but it’s not. It’s just not. Instead he smiles and pushes more pancakes on her plate.
He takes her to school and she hugs him tight and says she’ll see him later and that she loves him. It still chokes him up sometimes, that she says that so easily, but she’s a child and he’s seen her tell her teddy bears that she loves them.
Still, it makes him feel nice inside and he thinks no one would blame him for that.
When he finally does make it to his building, Matt Parkman enters his mind again.
They hadn’t called, but Mohinder’s not sure if that’s because something hadn’t gone horribly wrong or if it had and Bob had covered it up just like he’d covered up Matt’s existence.
No one seemed to look at him differently as he walked down the same halls he’d walked down many mornings before. No feverishly whispered conversations that stopped abruptly as he walked past, no odd, piercing looks as he walked to his office.
People just went about their days, which was slightly odd in and of itself, but Mohinder wasn’t about to let himself get too paranoid over the whole thing.
When he gets to his office, he shouldn’t be as surprised to see Bob as he is.
Elle, maybe, but Bob… not so much.
“Doctor Suresh. Please sit,” Elle says too sweetly.
She’s smiling brightly at him and Mohinder thinks she might shock him just because.
He’s been on the receiving end of those shocks. They aren’t exactly a walk in the park.
“I’m not sure…”
“I was recently informed that you’ve visited an old patient of ours. Matthew Parkman,” Bob says.
He’s absentmindedly playing with the things on Mohinder’s desk and it makes his skin twitch.
“I have. The nurses… they were concerned when Mister Parkman didn’t react to his prescribed treatment as he normally had many times before,” Mohinder says.
“I see. Well… Mister Parkman can be a handful sometimes,” Bob says.
“A real handful,” Elle says.
Her fingers glide over his shoulder, not shocking, but he jumps a little bit anyway.
Her smile widens.
“I really think that maybe the medication he is currently on isn’t working anymore.”
“And what’s your solution to this little problem?”
Mohinder frowns. He hadn’t been expecting that. He’d thought Bob would just tell him to perfect the formula they had or not even talk to him about it at all.
“I… I mean maybe… he has powers. We could use the modified Shanti virus. We could do more than just keep him as a vegetable.”
Elle laughs, high pitched and cruel and Bob’s smiling as well, that smile that Mohinder hasn’t been able to figure out, but he knows it sends shivers down his spine.
“You’re no where near ready for that,” Elle whispers into his ear.
“I can…”
“Elle is right, Doctor Suresh. You are no where near ready to complete the treatment,” Bob says.
“If I had a test subject…”
“We’ve been working to provide you with a test subject.”
“Mister Parkman could be a perfect…”
Bob holds up his hand as if to stop Mohinder’s thoughts before they form.
Not that Mohinder hasn’t been thinking about it all morning.
“Doctor Suresh, we at the Company think that any more prolonged visits with Mister Parkman might not be in your best interest,” Bob says.
Mohinder frowns.
“I really think that he may be the key to all this. To finding a cure. You’re no where near close to finding me a suitable test subject. You have one right here in this very building. One, I might add, that you don’t seem to have a problem testing all sorts of other different illegal drugs on.”
Bob smiles that tight lipped smile that Mohinder knows means the man is humoring and Elle laughs, actually laughs, right in his face.
He wishes he could test his drug on her, but he doesn’t think it would help.
“This is what the Company feels. If you do not wish to comply with it… then arrangements can be made.”
Mohinder glares at him, fists clenched as he pours all his anger for the man in that one look.
He’s threatening Molly. Mohinder knows this and he’d do it too. Even with many of the backers dead, there are still those that think the plan would have worked. That rounding up all of the people with special gifts was in everyone’s best interest.
Most of them had had powers themselves.
“Fine. I’ll make other arrangements.”
Bob smiles.
“See to it that you do.”
~*~
He reads Matthew Parkman’s file.
It’s not overtly terrible or anything. He’s just a man who had had a stream of good luck at work before suffering a psychotic break. That’s how his service record reads, anyway. He closed at least eight cases in the month leading up to his supposed break.
Mohinder knows that has something to do with his ability. It’s not just coincidence.
The story would end there except that before he’d been admitted to a mental institution his wife, Janice, had killed herself.
Drove herself right off of a cliff.
That’s all official though. That’s what the police reports say, what the coroner’s reports say. The company- Mohinder- has more information than that.
Mohinder has the ramblings of a man on videotape. The company had recorded all of their sessions with Matthew Parkman. In each one, he’d been restrained, heavily sedated, but still able to talk.
Still able to confess.
Janice Parkman’s brakes had worked. Everything in her car had been fine. The track marks had suggested that she had done it on purpose.
Everything pointed to Janice Parkman killing herself.
So the police had taken everything Matthew Parkman had said with a grain of salt. The crazy ramblings of a man wrecked with grief and maybe even a little guilt for not watching his wife closer. Case closed.
But Mohinder knows. He knows the kind of power that Matt Parkman can have over people. He can make you do things if he wants.
