"Tamas" (Governance #1)
I had been debating tonight whether to write this fic or porn for the Heroes Anonymous Kink Meme , but I wasn't feeling that porny tonight, so I wrote this instead. I've actually had this on my list of things to complete for about a year now, but I could never figure out how to approach it. Hopefully this incarnation does what I originally intended.
Title: "Tamas"
Fandom/Pairing: Heroes, Mohinder/Sylar
Rating: PG
Warnings: Possible improper use of Hindu terms (especially in later installments). Being not Hindu, and not having taken a class on Hinduism in about a year, this is a distinct possibility.
Also posted at: heroes_slash and mylar_fic
Summary: Meant to take place just before Mohinder and Sylar return to NY from their road trip in Season 1. See Author's Note for more details.
Author's Note: This is part of a series of three fics- not sequels, just three of a kind, if you will- which I'm grouping under the title of "Governance." Each is based on a concept from Samkhya philosophy, which cites three qualities that govern the material world. Tamas, the title of this story, means "darkness, inertia, slow, dulling."
Days and days on the road, and the hotel rooms had begun to seem like mere pauses, momentary lapses in the constant process of moving from place to place. Mohinder’s sight was tunnel vision, seeing only the road ahead; his only sense was the rushing of the wind on all sides as they drove. Their task pulled him forward, he an object in motion, destined to stay in motion, and conscious of nothing else.
Except that was not true. Sometimes he thought the momentum in his bloodstream had a different cause. Every moment he looked at Zane was like a breath held, a temporary stopping of the world; or rather, an immunity to it as it swirled around them. A dulling of the senses.
Perhaps it was both- the fatigue of his mind from travel, and the slow preoccupation of it with his companion- that caused his thought processes to function on a lower level. Rationalities and questions, suspicions even, caught in his throat before could think them properly, much less give them voice. An entrapment, but one he seemed only too keen to enter.
Zane was mysterious, enigmatic- with a darkness about him that Mohinder found himself strangely powerless against. He had felt the tendrils of it reaching out to him, subtle as the brush of fingertips against his skin; light enough to ignore if he had wanted. And oh, he had: the desire for human contact in a strange land overpowered him, overruled every dissent his logical mind still had to offer. Idiotic, perhaps, but it was the path he had chosen.
He looked over at the bed beside him, at the man who had become something like a friend, casually rotating through the channels on the television for a satisfactorily mindless late-night movie. Stared at him and thought back to the online search he’d done only minutes before Zane had entered. His mind processed the newspaper articles, the obituary, the police reports and what they had revealed. He stared and stared, and he tried to think of the person next to him as a killer, as his father’s killer-
But it wasn’t sinking in; the news, though terrible, seemed to pass over him without impact, desensitized as he was from all he had seen in recent weeks. Zane glanced over momentarily, then registered Mohinder’s piercing gaze and looked back, longer this time.
Mohinder leaned over and brushed their lips together.
When he pulled away, still half leaning against Zane, their eyes connected, and Mohinder saw the requisite shock and surprise- but something else flashed there, a quickly-vanishing cunning, a knowingness beyond what the musician from Ocean City would have. And it was then that Mohinder knew, for certain, that this man was Sylar, and not Zane Taylor. Only then could he glimpse the killer underneath the mask.
Forgive me, Father, for I know not what I do, he thought, and kissed him again.
Title: "Tamas"
Fandom/Pairing: Heroes, Mohinder/Sylar
Rating: PG
Warnings: Possible improper use of Hindu terms (especially in later installments). Being not Hindu, and not having taken a class on Hinduism in about a year, this is a distinct possibility.
Also posted at: heroes_slash and mylar_fic
Summary: Meant to take place just before Mohinder and Sylar return to NY from their road trip in Season 1. See Author's Note for more details.
Author's Note: This is part of a series of three fics- not sequels, just three of a kind, if you will- which I'm grouping under the title of "Governance." Each is based on a concept from Samkhya philosophy, which cites three qualities that govern the material world. Tamas, the title of this story, means "darkness, inertia, slow, dulling."
Days and days on the road, and the hotel rooms had begun to seem like mere pauses, momentary lapses in the constant process of moving from place to place. Mohinder’s sight was tunnel vision, seeing only the road ahead; his only sense was the rushing of the wind on all sides as they drove. Their task pulled him forward, he an object in motion, destined to stay in motion, and conscious of nothing else.
Except that was not true. Sometimes he thought the momentum in his bloodstream had a different cause. Every moment he looked at Zane was like a breath held, a temporary stopping of the world; or rather, an immunity to it as it swirled around them. A dulling of the senses.
Perhaps it was both- the fatigue of his mind from travel, and the slow preoccupation of it with his companion- that caused his thought processes to function on a lower level. Rationalities and questions, suspicions even, caught in his throat before could think them properly, much less give them voice. An entrapment, but one he seemed only too keen to enter.
Zane was mysterious, enigmatic- with a darkness about him that Mohinder found himself strangely powerless against. He had felt the tendrils of it reaching out to him, subtle as the brush of fingertips against his skin; light enough to ignore if he had wanted. And oh, he had: the desire for human contact in a strange land overpowered him, overruled every dissent his logical mind still had to offer. Idiotic, perhaps, but it was the path he had chosen.
He looked over at the bed beside him, at the man who had become something like a friend, casually rotating through the channels on the television for a satisfactorily mindless late-night movie. Stared at him and thought back to the online search he’d done only minutes before Zane had entered. His mind processed the newspaper articles, the obituary, the police reports and what they had revealed. He stared and stared, and he tried to think of the person next to him as a killer, as his father’s killer-
But it wasn’t sinking in; the news, though terrible, seemed to pass over him without impact, desensitized as he was from all he had seen in recent weeks. Zane glanced over momentarily, then registered Mohinder’s piercing gaze and looked back, longer this time.
Mohinder leaned over and brushed their lips together.
When he pulled away, still half leaning against Zane, their eyes connected, and Mohinder saw the requisite shock and surprise- but something else flashed there, a quickly-vanishing cunning, a knowingness beyond what the musician from Ocean City would have. And it was then that Mohinder knew, for certain, that this man was Sylar, and not Zane Taylor. Only then could he glimpse the killer underneath the mask.
Forgive me, Father, for I know not what I do, he thought, and kissed him again.