Theory of Relativity (prologue)
Okay, so after the quotes of other night I picked one of the stories to focus on, and I'm not going to deviate from this story until I'm done (which one was it? I'm not tellin'). But...I'm nearly at 4,000 words and I'm not even done with the first few sections. It's going to be a monster to finish, both in terms of word count and the amount of time to type it all out.
Now, I'm not usually a huge fan of posting my fics chapter-by-chapter because I nearly always work out of order. And this fic is especially tricky because I'm not exactly sure how linearly I'm going to lay out the pieces because there will be a lot of flashbacks and other such non-temporal mindfuckery. But I know for sure that this section is complete, and it's the prologue and coming first. So I thought I might post it to wps just because I'm a little vain and it tears me up inside sometimes when I write something that I really like but know that I won't be able to share it for daaaays.
To be honest, posting this piece leaves you with an entirely unfair sense of what the fic is going to be about because it is worlds apart from the entire arc's general tone. Just so that you don't walk away from this wanting to cry yourself into a puddle, I'll tell you that the last line is a little bit of foreshadowing. And that I would classify the entire fic as being action/adventure.
Oh, and if you have concrit, that would be totally cool. Because it is still part of a WIP, after all.
Title: Theory of Relativity (prologue)
Summary (of the whole thing, not just the prologue): There are only two people who can kill Matthew Parkman. One would do it to save the world. The other, only if she can’t save his soul.
Pairings: Matt/Mohinder is taken for granted as being truth. And...there will be Molly/Micah FoeYay, but not yet.
Warnings: Character death by the time I get to the third word (how’s that for hitting the ground running?). Some gore. Severely sad.
2010
Mohinder was dead even before he finished falling backwards, even before his body hit the ground. His death was much more messy, much less graceful, than any act Molly had ever seen him do while alive. Blood splattered everywhere from the ruined mess that was his head, for he had no power, no need for Sylar to preserve that whorled flesh that had once held DNA sequences next to lullabies.
Molly tried to scream, but she gagged on the dirty rag shoved into her mouth. Bile rose in her throat as she sputtered, filling her mouth and adding acid to the filthy, coppery taste covering her tongue. The screams she couldn’t make were echoed by several of the others: Elle, Hiro, Claire, Monica; pinned by Sylar’s powers but with mouths free. Matt’s outburst, though, was something less like a scream and more like a wail, an unearthly sound that echoed off of the walls of the warehouse.
“Now look what you made me do,” Sylar said. “I had liked Mohinder a great deal. But you didn’t leave me much of a choice, did you, Parkman? It could have been so simple. Your brain or your daughter’s life. You give me your powers, and sure, the little whelp would lose a father, but at least she’d have one left. But then you were too slow, and Mohinder had to try and play the hero in your place. Stupid, Parkman!”
Sylar stepped away from Mohinder’s body and crouched near Molly. He put his hands to her hair and stroked it. She struggled against the ropes, felt the skin on her wrists and ankles chafe. “Such a lovely power,” he cooed. “It’s no telepathy, but-“
“Don’t touch her!” Matt yelled as, with a burst of grief- and fear-induced adrenaline, he pushed off the weight that had been pressing against his left arm, holding him pinned in place. Sylar’s hands stopped suddenly, jerked away from her head as if she had burned him.
Matt surged forward and punched Sylar in the jaw, knocking the man backwards. Sylar grinned as he rubbed his jaw, licked the blood off of his teeth. And then he extended a hand towards Matt and a bright line started to appear on his forehead.
MATT! Molly screamed in her head.
“Stop it,” Matt said. His voice didn’t sound like his own; it was deeper, came from some place that Molly didn’t recognize. And Sylar stopped.
“You will never hurt my daughter again,” Matt said. He was breathing heavily. “Just DIE.”
Sylar’s entire body tensed. And then it was as if all of the air went out of his body. He collapsed, much like Mohinder had, only his fall was bloodless. The smack of his body against the pavement was an obscene noise. And when Sylar lay, finally, still, his hold over the others was broken.
Matt spun around to face the group. The assorted collection of Heroes he and Mohinder had gathered, Molly assumed, to rescue her. But she could tell by his expression that he was not going to thank them. The whites of his eyes were showing, veins stood out across his forehead, she would hear his breath from where she was lying. “That goes for all of you,” he roared: to Peter, to Hiro, to Claire, to Noah and Monica and Nathan and Elle. “None of you will do anything to hurt-even THINK about hurting-Molly or me, ever.” The full weight of his mental voice was behind his words, the full weight of his pain and adrenaline and caught-in-the-moment rage.
And then he fell to his knees beside Molly, untied her restraints with shaking fingers, took the gag out of her mouth, and she collapsed into his chest where he held her as she shook.
No one would look Matt in the eyes.
***
They tried to revive Mohinder, had pumped Claire’s blood straight into his heart. But his brain was too far gone; too many pieces of it had been ripped out and scattered across the concrete floor. They had him cremated, and when they met Venkamma Suresh at the Trivandrum International Airport forty-eight hours later, Matt and Molly’s eyes were so glazed over with grief and weariness that it was all they could do to manage even the slightest of smiles at a meeting that should have happened under completely different circumstances. With Mohinder leading the introductions, rather than taking up entirely too little space in the urn that Molly clutched to her chest as if it were a piece of driftwood keeping her afloat in the middle of an empty, bewildering sea.