The real question is why he did it.
Mohinder doesn’t know much about the people with powers. What he does know, doesn’t exactly make him very trusting.
He’s never heard of a case of someone not being able to control it, with the exception of Peter Petrelli.
And Peter Petrelli had been pretty powerful.
All evidence points to Matt being the same.
It makes sense, what with Bob’s reluctance to let Mohinder anywhere near Matt.
Mohinder knows that he should probably stay away, but he can’t.
He has to find the answers.
~*~
It’s a good thing Bob and Elle always have so much to do.
Orders come from the top, people Mohinder is never in contact with. They’ll leave for days at a time sometimes.
They never come back with anyone which makes Mohinder wonder what the hell they do when they’re away.
Mohinder knows about all the open cases. Knows about Claire Bennet and how her and her family have been on the run since before they knew that New York City was going to blow up. He knows about Peter and Nathan Petrelli. They’d disappeared that night, never showing up at Kirby Plaza like Issac Mendez had predicted.
Not much had happened like Issac Mendez had predicted.
Mohinder thinks he knows why. The timelines match up anyway.
He has to find the answers. Has to figure out why things had happened so utterly different then they were supposed to.
He looks through the logs to figure out when would be the safest time. They give Matt some doses at noon of their drug and then leave him alone for the next four hours. It’s risky, Mohinder knows this. Knows that there are cameras and spies everywhere and that it will eventually get back to Bob.
He doesn’t care.
He’s just thankful his key card works and slips into Matt’s room as quickly as he can.
Matt’s there, unmoving as he lies on the bed. His eyes are open and Mohinder finds that the eeriest thing about all of this.
“Matt,” Mohinder says softly.
He doesn’t even move.
“Matt,” Mohinder says louder.
He goes over to Matt’s bed and shakes him gently. Matt moves a little, but is mostly unresponsive.
“What are they giving you?” Mohinder murmurs.
“You’re the doctor, you figure it out.”
Mohinder jumps.
“You…”
“I’m awake.”
“Can you…”
“Yes.”
His face is tense, lines clear and evident and Mohinder bites his lip.
“Does it hurt? Me being here?”
“It’s louder. They’re all… they’re all far away so I can’t really… it’s jumbled with them.”
“I… I’m sorry. I just… I had to see you.”
Matt snorts.
“You’ve seen me.”
Mohinder frowns even more.
“I just…”
“Don’t you get it? It hurts. I… you can’t be here.”
“I just wanted to see if there were any way that I could fix this. Anyway I could makes this better without you having to…”
“Don’t… just… go. You have to go!”
Mohinder frowns.
“I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“You are. You are! You…”
He doesn’t finish his sentence. Instead he starts to scream and Mohinder thinks he might actually start to bang his head against the wall.
He doesn’t and Mohinder breathes a sigh of relief.
He just starts to take to himself, words Mohinder can’t quite make out, but they are definitely words.
He doesn’t know too much about this particular patient. He’s just stumbled upon him and now he’s in his room even though Bob had told him not to, that Matthew Parkman is a sensitive case.
He thinks he can see why.
“I… I am just trying to help you.”
Matt snorts.
“I think I have something that might help you. A cure. I… I’ve been working on it in my spare time. It’s not quite ready. I’m not sure that it will work. I haven’t been able to test it just quite yet. There aren’t that many willing test subjects.”
Matt doesn’t look at him, just continues to mutter nonsense to himself and Mohinder frowns.
“They have this man here. He can make it so that you can’t use your powers while he’s in the room. He could make it so you can’t hear voices.”
He doesn’t mean for that last part to come out sounding like a question, but he’s still not completely sure if that’s all Mister Parkman can do. The way Bob had said sensitive case had made all sorts of alarm bells go off for Mohinder.
Matt laughs.
“You think that’s it. No, no you don’t. I can hear it. In your head. All the doubt you have. I can hear that. It’s clearer than the other buzzing. Louder. Because you’re standing right there and you won’t go away,” he yells.
“You’ve been locked up in here. They’ve had you on some heavy narcotics. Perhaps if you were off the medication, better able to think more clearly…”
“I know you. I remember last night. I’m not a complete fucking nutcase, okay. I… I just… there’s nothing you can do for me.”
“I can help you.”
Matt’s laugh turns eerie and he shakes his head as much as he can while he’s lying down. Mohinder would find it disturbing if he hadn’t known that Matt wasn’t in his right mind.
Not that that makes it less disturbing.
“What makes you think I want your help?” Matt asks, turning his head so he’s staring straight at Mohinder.
Mohinder opens his mouth a few times to say something, anything, convince Matt that he needs this, that he has to get better.
But the truth is in the file and Mohinder doesn’t know the guilt personally, but he can guess that it’s probably eating Matt up just as much as his powers do.
“Yeah, and they don’t have a drug for that.”
“They technically don’t have a drug for your powers either. They’re just keeping you sedated because they don’t know what to do with you. I can actually help you. I can actually make it better if you would let me.”
