[Heroes] - Upon These Poor Souls
Title: Upon These Poor Souls
Rating: PG-13. Gen. Mohinder, Sylar.
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing about Heroes.
Summary: After Mohinder nearly drives them into a ditch for the third time, Sylar insists they pull over. 1966 words.
I started this way back when and never got around to getting it to where I liked it. But rewatching the first season has breathed new life into it and I've managed to get it to where I want it. Hopefully I haven't screwed anything up and that it doesn't suck. I haven't written anything in awhile. *crosses fingers*
"I can breathe my own air and I can sleep more soundly.
Upon these poor souls I'll build heaven and call it home."
-Dave Matthews Band
After Mohinder nearly drives them into a ditch for the third time, Sylar insists they pull over. It seems that Mohinder has only been managing to drive the car on pure nerves and once he pulls over to the shoulder, he puts it in park and slumps back against the seat. He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.
"Are you okay, Zane?" he asks for the seventh time. Mohinder doesn't look at him and Sylar suspects the question is an automatic response to accompany anything that goes wrong. He could hear Chandra's soft laugh as he jabbed another needle into Sylar's vein. 'He was the only one who could calm her. He would sing to her, make her laugh. He wasn't the same after she died.'
"I don't know," he tells Mohinder. "I don't really feel anything. Like I'm numb or something?" But it isn't numbness, it's the delight, the absolute joy that follows the kill. When everything fits together again and makes sense.
Mohinder lets his hands fall into him lap, defeated. "That poor woman is dead and we led him right to her."
"You still think it's Sylar?" he asks, injecting Zane's panic into his voice, laughing at the idea that he's chasing himself.
"It has to be," Mohinder says, turning to look at him. "The top of her head was gone and her brain . . ." He trails off and Sylar thinks he's awfully squeamish for a doctor, medical or no.
"We have to get out of here then," he says. "Right? I mean, he could be looking for us. He could be looking for me!"
"Calm down," Mohinder says, lifting a hand.
"Easy for you to say. You don't have a psycho killer hunting for you."
"We don't know he's even aware of us," he says, but Sylar can hear the desperate flutter of his heart.
"We've got to get out of here," Sylar says. "You can take me back home, back to Virginia." He can see the gears turning, hear the measured ticking of the clock. Mohinder is woefully predictable.
"No," Mohinder says. "You can't go back home. If anything, we need to work faster. We need to warn these people of the danger they face." He stares at Sylar a beat too long and Zane shifts under his gaze. "I can't promise I can keep you safe, but I can try. We need to do this, find these people, and you really helped me with Dale." Sylar fights down a smirk and swallows hard. "Again, I want you to know that I'm not being completely altruistic here and I hope you don't think that I'm just using-"
"You?" Sylar interrupts. "Using me?"
Mohinder laughs, disarmed, and Sylar can see the tension slip from his shoulders. Mohinder leans back and reaches into his pocket. Sylar watches as the other man pulls out a worn piece of folded paper. He unfolds it, slowly, reverently, the paper thin enough that Sylar can see Mohinder's spidery handwriting from the back. Two columns of writing. One column made up of two words for every line, the other column two or three words bisected with a comma. His confusion isn't feigned and Mohinder looks up at him, catching a glimpse. He smiles at Sylar and then it all falls into place, all of it turning, turning in his head.
"The list," Mohinder says proudly. "Of the others like you."
Sylar's mouth is dry, his blood is singing. He resists the urge to lunge forward and take that list by force, paint the inside of the car with blood and bone and gristle and meat. "How many?" he asks, licking his lips and hoping he doesn't look like a monster.
"Dozens," he says. "Have you ever been to Indiana?" he asks, eyes flicking from down at the list and then back up.
"No," Sylar breathes.
"There's a man there. I left a message but he never called me back. Maybe if you were to show him what you can do . . ."
Sylar thinks, I would love to show this man what I can do, but instead he smiles and says, "Indiana sounds like a wonderful place to be."
*
Jacob Gring can summon the wind. They have to find out the hard way.
