Mohinder exhaled through his nose and then swallowed quite a large mouthful of blood he'd been letting collect against his tongue, savoring the taste like one might do with a fine wine.
Another curse (or perk) of the disease was enhanced senses. He could smell, taste, see, and feel ten times stronger than before. Particularly useful was his sensitive hearing. Sylar may have been going out of his way to be silent, but he failed to stifle the ruffle of clothing when he moved his arm up and down to utilize his telekinesis.
And while Mohinder didn't know the intruders were two old acquaintances, he still launched into a mode of alert panic and felt the intense need to protect them.
His teeth pulled from Claire's neck, a string of blood and saliva connecting his mouth to her healing wound. Mohinder's dark eyes were sparkling in an almost royal-blue tint and he stared down into her tired hazels to hold her attention. "Someone is downstairs," he whispered. "Stay here. I mean it." He drew the back of his arm against his mouth to wipe the blood away, but only managed to smear it more as he stood.
Wearing a black tank helped to lessen how very warm he felt form Claire's blood. Mohinder's sex was still hard in his tight jeans - rather uncomfortable, but the fear of their intruders had him paying no mind to that. He turned off the bedroom light and pressed himself to the wall, listening for more movement.
~~
Peter put his hand on Sylar's arm when he noticed some light shifting in the upstairs hallway. He took that as a clue that they could have been made already, and tried to signal with his hand that he would go towards the back exit and block a potential escape.
Sylar mouthed, 'He heard us?' in disbelief, making a slightly put out face at Peter, before nodding his head in understanding of his brother's intentions. The Intuitive was supposed to be the one with the super hearing, ever since Bozeman, anyway.
None of the fledglings had ever made them this fast, though one had to take into consideration, none of them had lived as long as Mohinder with this affliction. Some had heightened senses, surely, but not to the degree the geneticist seemed to have.
That probably meant he was going to be monstrously strong and fast as well. Sylar swore under his breath and watched the top of the stair, listening carefully to the movement beyond the landing.
Blocking doorways wasn't going to mean shit then. If Mohinder wanted out, he'd manage it, through a window or a wall if need be, probably. Sylar glared upward as though the object of his displeasure were already standing before him, and strode forward with more confident, unconcealed steps.
Ever a tactile creature, he stroked his fingertips along the banister as he gained the stair, making his leisurely way toward that vanished light. A confident hunter, stalking his prey in his own time.
Peter watched him go and then walked swiftly to the back door. He plastered himself there in a dark corner, eyes on a window so that he could watch and make sure Mohinder didn't fly out and land in the snowy yard.
For his part, Mohinder was staying relatively calm. He'd faced many an attacker since his turning; vampire and human alike. He was, however, worried about Claire. She was his source of life for the time being. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure she was staying there as he told her to, and then poised himself by the door with the flexibility of a cat.
He listened closely to the loud, confident steps. Either this was an oafish vampire on the prowl for his prized regenerative, or this was some idiotic human looking for a place to sleep.
Mohinder waited until the footsteps cleared the stairs, rounded the corner, and came towards the only partially opened door on the floor. He held his breath, fingers curling into tight fists before he made his lunge.
The geneticist-turned-fiend moved at a blurred speed. If Sylar had blinked, he would have missed it. He was upon the intruder too quickly to soak in who he was pinning up against a creaking banister. The wooden beams and poles threatened to snap under Sylar's weight, Mohinder's cooled hand clenched tight around that pale throat as he silently threatened to push him over the edge and send him tumbling down the stairs. It would have killed or hurt anyone else.
And then he realized.
"...Sylar?!" Mohinder hissed through blood-caked lips, the ruby substance smeared down his neck where it had dripped when he pulled away from Claire so abruptly. He tightened his fingers around the man's throat, nails digging in.
The wind knocked out of him as he hit the banister, and his own hands closed quickly about the doctor's wrist, steadying himself within that grip. He felt the lingering instinctual panic of suffocation as his air-supply was cut off, and squeezed Mohinder's wrist that much tighter for it, but gradually fought through the evolutionarily dictated fear.
After a moment, unable to speak for lack of breath, he reached one deadly hand forward, toward Mohinder's face, a light in his amber eyes and a smirk on his bluing lips. His thumb brushed the tacky smear of blood along the sharp line of Mohinder's jaw, a tactile greeting, in lieu of the verbal sort.