“But you don’t know that for sure. I’m not… I’m not a stupid guy. I never read Flowers for Algeron, but I saw Charly okay,” Matt says.
“This…
“The drug they have me on right now keeps me pretty good.”
“It keeps you catatonic.”
“Yeah, well, everyone has their bad days.”
“I just think…”
“Doctor Suresh.”
Mohinder turns abruptly and sees a young nurse staring at him nervously.
“Yes,” He says around the thick lump in his throat.
“No one is allowed to see this patient without Mister Bishops express order.”
“I was just having a conversation with him.”
She frowns.
“I’ve been standing here for five minutes, Doctor Sureseh. You haven’t said a word. And Mister Parkman… the drugs he’s on… they don’t allow him to communicate much.”
“I…”
“She can’t hear me. I… I didn’t know I could do this. Mostly because why would I want to talk to any of them.”
“You’re… we’ve… but…”
“You were much more elegant when you thought we were actually talking. Anyway, she’s about to get suspicious. Come on, you’re a good liar. Come up with something funny.”
“Matt…”
“It’s nice, Doctor. I appreciate the fact that you want to help me, but I’m very dangerous. I can… you see what I can do.”
“And I want to help you anyway.”
“Doctor Suresh?”
“I… I’m done here,” he says.
She still stares at him oddly even as he walks past.
Mohinder knows Bob’s going to find out about this.
Part Two
Author: clockstopper
Artist Credit(s): lostgirlslair
Art link:
Pairing: Matt/Mohinder
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 18,534
Warnings/Spoilers: This kind of re-writes most of season one, but there are spoilers for that season and maybe one or two things in season two. They're vague though
Summary: Instead of Matt being able to kind of control his powers and develop them naturally, he gets them full blown and really powerful. Like too powerful for himself and he ends up killing his wife and her boyfriend guy by accident. The Company gets a hold of him and keeps him locked up through season one as well as parts of season two until Mohinder finds him. Mohinder is working for the Company and he's starting to have doubts in them and what they're doing even though he's always had some. They're sort of keeping him hostage because of Molly. Obviously a few things happen a bit differently then the show because Matt isn't around. Mohinder decides to set Matt free and trigger a sequence of events that hopefully put everything back on the right course.
A/N: I really don't know how this fic came to be or how I even was able to pound it out in time for this. The whole fic was supposed to be a lot longer, but I decided to splice it into two separate stories. I really hope I can finish the other part of this, but, if I don't I really feel this is strong enough to stand on it's own.
Alright, to the story
He taps his pen down on his desk.
Consciously, he’s aware that it’s pretty late. Later than he usually like to stay, but the work isn’t done.
It’s never done when you run a whole medical facility on your own.
He usually brings his work home with him, but Molly’s a curious child and curious children get into things. He’s caught her looking through the papers on his desk a few times. It’s stuff that more than like go over her head, but there are a few things that she would be able to.
That he doesn’t want her to.
So he tries to finish his work at the office, but today had not been such a good day.
Today had been a day of tests going haywire and the Company continually not telling him anything at all.
Elle still creeps him out. Like really creeps him out. Bob has demanded that she stay around him though.
Mohinder doesn’t know why he needs to be watched. He thinks it may have something to do with the whole Noah Bennet thing, but Mohinder was never in contact with him.
Has never been in contact with him.
They haven’t been able to find him and, after another lead that had led nowhere, the higher ups in the Company are beginning to become leery.
There’s practically no one to test on. The people with abilities are hiding, according to Elle. Though Mohinder doesn’t know how much he believes her, but, considering the Company hasn’t brought in anyone new since Peter Petrelli, Mohinder’s inclined to at least give it a thought.
It’s part of the reason that days like this keep going bad.
The one or two people that they have to test on refuse to be tested on. Mohinder still doesn’t quite know what Angela Petrelli’s powers are and Bob’s powers are what keep the Company running.
Mohinder suspects they have others. You can’t have a facility as big as this one and not house people if you want.
He honestly doesn’t want to think about it.
Bob won’t let him near most patients. His work is meant to be mostly theoretical, Bob says. A means to an end if necessary.
Mostly, Mohinder works on the Shanti virus and finding a cure for it.
They won’t tell Mohinder why it’s so important, not that he minds much. On some level he knows they’re playing him, but his discovery made it possible for Molly to live.
His discovery may one day save innocent people from killers.
He knows about Sylar. Everyone in the Company knows about Sylar, though few people have actually come face to face with him and lived to tell the tale.
Mohinder has, though. Mohinder spent close to a week in the Company of Sylar.
Mohinder knows just how crazy the man is, how dangerous he can be.
They still don’t know what happened to him, though he’s sure the Company’s exhausted resources trying to find him. Him and a lot of the missing people that have special abilities. Claire Bennet is gone, missing without a trace since before the show down with Sylar.
Peter and Nathan Petrelli were there that night, at Kirby Plaza. Mohinder remembers seeing them as he ran out of the building with Molly. They’d taken one look at Hiro with a sword in Sylar’s chest and had taken off.
