Silence and Denial
Title: Silence and Denial
Characters/Paring: Mohinder/Sylar
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: V3/vague V4
Warnings: None
Word Count: 2000
Summary: After a botched rescue attempt, Mohinder and Sylar are trapped in a very small room with the oxygen rapidly running out; and, much to Mohinder's annoyance, Sylar is feeling talkative.
Notes:
This is my mylar_fic Exchange fic for catoasapun. I hope you enjoy it! I smushed a couple of your prompts together in my head to come up with this.
A huge "Thank You" to both ladies who did beta work on this: ladywilde80 and levitatethis. You are both amazing and without you this fic would still be 1000 words and slightly silly, instead of the emotional journey it evolved into.
-----
“You know, as long as we’re stuck here together, we might as well talk.”
“I think I prefer silence, thank you.”
“So rude, and yet so unfailingly polite.”
Mohinder glared at Sylar in the dim light, but bit back the retort on the tip of his tongue. He was quite serious in his conviction that he would much rather die in silence than have to listen to Sylar’s tiresome rhetoric any longer.
Unfortunately for Mohinder, Sylar refused to let the silence settle.
“It’s your fault we’re in this mess,” Sylar grumbled, half under his breath.
“My fault? How the hell is this my fault?!” Silence be damned, Mohinder couldn’t just sit idly by while Sylar passed off responsibility once again. “You’re the one who went charging into a situation you didn’t understand. You’re the one with the insane notion that I would be grateful for rescue like some damsel in distress. You’re the one who got us into this predicament! All I did was choose the wrong damn door.” Mohinder heaved in a deep breath. Now that he was venting it felt rather good. “What gives you the right to complain anyway? You can’t die! When we run out of air that’s it for me! But you, as soon as we’re found you’ll start breathing again and everything will be sunshine and roses and I’ll still be dead. So excuse me if I don’t want to spend my last hours listening to you prattle on.”
Mohinder could feel death closing in around him, and he would be lying if he said he wasn’t terrified by the prospect. Of all the ways he’d imagined his life might end, none had been like this. Sylar had featured in quite a number of possible scenarios, but in those cases he was always the direct cause of Mohinder’s imminent demise.
“Given the size of this space, how long we’ve been here, it’s more like minutes - forty-five, maybe.” Sylar’s voice was infuriatingly factual as he rattled off just how long Mohinder had left to live.
Mohinder snorted angrily. He knew he didn’t have hours, but optimism (or denial) was a self-defense mechanism at this point. He couldn’t tell whether Sylar was taunting him or simply being his usual blunt self; but, other than being highly aggravating, it really didn’t matter.
The truth was that Mohinder wasn’t sure he didn’t deserve to die. Certainly he had done some horrible things. He had hoped to somehow make amends for them, but now…
“Don’t you want to know why I came to rescue you?”
The question had certainly been on his mind before, when time had still seemed like an unending concept, but it was hard to care with the clock ticking its final countdown. Caring was buried somewhere deep beneath fear, anger, and that now near constant hum of self-loathing.
“I expect you’ll tell me regardless of what I want.”
“True.” Sylar paused, shifting to a more comfortable position, if there was such a thing in this airtight vault of a storage room.
Mohinder wrapped his arms around his legs and rested his head against his knees. He had to stop breathing so heavily, it would buy him more time. As much as he didn’t want to prolong being trapped with Sylar, there was still the very remote chance that they would be found. Of course, anyone likely to find them was also likely to put a bullet in his brain, so he wasn’t entirely certain why he was bothering.
“I’ve let you live three times now.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful?”
“As I recently told someone else, that’s a very big deal for me.”
Mohinder let out a dismissive, scoffing sound. He didn’t care. Really, he didn’t. Not one iota. Except…
One way or another, Sylar had been the center of his obsessive concentration ever since the man murdered his father. At first he had been this nebulous, faceless monster; then a target of revenge, a mad dog to be put down. But then when Mohinder had thought him dead, a myriad of surprising “what ifs” had littered his conscience. And when Sylar had returned from that supposed death? Well, he had settled into the role as the perfect excuse, hadn’t he? Mohinder had convinced himself he needed the formula to stop Sylar, and had only shifted that focus to one of helping Maya when his own actions became too much to bare. It seemed obvious now, really. Hindsight was cruel and unusual punishment indeed.