He has a dozen locks on the door and Sylar can hear every one of them thanks to Dale Smither. Most of them are deadbolts, three of a bolt and chain lock, and two of them are the old-fashioned key locks. He can hear the pins turning, the key scraping the tumbler open. He's smiling at the control of his newly acquired powers when the door opens.
"Jacob Gring?" Mohinder asks, doing that little half-breath thing he usually does before asking a question.
Jacob's eyes skitter back and forth between the two of them, something not quite right in their depths. He pulls open the door. "Who wants to know?" he asks.
Mohinder introduces them and once again Sylar strives for self-effacing.
"How did you find me?" Jacob asks, not just demanding like Dale, but angry as well.
"You gave blood-"
"I did no such thing!" Jacob screams and Sylar moves automatically, an unconscious response to a threat. He towers over the other man and Jacob takes a step back. This would be when Sylar would push the man back into his own house, maybe throw him against the wall. He would smile as the other man screamed, sought answers in the depths of the other man's skull. It is a near thing, trying desperately to hold onto to his hunger, his need. But the thought that it will ruin everything, that he will have to give up the list, lets him regain control.
Mohinder is looking at him oddly, trying to divide his attention between Sylar and Jacob, raising his hands in a calming gesture. Even half-hidden in the shadows, Jacob's face is pale, his eyes wide and wild.
"It's okay," Mohinder says. "We can leave." He pushes his elbow against Sylar's. "Come on Zane, let's get out of here."
A muscle next to his eye twitches, but Sylar turns to follow.
"You're not going anywhere," a breathy whisper behind them. The snow around them is shaking, an invisible beast rousing from underneath. Small tornadoes of powder-light snow whirling through the air, wind whipping at their hair and clothes. Icicles snap off the edge of the roof and they're flying in an unsteady trajectory at Sylar because he's closest, and then Mohinder. Sylar deflects the icy spears without even looking, a subtle push that sends them arcing harmlessly away.
Mohinder is running for his life, shoulders hunched, the fingers of one hand brushing against the snow when he almost falls. Sylar's rage is building, a red haze that colors his vision.
"Zane!" Mohinder shouts, looking over his shoulder as he runs, and Sylar remembers belatedly that he is supposed to be afraid. But he hasn't felt afraid in a long time.
He lets himself slip down the stairs, melting the railing on one side in what he hopes is a suitable show of panic. Mohinder has gotten the rental car started and pulled up next to the end of the driveway, still crouched down and Sylar has to wonder what kind of neighborhoods Mohinder has been driving his taxi through.
"Get in," Mohinder says, pushing open the passenger door. Sylar scrambles in, letting an icicle slip past his defenses to crash into the window. Jacob Gring is screaming like a mad man, a banshee shriek fading the further away Mohinder drives.
"God," Mohinder says, hands shaking on the wheel. "God," and Sylar hopes he isn't going to drive them off the road again. "Are you okay?" Mohinder asks. "Nothing broken?"
He lets Zane Taylor come out, opens his mouth and hesitates, curls his fingers inside his sleeves. He turns in the seat, looks back behind them. "What was that all about?"
Mohinder's sigh is nearly explosive in the cramped space. "This was what I was afraid of. Some of these people are so terrified of what they can do, what they might become that they lash out. This is exactly the kind of thing Sylar feeds on."
Sylar perks up at that. He's fascinated by what Mohinder thinks of him. But then Mohinder turns his explanation back to genetics and powers emerging and it would have been fascinating if Sylar hadn't heard it all before.
Mohinder and his father, for all their professed hatred, are remarkably similar.
*
Sylar waits until 3:34 in the morning, what seems like an eternity with only the need, the hunger, as company. On the other side of the wall, he can hear Mohinder breathe. Deep, regular breaths, the sound of a man asleep.
Sylar has been sitting in the dark, not bothering to change his clothes or take off his shoes. It had taken the best of his skills to convince Mohinder to stay in the same town as Jacob Gring. The other man had been eager to put as much distance between them as possible. But Sylar can be very persuasive.