They haven’t been seen since either.
Mohinder knows, in a roundabout sort of way, that they’d all been expecting an explosion.
It had never happened.
He so lost in thought about the past year that he doesn’t hear the footsteps pounding toward his office, doesn’t realize someone’s calling his name.
“Doctor Suresh.”
He looks up, startled and he sees a nurse he’s passed by in the hallway many times, but hasn’t bothered to learn her name.
“Doctor Suresh,” she says again as though she doesn’t realize he’s staring at her now, that she has his attention.
Her voice is urgent, her face a mixture of panic and confusion.
“Yes?”
“We… we have a patient… he’s… he’s very unstable.”
“I wasn’t aware that we were getting a new patient.”
“He’s not new,” she says.
She fidgets a bit like she wasn’t supposed to tell him that and Mohinder suspects she wasn’t.
“Why wasn’t I made aware of his existence?”
“Mister Bishop thought better of it, Doctor. This patient… he’s a lost cause.”
“And yet you’re continuing to treat him.”
“Only so he isn’t a threat to the rest of the population. You don’t understand, Doctor. This patient is extremely powerful.”
Mohinder frowns.
“I wasn’t aware we had such threats in this facility.”
It makes him uneasy, thinking of all the times he’s come into work like it’s a normal day, all the times he’s brought Molly in for check ups, to make sure that the virus hasn’t come back, that she hasn’t regressed. All those times and apparently there were dangerous men lurking behind the walls.
The nurse doesn’t answer him. She doesn’t even really look at him.
“What are you treating him with?”
“A basic sedative mostly. Regular shots every two hours.”
“Can I see his file?”
She looks hesitant for a second before taking a deep breath and nodding her head decisively.
“Follow me,” she says.
Mohinder nods and follows her through the corridors, through the winding hallways that he hasn’t explored for fear of what he might find there.
They walk for what seems like forever. Certainly the other side of the building at least and then some it feels like to Mohinder. She doesn’t say anything the entire trip there and Mohinder almost runs into her when she stops abruptly in front of a room.
There are loud banging noises coming from the other side of the door, hoarse shouts and cries and words that sound like nonsense.
“What’s going on in there?” Mohinder asks.
“Some of the orderlies are attempting to restrain him. I just… I just don’t understand it. We give him the same dose every two hours,” she says as she hurriedly takes the chart off of the door and nervously hands it to Mohinder.
“Perhaps he’s become immune.”
She bites her lip and shakes her head.
“I told Mister Bishop this, but he assured me that this drug would do the trick.”
“You don’t even know what it is?” Mohinder asks, tone incredulous.
He can’t believe she would just administer a drug without knowing what it was. Can’t believe that anyone would be so unethical.
He knows he should be used to it. These are the people that held him at gunpoint and told him to fix Molly or else.
These are the people he works for and Mohinder hasn’t ever felt this wrong in his entire life.
“Mister Bishop said…”
“Mister Bishop isn’t a doctor. Whatever he gave you to give to this patient…”
He looks over the chart. Most of it isn’t written down. Just a marker to administer the drug locked in cabinet B in subsection 22 and Mohinder doesn’t even know where that is, much less what kind of drug it could be.
Mohinder shakes his head.
“Go back to my office. There are some animal tranquilizers in the locked cage. I trust you know what those look like.”
He doesn’t mean to sound rude, but the whole thing is completely absurd to begin with and he can’t believe he’s being dragged into it.
“Doctor Suresh, I’m not sure that mixing medications…”
“I don’t even know what medications he’s on. You say it’s a basic sedative. If that’s so that giving him a tranquillizer is just upping the dosage. He’ll be fine.”
“And if it isn’t?” She asks.
Mohinder frowns.
“We’ll deal with that when we get there. Hopeful what you people are doing isn’t that unethical.”
He wonders if she wants to glare at him. Her lips purse and she nods, makes her way back toward his office.
He takes a deep shuddering breath. The sounds from the room get louder, less muffled but the words still don’t make any sense. He knows he’s going to have to go in there.
Sucking in another breath he nods and grabs the door handle. He spares a second to think this is crazy before he opens it and walks in.
What he sees is kind of eerie.
There are the orderlies, all sort of standing in a row, tall and straight, but Mohinder can see that they’re all shaking quite a bit.
And there’s the patient.
He’s sitting at the edge of his bed, whispering hurriedly to himself. Every once in a while he’ll shout something. His hair is greasy, slightly long, but it looks like someone comes in and cuts it to keep it from getting to out of hand.
His face is pale and his eyes have dark, smudged circles around them like he hasn’t slept in forever.
He looks dangerous. He looks crazy.
He also looks terrified and completely lost.
“You’re new,” he says.
Mohinder’s shocked that the patient seems to be talking to him directly.
“Not really. My name is Mohinder Suresh. I’m a doctor here.”
The patient snorts.
“No ones actually a doctor here.”