Mohinder wasn't sure what he loathed more; the fact that Sylar had managed to find him so easily, or the fact that such a small gesture stirred up emotions he'd long since considered dead. Took you long enough, he wanted to say. Or perhaps, you didn't protect me from myself. That would have been a good one too. Both far too vulnerable, though.
In a bout of anger and panic, Mohinder gave a shove. One firm push followed by quite a loud crack and Sylar went backwards into a fifteen food drop to the downstairs level. Mohinder turned immediately and ran back to Claire, scooping her up into his arms. "Hold onto me, we're leaving."
Peter didn't have to catch Sylar - Sylar would have easily healed or caught himself. Though Peter's reflexes got the better of him and his hand went out, stopping Sylar mid-fall, righting him onto his feet. He heard a window breaking upstairs and then bolted out the front door after his brother. "Mohinder, stop!!"
This was a nice change, Sylar thought, as he sprinted after the doctor and his captive. For once, he didn't have to worry about breaking anyone! Never mind that Claire looked every inch the damsel in distress, being carried off by either a beast or a prince, as she was pursued by one of each sort not far behind. She was about as delicate as diamond these days, so Sylar had no qualms about what he did next.
Taking a few more running steps, he shot forward off the ground, leaving a divot in the earth and snow behind him and a violent puff of both in his wake. Barely above ground level, he was aloft, rocketing toward them both until he could plow hard into Mohinder, sending all three of them hurtling down into the snow.
Peter skidded to a stop when he got a face full of dirty snow. He coughed and waved his arms about, then grumbled about Sylar being an ass and continued his sprint forward.
Mohinder saw black. It was nighttime, not unusual, but this was cold blackness. Suddenly he was being pushed into snow and earth under the force of Sylar's power. Worst of all, it hurt. Poor Claire - buried beneath both of their bodies!
He started thrashing when he was able, trying to get out of the snow and get a hold on Sylar. Mohinder gripped what felt like the short hair atop Sylar's head and gave him a swift punch backed by super strength. Unfortunately he was outnumbered, and immediately felt the tug of Peter's telekinesis on his arms. "Let me go!!" he yelled, chest heaving.
"Stay. Down!" Sylar shoved with his own palm against Mohinder's chest, his own face now smeared with blood from a briefly broken nose. Claire was struggling to get out from under them, hands flailing to find her uncle, who was blessedly near by!
"Oh, my God! Peter! You found us!" She wasn't nearly as stunned by the fall as the other two. After jumping from seven-story high scaffolding more than a dozen times, and plenty of other nasty wrecks since, she wasn't so easily phased by a hard fall.
Sylar spread his telekinetic influence over the doctor like a blanket, fastening him to the ground like a butterfly under glass, though the man fought more like a whole hornets' nest. "Why such a hurry, Doctor? It's been so long. We've got so much catching up to do."
Peter helped Claire up once Sylar had Mohinder under control, hugging her to his frame. "We got lucky on some leads." He gave her a gentle squeeze and then watched Mohinder. This was the first time he'd seen someone close to him as a vampire. Suresh looked about the same, but his eyes were freaky and his slender body moved like an animal's.
Mohinder clenched his jaw tightly and narrowed his eyes at Sylar. "Let me up right now and perhaps I won't kill you," he offered. But he knew he was no match for Sylar's powers. Telekinesis and regeneration trumped speed and strength. Mohinder's regeneration was akin to that of a human's still, and he was starting to ache from the previous blow.
"It would only give you a few seconds' lead time if you did," Sylar smirked, brushing at his bloodied muzzle with the back of one wrist. He then made a counter offer. "Calm down, and maybe I'll let you up. But give me any reason to think you're still just like the rest of those animals out there... You've been MIA, but I'm sure you know what Peter and I've been up to since the world went insane."
"Yes. I've seen the news." He was curious as to why they hadn't killed him yet, actually. That'd been his first thought upon seeing Sylar and Peter. "Do it. Get rid of me. Millions want you to, I'm sure. They think if the source dies, the virus dies." But he knew better, because he'd been studying it from top to bottom, side to side, corner to corner.
He had no idea how to fix the mess he'd made. Perhaps death was a just punishment for killing so many with his ungodly experiment.