It's twelve miles to Jacob Gring's house and obviously he can't take the rental car, so he steals one from the drugstore next door. An old Buick, but it's easy to hot wire; everything falling into place with one glance.
He drives to an all-night diner and parks the car there. He walks the rest of the half-mile to Jacob Gring's house. The lights are still on and the other man is pacing back and forth in front of the open window. The snow in the front yard is piled in odd shapes, grass visible in some places, drifts nearly two feet tall. He goes to the back door, not caring about the trail of footprints he leaves behind.
Jacob is surprised to see him (they always are), but lifts a hand and most of the objects in the room lift along with it. Sylar uses his power to pick the other man up by the throat and throw him against the wall.
"Now, now," Sylar says with a smirk. "That's just not fair. You know, some people don't like it when you attack them for no reason."
Jacob chokes, trying to pull in a breath that will never come.
Sylar lifts a finger and begins to cut.
*
Mohinder yawns as they drive through the middle of town. It is snowing, fat, heavy flakes that weigh down on the wipers and leave a sheen of water across the windshield with every pass. Sylar is trying desperately to keep a tornado from forming in the middle of the car and doesn't notice that the route Mohinder is taking goes past Jacob Gring's house.
Mohinder lifts his cup of coffee to his lips and lowers it back down. "What's this?"
Sylar forces himself to uncurl his fingers one by one and look out the windshield.
A policeman is standing in the middle of the street, directing traffic to a detour. There are five police cars parked outside of Gring's house. Mohinder slows down, trying to divide his attention between the policeman and Gring's house.
"Maybe he flipped out," Sylar says, turning to look out the passenger window as they pass, breath fogging the glass.
Silence stretches out. "Yeah, maybe," Mohinder says, and Sylar hopes the other man isn't starting to figure it out. This is so fun, so convenient, and he'd hate to have to kill him.
Before they turn the corner, Sylar watches a plainclothes detective stumble out the front door and vomit into the bushes.
*
He figures out too late that the tea is drugged and when he wakes up, he can't feel his fingers and Mohinder's face is nothing but grim determination.
Rating: PG-13. Gen. Mohinder, Sylar.
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing about Heroes.
Summary: After Mohinder nearly drives them into a ditch for the third time, Sylar insists they pull over. 1966 words.
I started this way back when and never got around to getting it to where I liked it. But rewatching the first season has breathed new life into it and I've managed to get it to where I want it. Hopefully I haven't screwed anything up and that it doesn't suck. I haven't written anything in awhile. *crosses fingers*
"I can breathe my own air and I can sleep more soundly.
Upon these poor souls I'll build heaven and call it home."
-Dave Matthews Band
After Mohinder nearly drives them into a ditch for the third time, Sylar insists they pull over. It seems that Mohinder has only been managing to drive the car on pure nerves and once he pulls over to the shoulder, he puts it in park and slumps back against the seat. He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.
"Are you okay, Zane?" he asks for the seventh time. Mohinder doesn't look at him and Sylar suspects the question is an automatic response to accompany anything that goes wrong. He could hear Chandra's soft laugh as he jabbed another needle into Sylar's vein. 'He was the only one who could calm her. He would sing to her, make her laugh. He wasn't the same after she died.'
"I don't know," he tells Mohinder. "I don't really feel anything. Like I'm numb or something?" But it isn't numbness, it's the delight, the absolute joy that follows the kill. When everything fits together again and makes sense.
Mohinder lets his hands fall into him lap, defeated. "That poor woman is dead and we led him right to her."
"You still think it's Sylar?" he asks, injecting Zane's panic into his voice, laughing at the idea that he's chasing himself.
"It has to be," Mohinder says, turning to look at him. "The top of her head was gone and her brain . . ." He trails off and Sylar thinks he's awfully squeamish for a doctor, medical or no.
"We have to get out of here then," he says. "Right? I mean, he could be looking for us. He could be looking for me!"
"Calm down," Mohinder says, lifting a hand.
"Easy for you to say. You don't have a psycho killer hunting for you."