“Well I assure you I am actually a doctor here. I’m a geneticist. I have a PhD and everything.”
The patient laughs.
“Don’t get so defensive.”
Mohinder takes a step forward. There’s enough of a gap between the orderlies for him to get close to the patient, but Mohinder’s hesitant to get any closer.
He doesn’t know what this man is capable of, even if he doesn’t exactly look all that dangerous.
“I am, you know. Everything they’ve told you about me. Or haven’t told you, I guess. I’m a bad man.”
The patient starts laughing again, hysterically and the orderlies take a few steps back, their faces twisted and contorted like they’re fighting it.
“The miracle drug must not be working as well as they thought. It’s getting easier to make those guys act like tin soldiers. Though it makes medicine time a lot more entertaining.”
Mohinder frowns and stops in his tracks. He watches as the orderlies start to slap themselves in the face and he feels horrified at what he’s witnessing.
“Oh come on Mohinder Suresh PhD. This is funny. Better than the Three Stooges.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“It’s better than being drugged up to the eyeballs, staring at the ceiling catching the spare though flittering through.”
Mohinder’s mind races. He doesn’t know what to do. Its obvious this man is a psychic and he’s only encountered a few of those in his time.
Sylar being one of them.
He’s not sure what to do, he’s not sure how to act. He doesn’t have any sort of weapon or drug to make him stop and he doesn’t…
“God, stop.”
Mohinder feels his throat seize up and his whole body feels like its tightening and he doesn’t know what’s going on, but he feels surprisingly limp, like he could fall to the floor and he doesn’t know what’s keeping him up.
“God, I didn’t mean… yeah of course the fun never lasts. Don’t… don’t stop okay. Continue.”
And suddenly he can breathe. He can feel and his hands feel tingly, his whole body feels tingly and he stares at the patient in horror.
“It’s Matt, okay. My name is Matt. Stop… stop calling me the patient okay? It’s unnerving.”
“That’s unnerving?”
The orderlies have stopped now. They’re just standing like they had been when Mohinder had opened the door.
“You gonna stop me?” Matt asks.
“I… I have something that might work.”
“Tranqs? Hmm… maybe I’ll actually be able to get some sleep.”
“When’s the last time you slept?” Mohinder asks.
It’s easier to slip into doctor mode, even though he’s not a really medical doctor. He walks over to where Matt is sitting and kneels down, looks up at him and frowns.
“When’s the last time you ate?”
It’s not that Matt is super thin or anything. Just overly pale and haunted looking, but he has a slightly malnourished look to him.
“They bring stuff, but they’re all so fucking loud or I’m a vegetable. Once they had to hook me up to an IV and the guy was new and he’d never done that or he was shit at it and he kept poking me, but not getting a vein and he kept thinking sorry and how he was a fucking idiot at the top of his lungs.”
Mohinder smiles.
“Lucky for you I’m quite competent with needles.”
Matt nods.
“I… I just want to not think, you know. Not to hear all these thoughts that aren’t mine. I just… whatever they got me on doesn’t help with that, you know.”
“I don’t actually.”
Matt nods.
“They’ve kept you out of the loop. It’s because I’m a very powerful person Mohinder Suresh PhD. Dangerous too.”
“Is that why they keep you all the way over here? To keep you away from people?”
“Might’ve been my suggestion too. Less noise, you know. Sometimes I can actually sleep.”
Mohinder nods and pats Matt’s hand sympathetically.
“Doctor Suresh.”
Mohinder turns a bit and sees the nurse with a needle and vile in hand. Her eyes are wide and she’s staring at Matt like he’s a caged lion. Mohinder motions for her to come and give him the drug, but she frowns and doesn’t move.
“He said come over here,” Matt says.
Her eyes widen some more and she walks, jerky and unstable, over to where Mohinder is kneeling.
“You shouldn’t do that.”
“She’s being stupid. The sooner you knock me out, the sooner all of you can get the hell out of here.”
Mohinder nods. He takes the drug from the nurse’s tight grasp and shakes his head.
“Tell them all to leave,” Mohinder says.
“I thought you didn’t want me controlling them?”
“I don’t, but they seem to be under a trance and I’m pretty sure they’ll only leave if you tell them too.”
Matt nods and his face scrunches up a bit. Mohinder watches as the nurse and the orderlies leave the room, all jerky motions and they don’t look like they’re fighting it that much.
Mohinder hurriedly fills the needle with the clear liquid and looks over at Matt.
“Do it,” Matt says.
It’s weird because Mohinder doesn’t feel any compulsion to do it when everything Matt had said before had made others do things.
“Stop thinking about it so hard okay. I’m not even sure how it works. Just… it’s easier to control when there are so many people around.”
Mohinder nods.
“I… you’re sure…”
“Look, you’ve seen what I can do. Obviously you can’t let me escape and I don’t… I wasn’t lying okay. I am dangerous. I’ve… I’ve hurt people. So just give me the damn tranquillizer and maybe I can get some sleep.”
Mohinder opens his mouth again, but doesn’t say anything.