Mohinder closed his eyes, long lashes fanning out dark skin.
"We're not gonna kill you," Peter said, still holding Claire. "We're gonna take you back to New York so you can work on this with The Company."
The vampire tensed, and his eyes flew open. "What?! No!" The Company would turn him into some caged Frankenstein!!
"He's been working on it here," Claire explained, quickly, intent on diffusing the tense situation as quickly as she could. "He is different. Don't hurt him, please." She implored her uncle, then looked reluctantly over to the man whom she could scarce believe she shared any blood relationship. "Please..."
"Relax, Claire. You, too, Suresh. You think I'm going to let those inept fools try to take you apart? We all know you're the only one with the intellect to handle this," he tapped one deadly finger between the geneticist's unsettlingly alien eyes. "And I'm personally aware of how badly they bungle things without supervision."
He still had a divot in the back of his head, a very small spot where the hair wouldn't grow, because a hole had been drilled there and a plastic shunt jammed in. He ran his fingertips over it sometimes, whenever the memories came back to haunt him.
"I want to fix this, Mohinder..." Sylar spoke more softly, more directly to the geneticist. "I'm tired of it, honestly, all the senseless death. It's as though New York has actually happened, but in agonizing slow-motion. I've killed so many, with nothing gained, and I want to stop, but I can't. ...you know what that's like now, too."
Mohinder was surprised, and pleased, that Claire spoke out for him. Nobody had done that in a long time. He stared at her until Sylar tapped his forehead and then narrowed his eyes on a man he never thought he'd see again, unless in Hell. Well, technically this was Hell.
Was Mohinder about to admit he understood anything Sylar did? No. He wanted to defend himself and say he hadn't killed that many, but killing with his bare hands was no different than indirectly killing with the virus he'd created. The weight of it all was coming down on him, fast, making it difficult to breathe. Leave it to Sylar to still cause him vulnerability when he was so very powerful for once.
"I never meant for any of this to happen," he whispered, his gaze on Sylar's neck. Anywhere but his eyes. Damn those pretty auburn eyes. "I'm trying to fix it."
Peter didn't quite catch what he'd said, so he rubbed Claire's back for a minute before speaking up. "Can we go inside? Its cold."
"So are we. Let us help," he released the pressure on Mohinder, gradually. Lifting his hand from the doctor's chest, he extended it forward, open, in an offer to help him up. He held his breath, though unconsciously, waiting to see if he'd be scorned or accepted.
Mohinder felt the pressure lift gradually and looked at Sylar's hand. Was he willing to take it, after everything? Was he no longer ashamed of his own cold skin and monstrously tight grip?
Mohinder rolled to the side and stood up on his own with grace he hadn't possessed years ago when their paths first crossed. He brushed dirty snow from his clothing, tending to his looks. Monster or not, he wanted to be presentable.
Mohinder also held himself with more confidence than Sylar likely remembered - shoulders back, spine straight. He had no reason to slump or cower.
Without a word he moved around them, brushing his fingers against Claire's arm in a silent apology for how things were going. He'd just wanted a quiet existence here, with her, left to his own thoughts on the cure. Of course Sylar would never allow it.
Peter glanced at his brother and then walked with Claire towards the cabin, remembering coming here as a kid. Good memories.
Sylar closed his empty fingers into a fist and pressed his mouth into a thin line for a moment before he swept to his own feet. Hot, boiling anger of the type he usually tried to repress around Peter came surging upward inside of him, that hated feeling of rejection making his ears burn again.
He stalked behind them, a cloud of dark feelings, keeping his eyes on Mohinder so that the doctor didn't make a second attempt to flee. Inside he was raging. Didn't the geneticist see what Sylar had done for him? How much he'd given up, thanks to the very existence of this damned disease?
Claire pressed close to Peter, shivering in the cold of the night and the heat of her half-uncle's glare. She still wasn't comfortable with that monster being part of the family. She knew he tried, and hard, but the fact that he was a cold blooded killer remained unchanged. He just had a good excuse for it now, but it still didn't make him right. "I missed you," she told Peter, quietly.
Another curse (or perk) of the disease was enhanced senses. He could smell, taste, see, and feel ten times stronger than before. Particularly useful was his sensitive hearing. Sylar may have been going out of his way to be silent, but he failed to stifle the ruffle of clothing when he moved his arm up and down to utilize his telekinesis.