As much as he wanted to rid himself of Sylar’s influence, the task had proved impossible. Even now, he wanted to ignore the man, but the stirrings of his mind wouldn’t let him.
“I only count one.”
“What?”
“Only one time you, as you’ve so magnanimously put it, let me live.” Mohinder looked up from his knees, making eye-contact with Sylar for the first time since the door had locked behind them. Sylar stared back with a raised eyebrow, waiting for him to elaborate.
“After I showed you the cure,” Mohinder continued thoughtfully. It was easy to put aside his anger and despair in favour of solving this puzzle. Too easy, really, and maybe that was part of the problem, but he refused to dwell on it. “You were already leaving before Elle showed up.”
Sylar nodded, but said nothing.
“I assumed you were too caught up in the prospect of getting your abilities back to care whether we lived or died. Or maybe you knew it was only a matter of time until Company operatives came to stop you.”
“You never thought I might just be grateful?”
Mohinder hesitated with bewilderment at Sylar’s words. He regarded the man before him carefully, looking for some indication of a telltale smirk to run counter to the otherwise sentimental question; but there was no trace of humour in his expression, his face was an inscrutable mask.
Slowly, thoughtfully, Mohinder said, “I lied to you about the cure. I stalled for time to try and get you caught.”
“I wouldn’t have expected any less from you,” Sylar returned with a shrug. “Even powerless, you fought me better than anyone else.”
Was that respect in Sylar’s voice? Mohinder was certain it couldn’t be, but he didn’t know how else to categorize it. It was an odd feeling, to be sure; he didn’t want Sylar’s respect, but he couldn’t help feeling vaguely proud of himself. After all, Sylar saw most people as bugs to be squashed.
“That’s not a reason to save my life,” Mohinder retorted as offhandishly as he could. No point in letting Sylar know how he felt. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“You do tend to bring out my illogical side.” Sylar sighed at that, as if he was quite put off by the idea.
“Excuse me?”
“Well, I should have killed you several times over on our road-trip.” Sylar admitted with an uncomfortable shrug.
“You were using me,” Mohinder refuted bitterly.
“Yes, but-“ Sylar shifted, averting his eyes. He opened his mouth once, but no sound came out. He seemed torn, unable to decide what to say, and that was incredibly odd behaviour for Sylar. Perhaps simply for being so out of character, it leant an authenticity to his words that Mohinder would otherwise have dismissed out of hand.
Still, as curious as he was, Mohinder wasn’t particularly interested in Sylar’s excuses regarding the Zane incident. Those memories were still too painful to acknowledge, and now with death in the balance it was an upsetting trip down memory lane he preferred to avoid completely.
“Even after you tried to shoot me, I still wasn’t going to kill you.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Mohinder snapped. “You were trying to torture the list out of me. If Peter hadn’t shown up-“
“I wasn’t going to kill you,” Sylar swiftly cut him off. “After I got what I wanted I was going to let you live.”
“I shot a bullet at your head, to say the least, and you expect me to believe you still had no intention of killing me? Lie to yourself all you want, but I don’t buy it.”
“You don’t know me as well as you think you do.” Sylar paused thoughtfully. “Or you do, and you’re just in denial about it.”
Mohinder set his jaw stubbornly. He didn’t like the way this conversation was headed, but he couldn’t see any way to derail it. Of course, with the oxygen levels in the room rapidly depleting, it was possible that he was imagining things, reading meanings where none existed. Either way, without really thinking about it, he was already speaking again.
“I have no idea what you’re on about.”
“Really,” Sylar drawled doubtfully, shifting closer in the already confined space, and in a manner that made Mohinder distinctly uncomfortable. “All those conversations on the road, we got to know each other pretty well.”
“You mean you got inside my head while I befriended an illusion,” Mohinder grumbled back. There was no point in denying that he had viewed Zane as a friend, at least for a while.
“I didn’t lie to you that much, not really.” Sylar spoke with a softness to his voice that left Mohinder feeling very unsettled. “The details about a fake life, sure, but the rest? That was real and you know it.”
“That’s absurd!”
“You’re just afraid to admit it because it would mean that the person you grew to like wasn’t an illusion at all.” Sylar moved closer with every word, until his face was mere inches from Mohinder’s. “That it was me, Sylar, not some mask that you fell in-“
Mohinder shoved Sylar away in a violent rush, slamming him back against the cold steel wall.