He grabs Matt’s arm and focuses on finding a vein. It’s not hard. Matt most not have been kidding about needing IVs. He’s scarred up pretty bad in some places and Mohinder has no problem finding a vein, piercing skin and injecting Matt with the drug.
Matt sighs.
“That feels better.”
“I… I don’t know what they have you own. Or if it’s going to have any adverse effects. I should… I’m going to stay to monitor you for a bit,” Mohinder says.
Matt doesn’t appear to be listening to him. He lies down and closes his eyes.
“So I’ll just…”
“Think of something happy.”
“What?”
“Something happy. Before I pass out. I can…”
“I…”
He hurriedly thinks about Molly and the last time he was able to take her to the park. How they spent the day together and he’d bought her a hot dog at one of the street vendors and how she had smiled more that day then she had in all the time since he’s adopted her.
Matt passes out with a faint smile on his face.
~*~
He doesn’t get home until almost midnight.
He’d had to. Just when he’d thought that Matt was going to stay asleep for good, he’d woken up again.
This time it had been screams. Just screams, no trace of the somewhat funny man he’d seen before.
Mohinder still wonders how he it’s possibly that he hadn’t known.
He’d upped the dosage despite the nurses looking at him with weary, distrustful eyes. He couldn’t care though. He ordered them to do what he’d said and hadn’t given them a second glance.
When he’d finally realized what time it was, he’d left them strict instructions to call him if there were any problems.
They had just nodded.
They hadn’t called him.
He’d been anxious about it before he’d gotten home, awful thoughts running through his head about Matt Parkman and what they could have possibly done to him to make him the way he had been.
What he’d done to himself.
But once he’d gotten home, he’d had to push those thoughts to the back of his brain. Molly had been asleep, luckily. Mohinder’s sure he couldn’t have handled it if she had been awake, answering all her questions about where he’d been and why he hadn’t called, staring up at him with those big eyes until he felt like buying her a pony just so she wouldn’t look at him like that anymore.
The babysitter looks at him as though he’s the worst parent in the world. Mohinder knew she would just by the tone in her voice when he’d called to beg her to stay later than usual. She tells Mohinder how Molly won the spelling bee and how she’d been asking for Mohinder all night.
Mohinder knows all this. He’d talked with her briefly when he’d called to say he was going to be late. He could hear the excitement in her voice and he already feels guilty enough without having a babysitter point out his obvious flaws as a parent figure.
One time, she’d made dinner for them, without Mohinder asking, and Mohinder had protested because he’d planned to take Molly out for pizza and shopping for new clothes. It had been something Molly had been looking forward to for quite some time and Mohinder didn’t want to disappoint.
She’d looked at him like he was the worst example of parenting in the world, like choosing fast food over home cooked was a sin.
She’d ask, she’d always asked, how some sweet and kind child could end up in his care. The stock answer is always Molly’s parents had made him her guardian. That’s what the Company had said to go with and Mohinder doesn’t want to think about the real person they had made guardian and what could have possibly happened to them.
Of course, Molly’s parents had been young. Mohinder deludes himself into thinking that they hadn’t thought that far ahead.
She’d just looked at him like everyone hadn’t deserved someone as special as Molly.
He can’t quite argue with that.
He’s sure to be up with her when she wakes up for school though, makes her pancakes and smiles at her until his face hurts.
“It’s okay that you didn’t get home until late,” she says.
“No, it’s not.”
“Sure it is. You’re doing stuff, right? Important stuff.”
“You’re important.”
She rolls her eyes at him.
“I know that. I just… You don’t have to feel guilty,” she says.
He wishes it were that simple, but it’s not. It’s just not. Instead he smiles and pushes more pancakes on her plate.
He takes her to school and she hugs him tight and says she’ll see him later and that she loves him. It still chokes him up sometimes, that she says that so easily, but she’s a child and he’s seen her tell her teddy bears that she loves them.
Still, it makes him feel nice inside and he thinks no one would blame him for that.
When he finally does make it to his building, Matt Parkman enters his mind again.
They hadn’t called, but Mohinder’s not sure if that’s because something hadn’t gone horribly wrong or if it had and Bob had covered it up just like he’d covered up Matt’s existence.
No one seemed to look at him differently as he walked down the same halls he’d walked down many mornings before. No feverishly whispered conversations that stopped abruptly as he walked past, no odd, piercing looks as he walked to his office.
People just went about their days, which was slightly odd in and of itself, but Mohinder wasn’t about to let himself get too paranoid over the whole thing.
When he gets to his office, he shouldn’t be as surprised to see Bob as he is.
Elle, maybe, but Bob… not so much.
“Doctor Suresh. Please sit,” Elle says too sweetly.
She’s smiling brightly at him and Mohinder thinks she might shock him just because.
He’s been on the receiving end of those shocks. They aren’t exactly a walk in the park.
“I’m not sure…”
“I was recently informed that you’ve visited an old patient of ours. Matthew Parkman,” Bob says.