And while Mohinder didn't know the intruders were two old acquaintances, he still launched into a mode of alert panic and felt the intense need to protect them.
His teeth pulled from Claire's neck, a string of blood and saliva connecting his mouth to her healing wound. Mohinder's dark eyes were sparkling in an almost royal-blue tint and he stared down into her tired hazels to hold her attention. "Someone is downstairs," he whispered. "Stay here. I mean it." He drew the back of his arm against his mouth to wipe the blood away, but only managed to smear it more as he stood.
Wearing a black tank helped to lessen how very warm he felt form Claire's blood. Mohinder's sex was still hard in his tight jeans - rather uncomfortable, but the fear of their intruders had him paying no mind to that. He turned off the bedroom light and pressed himself to the wall, listening for more movement.
~~
Peter put his hand on Sylar's arm when he noticed some light shifting in the upstairs hallway. He took that as a clue that they could have been made already, and tried to signal with his hand that he would go towards the back exit and block a potential escape.
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None of the fledglings had ever made them this fast, though one had to take into consideration, none of them had lived as long as Mohinder with this affliction. Some had heightened senses, surely, but not to the degree the geneticist seemed to have.
That probably meant he was going to be monstrously strong and fast as well. Sylar swore under his breath and watched the top of the stair, listening carefully to the movement beyond the landing.
Blocking doorways wasn't going to mean shit then. If Mohinder wanted out, he'd manage it, through a window or a wall if need be, probably. Sylar glared upward as though the object of his displeasure were already standing before him, and strode forward with more confident, unconcealed steps.
Ever a tactile creature, he stroked his fingertips along the banister as he gained the stair, making his leisurely way toward that vanished light. A confident hunter, stalking his prey in his own time.
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For his part, Mohinder was staying relatively calm. He'd faced many an attacker since his turning; vampire and human alike. He was, however, worried about Claire. She was his source of life for the time being. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure she was staying there as he told her to, and then poised himself by the door with the flexibility of a cat.
He listened closely to the loud, confident steps. Either this was an oafish vampire on the prowl for his prized regenerative, or this was some idiotic human looking for a place to sleep.
Mohinder waited until the footsteps cleared the stairs, rounded the corner, and came towards the only partially opened door on the floor. He held his breath, fingers curling into tight fists before he made his lunge.
The geneticist-turned-fiend moved at a blurred speed. If Sylar had blinked, he would have missed it. He was upon the intruder too quickly to soak in who he was pinning up against a creaking banister. The wooden beams and poles threatened to snap under Sylar's weight, Mohinder's cooled hand clenched tight around that pale throat as he silently threatened to push him over the edge and send him tumbling down the stairs. It would have killed or hurt anyone else.
And then he realized.
"...Sylar?!" Mohinder hissed through blood-caked lips, the ruby substance smeared down his neck where it had dripped when he pulled away from Claire so abruptly. He tightened his fingers around the man's throat, nails digging in.
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After a moment, unable to speak for lack of breath, he reached one deadly hand forward, toward Mohinder's face, a light in his amber eyes and a smirk on his bluing lips. His thumb brushed the tacky smear of blood along the sharp line of Mohinder's jaw, a tactile greeting, in lieu of the verbal sort.
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In a bout of anger and panic, Mohinder gave a shove. One firm push followed by quite a loud crack and Sylar went backwards into a fifteen food drop to the downstairs level. Mohinder turned immediately and ran back to Claire, scooping her up into his arms. "Hold onto me, we're leaving."
Peter didn't have to catch Sylar - Sylar would have easily healed or caught himself. Though Peter's reflexes got the better of him and his hand went out, stopping Sylar mid-fall, righting him onto his feet. He heard a window breaking upstairs and then bolted out the front door after his brother. "Mohinder, stop!!"
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Taking a few more running steps, he shot forward off the ground, leaving a divot in the earth and snow behind him and a violent puff of both in his wake. Barely above ground level, he was aloft, rocketing toward them both until he could plow hard into Mohinder, sending all three of them hurtling down into the snow.
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Mohinder saw black. It was nighttime, not unusual, but this was cold blackness. Suddenly he was being pushed into snow and earth under the force of Sylar's power. Worst of all, it hurt. Poor Claire - buried beneath both of their bodies!