"We don't know he's even aware of us," he says, but Sylar can hear the desperate flutter of his heart.
"We've got to get out of here," Sylar says. "You can take me back home, back to Virginia." He can see the gears turning, hear the measured ticking of the clock. Mohinder is woefully predictable.
"No," Mohinder says. "You can't go back home. If anything, we need to work faster. We need to warn these people of the danger they face." He stares at Sylar a beat too long and Zane shifts under his gaze. "I can't promise I can keep you safe, but I can try. We need to do this, find these people, and you really helped me with Dale." Sylar fights down a smirk and swallows hard. "Again, I want you to know that I'm not being completely altruistic here and I hope you don't think that I'm just using-"
"You?" Sylar interrupts. "Using me?"
Mohinder laughs, disarmed, and Sylar can see the tension slip from his shoulders. Mohinder leans back and reaches into his pocket. Sylar watches as the other man pulls out a worn piece of folded paper. He unfolds it, slowly, reverently, the paper thin enough that Sylar can see Mohinder's spidery handwriting from the back. Two columns of writing. One column made up of two words for every line, the other column two or three words bisected with a comma. His confusion isn't feigned and Mohinder looks up at him, catching a glimpse. He smiles at Sylar and then it all falls into place, all of it turning, turning in his head.
"The list," Mohinder says proudly. "Of the others like you."
Sylar's mouth is dry, his blood is singing. He resists the urge to lunge forward and take that list by force, paint the inside of the car with blood and bone and gristle and meat. "How many?" he asks, licking his lips and hoping he doesn't look like a monster.
"Dozens," he says. "Have you ever been to Indiana?" he asks, eyes flicking from down at the list and then back up.
"No," Sylar breathes.
"There's a man there. I left a message but he never called me back. Maybe if you were to show him what you can do . . ."
Sylar thinks, I would love to show this man what I can do, but instead he smiles and says, "Indiana sounds like a wonderful place to be."
*
Jacob Gring can summon the wind. They have to find out the hard way.
He has a dozen locks on the door and Sylar can hear every one of them thanks to Dale Smither. Most of them are deadbolts, three of a bolt and chain lock, and two of them are the old-fashioned key locks. He can hear the pins turning, the key scraping the tumbler open. He's smiling at the control of his newly acquired powers when the door opens.
"Jacob Gring?" Mohinder asks, doing that little half-breath thing he usually does before asking a question.
Jacob's eyes skitter back and forth between the two of them, something not quite right in their depths. He pulls open the door. "Who wants to know?" he asks.
Mohinder introduces them and once again Sylar strives for self-effacing.
"How did you find me?" Jacob asks, not just demanding like Dale, but angry as well.
"You gave blood-"
"I did no such thing!" Jacob screams and Sylar moves automatically, an unconscious response to a threat. He towers over the other man and Jacob takes a step back. This would be when Sylar would push the man back into his own house, maybe throw him against the wall. He would smile as the other man screamed, sought answers in the depths of the other man's skull. It is a near thing, trying desperately to hold onto to his hunger, his need. But the thought that it will ruin everything, that he will have to give up the list, lets him regain control.
Mohinder is looking at him oddly, trying to divide his attention between Sylar and Jacob, raising his hands in a calming gesture. Even half-hidden in the shadows, Jacob's face is pale, his eyes wide and wild.
"It's okay," Mohinder says. "We can leave." He pushes his elbow against Sylar's. "Come on Zane, let's get out of here."
A muscle next to his eye twitches, but Sylar turns to follow.
"You're not going anywhere," a breathy whisper behind them. The snow around them is shaking, an invisible beast rousing from underneath. Small tornadoes of powder-light snow whirling through the air, wind whipping at their hair and clothes. Icicles snap off the edge of the roof and they're flying in an unsteady trajectory at Sylar because he's closest, and then Mohinder. Sylar deflects the icy spears without even looking, a subtle push that sends them arcing harmlessly away.
Mohinder is running for his life, shoulders hunched, the fingers of one hand brushing against the snow when he almost falls. Sylar's rage is building, a red haze that colors his vision.