He’s absentmindedly playing with the things on Mohinder’s desk and it makes his skin twitch.
“I have. The nurses… they were concerned when Mister Parkman didn’t react to his prescribed treatment as he normally had many times before,” Mohinder says.
“I see. Well… Mister Parkman can be a handful sometimes,” Bob says.
“A real handful,” Elle says.
Her fingers glide over his shoulder, not shocking, but he jumps a little bit anyway.
Her smile widens.
“I really think that maybe the medication he is currently on isn’t working anymore.”
“And what’s your solution to this little problem?”
Mohinder frowns. He hadn’t been expecting that. He’d thought Bob would just tell him to perfect the formula they had or not even talk to him about it at all.
“I… I mean maybe… he has powers. We could use the modified Shanti virus. We could do more than just keep him as a vegetable.”
Elle laughs, high pitched and cruel and Bob’s smiling as well, that smile that Mohinder hasn’t been able to figure out, but he knows it sends shivers down his spine.
“You’re no where near ready for that,” Elle whispers into his ear.
“I can…”
“Elle is right, Doctor Suresh. You are no where near ready to complete the treatment,” Bob says.
“If I had a test subject…”
“We’ve been working to provide you with a test subject.”
“Mister Parkman could be a perfect…”
Bob holds up his hand as if to stop Mohinder’s thoughts before they form.
Not that Mohinder hasn’t been thinking about it all morning.
“Doctor Suresh, we at the Company think that any more prolonged visits with Mister Parkman might not be in your best interest,” Bob says.
Mohinder frowns.
“I really think that he may be the key to all this. To finding a cure. You’re no where near close to finding me a suitable test subject. You have one right here in this very building. One, I might add, that you don’t seem to have a problem testing all sorts of other different illegal drugs on.”
Bob smiles that tight lipped smile that Mohinder knows means the man is humoring and Elle laughs, actually laughs, right in his face.
He wishes he could test his drug on her, but he doesn’t think it would help.
“This is what the Company feels. If you do not wish to comply with it… then arrangements can be made.”
Mohinder glares at him, fists clenched as he pours all his anger for the man in that one look.
He’s threatening Molly. Mohinder knows this and he’d do it too. Even with many of the backers dead, there are still those that think the plan would have worked. That rounding up all of the people with special gifts was in everyone’s best interest.
Most of them had had powers themselves.
“Fine. I’ll make other arrangements.”
Bob smiles.
“See to it that you do.”
~*~
He reads Matthew Parkman’s file.
It’s not overtly terrible or anything. He’s just a man who had had a stream of good luck at work before suffering a psychotic break. That’s how his service record reads, anyway. He closed at least eight cases in the month leading up to his supposed break.
Mohinder knows that has something to do with his ability. It’s not just coincidence.
The story would end there except that before he’d been admitted to a mental institution his wife, Janice, had killed herself.
Drove herself right off of a cliff.
That’s all official though. That’s what the police reports say, what the coroner’s reports say. The company- Mohinder- has more information than that.
Mohinder has the ramblings of a man on videotape. The company had recorded all of their sessions with Matthew Parkman. In each one, he’d been restrained, heavily sedated, but still able to talk.
Still able to confess.
Janice Parkman’s brakes had worked. Everything in her car had been fine. The track marks had suggested that she had done it on purpose.
Everything pointed to Janice Parkman killing herself.
So the police had taken everything Matthew Parkman had said with a grain of salt. The crazy ramblings of a man wrecked with grief and maybe even a little guilt for not watching his wife closer. Case closed.
But Mohinder knows. He knows the kind of power that Matt Parkman can have over people. He can make you do things if he wants.
The real question is why he did it.
Mohinder doesn’t know much about the people with powers. What he does know, doesn’t exactly make him very trusting.
He’s never heard of a case of someone not being able to control it, with the exception of Peter Petrelli.
And Peter Petrelli had been pretty powerful.
All evidence points to Matt being the same.
It makes sense, what with Bob’s reluctance to let Mohinder anywhere near Matt.
Mohinder knows that he should probably stay away, but he can’t.
He has to find the answers.
~*~
It’s a good thing Bob and Elle always have so much to do.
Orders come from the top, people Mohinder is never in contact with. They’ll leave for days at a time sometimes.
They never come back with anyone which makes Mohinder wonder what the hell they do when they’re away.
Mohinder knows about all the open cases. Knows about Claire Bennet and how her and her family have been on the run since before they knew that New York City was going to blow up. He knows about Peter and Nathan Petrelli. They’d disappeared that night, never showing up at Kirby Plaza like Issac Mendez had predicted.
Not much had happened like Issac Mendez had predicted.
Mohinder thinks he knows why. The timelines match up anyway.
He has to find the answers. Has to figure out why things had happened so utterly different then they were supposed to.
He looks through the logs to figure out when would be the safest time. They give Matt some doses at noon of their drug and then leave him alone for the next four hours. It’s risky, Mohinder knows this. Knows that there are cameras and spies everywhere and that it will eventually get back to Bob.