“You arrogant bastard!”
“Tell me I’m wrong then. Go on. Deny it to your last breath.”
Mohinder wanted to, he really did. He wanted to shove Sylar’s words back down his throat, wanted to challenge his own motives too, but no. He wouldn’t give Sylar the satisfaction, especially not now.
“Just, shut up.” Mohinder muttered despondently as he pulled back into himself.
The truth was Sylar had hit a nerve, one so raw and intimately troubling that Mohinder had bundled it away in a defensive array of so many layers that made it easy to forget, to ignore; at least, until Sylar dug straight for it.
An ignored wound does not heal, it only festers and becomes more sensitive, and this one was sporting a massive infection. Whatever it had been before, now it was an ugly, puss-filled mess and Mohinder didn’t intend to spend his last moments poking at it. There was nothing to be gained from such deathbed confessions, despite romanticized beliefs to the contrary.
“You can’t deny it, because you know it’s true.”
“One more word Sylar, and I swear…”
It was Sylar’s turn to scoff now, but he held his tongue for the moment.
The absence of sound settled over them like an oppressive blanket and Mohinder willingly wrapped himself in it. He didn’t want to care anymore. It was better not to think, not to feel, while waiting for death to come. Detachedness was better than subjecting himself to the agony that was embodied, like some biological weapon, in the man across from him.
“I think the patrols have gone by now.”
“Oh that’s comforting,” Mohinder mumbled sarcastically. Now he was all the more certainly doomed.
“It should be,” Sylar said imperiously as he got to his feet and paced towards the door. “That means it’s time to leave.”
Mohinder blinked in confusion once, twice.
“What?”
Sylar simply smirked and put his ear to the vault-like door. He made a few turning gestures with his hand, and in less time than it took for Mohinder to process what was happening, the door clicked open.
When Sylar turned around, presumably to gloat, a smug grin plastered on his face, Mohinder punched him so hard that his jaw shattered and his neck snapped.
--
Some time later, when Sylar regained consciousness and settled his bones back into place, it was with a smile. Mohinder was gone, but that was ok.
They were making progress.
Characters/Paring: Mohinder/Sylar
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: V3/vague V4
Warnings: None
Word Count: 2000
Summary: After a botched rescue attempt, Mohinder and Sylar are trapped in a very small room with the oxygen rapidly running out; and, much to Mohinder's annoyance, Sylar is feeling talkative.
Notes:
This is my mylar_fic Exchange fic for catoasapun. I hope you enjoy it! I smushed a couple of your prompts together in my head to come up with this.
A huge "Thank You" to both ladies who did beta work on this: ladywilde80 and levitatethis. You are both amazing and without you this fic would still be 1000 words and slightly silly, instead of the emotional journey it evolved into.
-----
“You know, as long as we’re stuck here together, we might as well talk.”
“I think I prefer silence, thank you.”
“So rude, and yet so unfailingly polite.”
Mohinder glared at Sylar in the dim light, but bit back the retort on the tip of his tongue. He was quite serious in his conviction that he would much rather die in silence than have to listen to Sylar’s tiresome rhetoric any longer.
Unfortunately for Mohinder, Sylar refused to let the silence settle.
“It’s your fault we’re in this mess,” Sylar grumbled, half under his breath.
“My fault? How the hell is this my fault?!” Silence be damned, Mohinder couldn’t just sit idly by while Sylar passed off responsibility once again. “You’re the one who went charging into a situation you didn’t understand. You’re the one with the insane notion that I would be grateful for rescue like some damsel in distress. You’re the one who got us into this predicament! All I did was choose the wrong damn door.” Mohinder heaved in a deep breath. Now that he was venting it felt rather good. “What gives you the right to complain anyway? You can’t die! When we run out of air that’s it for me! But you, as soon as we’re found you’ll start breathing again and everything will be sunshine and roses and I’ll still be dead. So excuse me if I don’t want to spend my last hours listening to you prattle on.”
Mohinder could feel death closing in around him, and he would be lying if he said he wasn’t terrified by the prospect. Of all the ways he’d imagined his life might end, none had been like this. Sylar had featured in quite a number of possible scenarios, but in those cases he was always the direct cause of Mohinder’s imminent demise.