He started thrashing when he was able, trying to get out of the snow and get a hold on Sylar. Mohinder gripped what felt like the short hair atop Sylar's head and gave him a swift punch backed by super strength. Unfortunately he was outnumbered, and immediately felt the tug of Peter's telekinesis on his arms. "Let me go!!" he yelled, chest heaving.
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"Oh, my God! Peter! You found us!" She wasn't nearly as stunned by the fall as the other two. After jumping from seven-story high scaffolding more than a dozen times, and plenty of other nasty wrecks since, she wasn't so easily phased by a hard fall.
Sylar spread his telekinetic influence over the doctor like a blanket, fastening him to the ground like a butterfly under glass, though the man fought more like a whole hornets' nest. "Why such a hurry, Doctor? It's been so long. We've got so much catching up to do."
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Mohinder clenched his jaw tightly and narrowed his eyes at Sylar. "Let me up right now and perhaps I won't kill you," he offered. But he knew he was no match for Sylar's powers. Telekinesis and regeneration trumped speed and strength. Mohinder's regeneration was akin to that of a human's still, and he was starting to ache from the previous blow.
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He had no idea how to fix the mess he'd made. Perhaps death was a just punishment for killing so many with his ungodly experiment.
Mohinder closed his eyes, long lashes fanning out dark skin.
"We're not gonna kill you," Peter said, still holding Claire. "We're gonna take you back to New York so you can work on this with The Company."
The vampire tensed, and his eyes flew open. "What?! No!" The Company would turn him into some caged Frankenstein!!
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"Relax, Claire. You, too, Suresh. You think I'm going to let those inept fools try to take you apart? We all know you're the only one with the intellect to handle this," he tapped one deadly finger between the geneticist's unsettlingly alien eyes. "And I'm personally aware of how badly they bungle things without supervision."
He still had a divot in the back of his head, a very small spot where the hair wouldn't grow, because a hole had been drilled there and a plastic shunt jammed in. He ran his fingertips over it sometimes, whenever the memories came back to haunt him.
"I want to fix this, Mohinder..." Sylar spoke more softly, more directly to the geneticist. "I'm tired of it, honestly, all the senseless death. It's as though New York has actually happened, but in agonizing slow-motion. I've killed so many, with nothing gained, and I want to stop, but I can't. ...you know what that's like now, too."
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Was Mohinder about to admit he understood anything Sylar did? No. He wanted to defend himself and say he hadn't killed that many, but killing with his bare hands was no different than indirectly killing with the virus he'd created. The weight of it all was coming down on him, fast, making it difficult to breathe. Leave it to Sylar to still cause him vulnerability when he was so very powerful for once.
"I never meant for any of this to happen," he whispered, his gaze on Sylar's neck. Anywhere but his eyes. Damn those pretty auburn eyes. "I'm trying to fix it."
Peter didn't quite catch what he'd said, so he rubbed Claire's back for a minute before speaking up. "Can we go inside? Its cold."
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Mohinder rolled to the side and stood up on his own with grace he hadn't possessed years ago when their paths first crossed. He brushed dirty snow from his clothing, tending to his looks. Monster or not, he wanted to be presentable.
Mohinder also held himself with more confidence than Sylar likely remembered - shoulders back, spine straight. He had no reason to slump or cower.
Without a word he moved around them, brushing his fingers against Claire's arm in a silent apology for how things were going. He'd just wanted a quiet existence here, with her, left to his own thoughts on the cure. Of course Sylar would never allow it.
Peter glanced at his brother and then walked with Claire towards the cabin, remembering coming here as a kid. Good memories.
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He stalked behind them, a cloud of dark feelings, keeping his eyes on Mohinder so that the doctor didn't make a second attempt to flee. Inside he was raging. Didn't the geneticist see what Sylar had done for him? How much he'd given up, thanks to the very existence of this damned disease?
Claire pressed close to Peter, shivering in the cold of the night and the heat of her half-uncle's glare. She still wasn't comfortable with that monster being part of the family. She knew he tried, and hard, but the fact that he was a cold blooded killer remained unchanged. He just had a good excuse for it now, but it still didn't make him right. "I missed you," she told Peter, quietly.
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