"Zane!" Mohinder shouts, looking over his shoulder as he runs, and Sylar remembers belatedly that he is supposed to be afraid. But he hasn't felt afraid in a long time.
He lets himself slip down the stairs, melting the railing on one side in what he hopes is a suitable show of panic. Mohinder has gotten the rental car started and pulled up next to the end of the driveway, still crouched down and Sylar has to wonder what kind of neighborhoods Mohinder has been driving his taxi through.
"Get in," Mohinder says, pushing open the passenger door. Sylar scrambles in, letting an icicle slip past his defenses to crash into the window. Jacob Gring is screaming like a mad man, a banshee shriek fading the further away Mohinder drives.
"God," Mohinder says, hands shaking on the wheel. "God," and Sylar hopes he isn't going to drive them off the road again. "Are you okay?" Mohinder asks. "Nothing broken?"
He lets Zane Taylor come out, opens his mouth and hesitates, curls his fingers inside his sleeves. He turns in the seat, looks back behind them. "What was that all about?"
Mohinder's sigh is nearly explosive in the cramped space. "This was what I was afraid of. Some of these people are so terrified of what they can do, what they might become that they lash out. This is exactly the kind of thing Sylar feeds on."
Sylar perks up at that. He's fascinated by what Mohinder thinks of him. But then Mohinder turns his explanation back to genetics and powers emerging and it would have been fascinating if Sylar hadn't heard it all before.
Mohinder and his father, for all their professed hatred, are remarkably similar.
*
Sylar waits until 3:34 in the morning, what seems like an eternity with only the need, the hunger, as company. On the other side of the wall, he can hear Mohinder breathe. Deep, regular breaths, the sound of a man asleep.
Sylar has been sitting in the dark, not bothering to change his clothes or take off his shoes. It had taken the best of his skills to convince Mohinder to stay in the same town as Jacob Gring. The other man had been eager to put as much distance between them as possible. But Sylar can be very persuasive.
It's twelve miles to Jacob Gring's house and obviously he can't take the rental car, so he steals one from the drugstore next door. An old Buick, but it's easy to hot wire; everything falling into place with one glance.
He drives to an all-night diner and parks the car there. He walks the rest of the half-mile to Jacob Gring's house. The lights are still on and the other man is pacing back and forth in front of the open window. The snow in the front yard is piled in odd shapes, grass visible in some places, drifts nearly two feet tall. He goes to the back door, not caring about the trail of footprints he leaves behind.
Jacob is surprised to see him (they always are), but lifts a hand and most of the objects in the room lift along with it. Sylar uses his power to pick the other man up by the throat and throw him against the wall.
"Now, now," Sylar says with a smirk. "That's just not fair. You know, some people don't like it when you attack them for no reason."
Jacob chokes, trying to pull in a breath that will never come.
Sylar lifts a finger and begins to cut.
*
Mohinder yawns as they drive through the middle of town. It is snowing, fat, heavy flakes that weigh down on the wipers and leave a sheen of water across the windshield with every pass. Sylar is trying desperately to keep a tornado from forming in the middle of the car and doesn't notice that the route Mohinder is taking goes past Jacob Gring's house.
Mohinder lifts his cup of coffee to his lips and lowers it back down. "What's this?"
Sylar forces himself to uncurl his fingers one by one and look out the windshield.
A policeman is standing in the middle of the street, directing traffic to a detour. There are five police cars parked outside of Gring's house. Mohinder slows down, trying to divide his attention between the policeman and Gring's house.
"Maybe he flipped out," Sylar says, turning to look out the passenger window as they pass, breath fogging the glass.
Silence stretches out. "Yeah, maybe," Mohinder says, and Sylar hopes the other man isn't starting to figure it out. This is so fun, so convenient, and he'd hate to have to kill him.
Before they turn the corner, Sylar watches a plainclothes detective stumble out the front door and vomit into the bushes.
*
He figures out too late that the tea is drugged and when he wakes up, he can't feel his fingers and Mohinder's face is nothing but grim determination.