“Given the size of this space, how long we’ve been here, it’s more like minutes - forty-five, maybe.” Sylar’s voice was infuriatingly factual as he rattled off just how long Mohinder had left to live.
Mohinder snorted angrily. He knew he didn’t have hours, but optimism (or denial) was a self-defense mechanism at this point. He couldn’t tell whether Sylar was taunting him or simply being his usual blunt self; but, other than being highly aggravating, it really didn’t matter.
The truth was that Mohinder wasn’t sure he didn’t deserve to die. Certainly he had done some horrible things. He had hoped to somehow make amends for them, but now…
“Don’t you want to know why I came to rescue you?”
The question had certainly been on his mind before, when time had still seemed like an unending concept, but it was hard to care with the clock ticking its final countdown. Caring was buried somewhere deep beneath fear, anger, and that now near constant hum of self-loathing.
“I expect you’ll tell me regardless of what I want.”
“True.” Sylar paused, shifting to a more comfortable position, if there was such a thing in this airtight vault of a storage room.
Mohinder wrapped his arms around his legs and rested his head against his knees. He had to stop breathing so heavily, it would buy him more time. As much as he didn’t want to prolong being trapped with Sylar, there was still the very remote chance that they would be found. Of course, anyone likely to find them was also likely to put a bullet in his brain, so he wasn’t entirely certain why he was bothering.
“I’ve let you live three times now.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful?”
“As I recently told someone else, that’s a very big deal for me.”
Mohinder let out a dismissive, scoffing sound. He didn’t care. Really, he didn’t. Not one iota. Except…
One way or another, Sylar had been the center of his obsessive concentration ever since the man murdered his father. At first he had been this nebulous, faceless monster; then a target of revenge, a mad dog to be put down. But then when Mohinder had thought him dead, a myriad of surprising “what ifs” had littered his conscience. And when Sylar had returned from that supposed death? Well, he had settled into the role as the perfect excuse, hadn’t he? Mohinder had convinced himself he needed the formula to stop Sylar, and had only shifted that focus to one of helping Maya when his own actions became too much to bare. It seemed obvious now, really. Hindsight was cruel and unusual punishment indeed.
As much as he wanted to rid himself of Sylar’s influence, the task had proved impossible. Even now, he wanted to ignore the man, but the stirrings of his mind wouldn’t let him.
“I only count one.”
“What?”
“Only one time you, as you’ve so magnanimously put it, let me live.” Mohinder looked up from his knees, making eye-contact with Sylar for the first time since the door had locked behind them. Sylar stared back with a raised eyebrow, waiting for him to elaborate.
“After I showed you the cure,” Mohinder continued thoughtfully. It was easy to put aside his anger and despair in favour of solving this puzzle. Too easy, really, and maybe that was part of the problem, but he refused to dwell on it. “You were already leaving before Elle showed up.”
Sylar nodded, but said nothing.
“I assumed you were too caught up in the prospect of getting your abilities back to care whether we lived or died. Or maybe you knew it was only a matter of time until Company operatives came to stop you.”
“You never thought I might just be grateful?”
Mohinder hesitated with bewilderment at Sylar’s words. He regarded the man before him carefully, looking for some indication of a telltale smirk to run counter to the otherwise sentimental question; but there was no trace of humour in his expression, his face was an inscrutable mask.
Slowly, thoughtfully, Mohinder said, “I lied to you about the cure. I stalled for time to try and get you caught.”
“I wouldn’t have expected any less from you,” Sylar returned with a shrug. “Even powerless, you fought me better than anyone else.”
Was that respect in Sylar’s voice? Mohinder was certain it couldn’t be, but he didn’t know how else to categorize it. It was an odd feeling, to be sure; he didn’t want Sylar’s respect, but he couldn’t help feeling vaguely proud of himself. After all, Sylar saw most people as bugs to be squashed.
“That’s not a reason to save my life,” Mohinder retorted as offhandishly as he could. No point in letting Sylar know how he felt. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“You do tend to bring out my illogical side.” Sylar sighed at that, as if he was quite put off by the idea.
“Excuse me?”
“Well, I should have killed you several times over on our road-trip.” Sylar admitted with an uncomfortable shrug.
“You were using me,” Mohinder refuted bitterly.