He doesn’t care.
He’s just thankful his key card works and slips into Matt’s room as quickly as he can.
Matt’s there, unmoving as he lies on the bed. His eyes are open and Mohinder finds that the eeriest thing about all of this.
“Matt,” Mohinder says softly.
He doesn’t even move.
“Matt,” Mohinder says louder.
He goes over to Matt’s bed and shakes him gently. Matt moves a little, but is mostly unresponsive.
“What are they giving you?” Mohinder murmurs.
“You’re the doctor, you figure it out.”
Mohinder jumps.
“You…”
“I’m awake.”
“Can you…”
“Yes.”
His face is tense, lines clear and evident and Mohinder bites his lip.
“Does it hurt? Me being here?”
“It’s louder. They’re all… they’re all far away so I can’t really… it’s jumbled with them.”
“I… I’m sorry. I just… I had to see you.”
Matt snorts.
“You’ve seen me.”
Mohinder frowns even more.
“I just…”
“Don’t you get it? It hurts. I… you can’t be here.”
“I just wanted to see if there were any way that I could fix this. Anyway I could makes this better without you having to…”
“Don’t… just… go. You have to go!”
Mohinder frowns.
“I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“You are. You are! You…”
He doesn’t finish his sentence. Instead he starts to scream and Mohinder thinks he might actually start to bang his head against the wall.
He doesn’t and Mohinder breathes a sigh of relief.
He just starts to take to himself, words Mohinder can’t quite make out, but they are definitely words.
He doesn’t know too much about this particular patient. He’s just stumbled upon him and now he’s in his room even though Bob had told him not to, that Matthew Parkman is a sensitive case.
He thinks he can see why.
“I… I am just trying to help you.”
Matt snorts.
“I think I have something that might help you. A cure. I… I’ve been working on it in my spare time. It’s not quite ready. I’m not sure that it will work. I haven’t been able to test it just quite yet. There aren’t that many willing test subjects.”
Matt doesn’t look at him, just continues to mutter nonsense to himself and Mohinder frowns.
“They have this man here. He can make it so that you can’t use your powers while he’s in the room. He could make it so you can’t hear voices.”
He doesn’t mean for that last part to come out sounding like a question, but he’s still not completely sure if that’s all Mister Parkman can do. The way Bob had said sensitive case had made all sorts of alarm bells go off for Mohinder.
Matt laughs.
“You think that’s it. No, no you don’t. I can hear it. In your head. All the doubt you have. I can hear that. It’s clearer than the other buzzing. Louder. Because you’re standing right there and you won’t go away,” he yells.
“You’ve been locked up in here. They’ve had you on some heavy narcotics. Perhaps if you were off the medication, better able to think more clearly…”
“I know you. I remember last night. I’m not a complete fucking nutcase, okay. I… I just… there’s nothing you can do for me.”
“I can help you.”
Matt’s laugh turns eerie and he shakes his head as much as he can while he’s lying down. Mohinder would find it disturbing if he hadn’t known that Matt wasn’t in his right mind.
Not that that makes it less disturbing.
“What makes you think I want your help?” Matt asks, turning his head so he’s staring straight at Mohinder.
Mohinder opens his mouth a few times to say something, anything, convince Matt that he needs this, that he has to get better.
But the truth is in the file and Mohinder doesn’t know the guilt personally, but he can guess that it’s probably eating Matt up just as much as his powers do.
“Yeah, and they don’t have a drug for that.”
“They technically don’t have a drug for your powers either. They’re just keeping you sedated because they don’t know what to do with you. I can actually help you. I can actually make it better if you would let me.”
“But you don’t know that for sure. I’m not… I’m not a stupid guy. I never read Flowers for Algeron, but I saw Charly okay,” Matt says.
“This…
“The drug they have me on right now keeps me pretty good.”
“It keeps you catatonic.”
“Yeah, well, everyone has their bad days.”
“I just think…”
“Doctor Suresh.”
Mohinder turns abruptly and sees a young nurse staring at him nervously.
“Yes,” He says around the thick lump in his throat.
“No one is allowed to see this patient without Mister Bishops express order.”
“I was just having a conversation with him.”
She frowns.
“I’ve been standing here for five minutes, Doctor Sureseh. You haven’t said a word. And Mister Parkman… the drugs he’s on… they don’t allow him to communicate much.”
“I…”
“She can’t hear me. I… I didn’t know I could do this. Mostly because why would I want to talk to any of them.”
“You’re… we’ve… but…”
“You were much more elegant when you thought we were actually talking. Anyway, she’s about to get suspicious. Come on, you’re a good liar. Come up with something funny.”
“Matt…”
“It’s nice, Doctor. I appreciate the fact that you want to help me, but I’m very dangerous. I can… you see what I can do.”
“And I want to help you anyway.”
“Doctor Suresh?”
“I… I’m done here,” he says.
She still stares at him oddly even as he walks past.
Mohinder knows Bob’s going to find out about this.
Part Two