“Yes, but-“ Sylar shifted, averting his eyes. He opened his mouth once, but no sound came out. He seemed torn, unable to decide what to say, and that was incredibly odd behaviour for Sylar. Perhaps simply for being so out of character, it leant an authenticity to his words that Mohinder would otherwise have dismissed out of hand.
Still, as curious as he was, Mohinder wasn’t particularly interested in Sylar’s excuses regarding the Zane incident. Those memories were still too painful to acknowledge, and now with death in the balance it was an upsetting trip down memory lane he preferred to avoid completely.
“Even after you tried to shoot me, I still wasn’t going to kill you.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Mohinder snapped. “You were trying to torture the list out of me. If Peter hadn’t shown up-“
“I wasn’t going to kill you,” Sylar swiftly cut him off. “After I got what I wanted I was going to let you live.”
“I shot a bullet at your head, to say the least, and you expect me to believe you still had no intention of killing me? Lie to yourself all you want, but I don’t buy it.”
“You don’t know me as well as you think you do.” Sylar paused thoughtfully. “Or you do, and you’re just in denial about it.”
Mohinder set his jaw stubbornly. He didn’t like the way this conversation was headed, but he couldn’t see any way to derail it. Of course, with the oxygen levels in the room rapidly depleting, it was possible that he was imagining things, reading meanings where none existed. Either way, without really thinking about it, he was already speaking again.
“I have no idea what you’re on about.”
“Really,” Sylar drawled doubtfully, shifting closer in the already confined space, and in a manner that made Mohinder distinctly uncomfortable. “All those conversations on the road, we got to know each other pretty well.”
“You mean you got inside my head while I befriended an illusion,” Mohinder grumbled back. There was no point in denying that he had viewed Zane as a friend, at least for a while.
“I didn’t lie to you that much, not really.” Sylar spoke with a softness to his voice that left Mohinder feeling very unsettled. “The details about a fake life, sure, but the rest? That was real and you know it.”
“That’s absurd!”
“You’re just afraid to admit it because it would mean that the person you grew to like wasn’t an illusion at all.” Sylar moved closer with every word, until his face was mere inches from Mohinder’s. “That it was me, Sylar, not some mask that you fell in-“
Mohinder shoved Sylar away in a violent rush, slamming him back against the cold steel wall.
“You arrogant bastard!”
“Tell me I’m wrong then. Go on. Deny it to your last breath.”
Mohinder wanted to, he really did. He wanted to shove Sylar’s words back down his throat, wanted to challenge his own motives too, but no. He wouldn’t give Sylar the satisfaction, especially not now.
“Just, shut up.” Mohinder muttered despondently as he pulled back into himself.
The truth was Sylar had hit a nerve, one so raw and intimately troubling that Mohinder had bundled it away in a defensive array of so many layers that made it easy to forget, to ignore; at least, until Sylar dug straight for it.
An ignored wound does not heal, it only festers and becomes more sensitive, and this one was sporting a massive infection. Whatever it had been before, now it was an ugly, puss-filled mess and Mohinder didn’t intend to spend his last moments poking at it. There was nothing to be gained from such deathbed confessions, despite romanticized beliefs to the contrary.
“You can’t deny it, because you know it’s true.”
“One more word Sylar, and I swear…”
It was Sylar’s turn to scoff now, but he held his tongue for the moment.
The absence of sound settled over them like an oppressive blanket and Mohinder willingly wrapped himself in it. He didn’t want to care anymore. It was better not to think, not to feel, while waiting for death to come. Detachedness was better than subjecting himself to the agony that was embodied, like some biological weapon, in the man across from him.
“I think the patrols have gone by now.”
“Oh that’s comforting,” Mohinder mumbled sarcastically. Now he was all the more certainly doomed.
“It should be,” Sylar said imperiously as he got to his feet and paced towards the door. “That means it’s time to leave.”
Mohinder blinked in confusion once, twice.
“What?”
Sylar simply smirked and put his ear to the vault-like door. He made a few turning gestures with his hand, and in less time than it took for Mohinder to process what was happening, the door clicked open.
When Sylar turned around, presumably to gloat, a smug grin plastered on his face, Mohinder punched him so hard that his jaw shattered and his neck snapped.
--
Some time later, when Sylar regained consciousness and settled his bones back into place, it was with a smile. Mohinder was gone, but that was ok.
They were making progress.