She didn’t let go of it during the entire ride to Kanyakumari, either. She lay in the back of the car with Matt’s arms wrapped around her as he rested one hand lightly on Mohinder’s urn and the other in her hair.
Even dressed in white, Matt and Molly stood out on the beach. Molly could tell that none of Mohinder’s relatives knew what to do with them, everyone staying at a little bit of distance save for Venkamma and a man who introduced himself as Nirand.
“Did he find what he was looking for in America?” Nirand asked. “The answers to his father’s questions?”
“He did,” Matt said, squeezing Molly’s hand. He didn’t let go until after one of Mohinder’s uncles scattered the ashes, after Molly felt herself stop breathing for several long moments as she saw Mohinder for the last time, the dusty bits of his body sinking below the surface of water.
They went back to Chennai and stayed through a few days while Matt and Venkamma sorted and traded some of Mohinder’s effects. She enjoyed the cool comfort she felt whenever she was around Mohinder’s mother, but on the whole was hard not to mourn in Chennai, though, seeing all of the things that Mohinder must have seen as a boy, forgetting at times that he wasn’t someone she should be looking for and always turning at flashes of mild skin and dark hair, only to be reminded all over again that she had lost her third parent. So Molly was not sorry to leave India, not sad to be saying goodbye as they stood outside the airport terminal, Venkamma hugging Molly tightly for the last time.
“I know it’s hard, but try not to be sad for too long, Molly,” Venkamma said. “The longer you grieve, the longer Mohinder’s soul will remain with you on earth, trapped, unable to move on to the next realm. He wants you to be happy. Can do you that for him, sweetheart?”
She nodded, tears rolling down her cheeks. But there was a part of her that didn’t see what was the problem with Mohinder staying with her, forever.
Now, I'm not usually a huge fan of posting my fics chapter-by-chapter because I nearly always work out of order. And this fic is especially tricky because I'm not exactly sure how linearly I'm going to lay out the pieces because there will be a lot of flashbacks and other such non-temporal mindfuckery. But I know for sure that this section is complete, and it's the prologue and coming first. So I thought I might post it to wps just because I'm a little vain and it tears me up inside sometimes when I write something that I really like but know that I won't be able to share it for daaaays.
To be honest, posting this piece leaves you with an entirely unfair sense of what the fic is going to be about because it is worlds apart from the entire arc's general tone. Just so that you don't walk away from this wanting to cry yourself into a puddle, I'll tell you that the last line is a little bit of foreshadowing. And that I would classify the entire fic as being action/adventure.
Oh, and if you have concrit, that would be totally cool. Because it is still part of a WIP, after all.
Title: Theory of Relativity (prologue)
Summary (of the whole thing, not just the prologue): There are only two people who can kill Matthew Parkman. One would do it to save the world. The other, only if she can’t save his soul.
Pairings: Matt/Mohinder is taken for granted as being truth. And...there will be Molly/Micah FoeYay, but not yet.
Warnings: Character death by the time I get to the third word (how’s that for hitting the ground running?). Some gore. Severely sad.
2010
Mohinder was dead even before he finished falling backwards, even before his body hit the ground. His death was much more messy, much less graceful, than any act Molly had ever seen him do while alive. Blood splattered everywhere from the ruined mess that was his head, for he had no power, no need for Sylar to preserve that whorled flesh that had once held DNA sequences next to lullabies.
Molly tried to scream, but she gagged on the dirty rag shoved into her mouth. Bile rose in her throat as she sputtered, filling her mouth and adding acid to the filthy, coppery taste covering her tongue. The screams she couldn’t make were echoed by several of the others: Elle, Hiro, Claire, Monica; pinned by Sylar’s powers but with mouths free. Matt’s outburst, though, was something less like a scream and more like a wail, an unearthly sound that echoed off of the walls of the warehouse.
“Now look what you made me do,” Sylar said. “I had liked Mohinder a great deal. But you didn’t leave me much of a choice, did you, Parkman? It could have been so simple. Your brain or your daughter’s life. You give me your powers, and sure, the little whelp would lose a father, but at least she’d have one left. But then you were too slow, and Mohinder had to try and play the hero in your place. Stupid, Parkman!”
Sylar stepped away from Mohinder’s body and crouched near Molly. He put his hands to her hair and stroked it. She struggled against the ropes, felt the skin on her wrists and ankles chafe. “Such a lovely power,” he cooed. “It’s no telepathy, but-“
“Don’t touch her!” Matt yelled as, with a burst of grief- and fear-induced adrenaline, he pushed off the weight that had been pressing against his left arm, holding him pinned in place. Sylar’s hands stopped suddenly, jerked away from her head as if she had burned him.
Matt surged forward and punched Sylar in the jaw, knocking the man backwards. Sylar grinned as he rubbed his jaw, licked the blood off of his teeth. And then he extended a hand towards Matt and a bright line started to appear on his forehead.
MATT! Molly screamed in her head.
“Stop it,” Matt said. His voice didn’t sound like his own; it was deeper, came from some place that Molly didn’t recognize. And Sylar stopped.
“You will never hurt my daughter again,” Matt said. He was breathing heavily. “Just DIE.”
Sylar’s entire body tensed. And then it was as if all of the air went out of his body. He collapsed, much like Mohinder had, only his fall was bloodless. The smack of his body against the pavement was an obscene noise. And when Sylar lay, finally, still, his hold over the others was broken.
Matt spun around to face the group. The assorted collection of Heroes he and Mohinder had gathered, Molly assumed, to rescue her. But she could tell by his expression that he was not going to thank them. The whites of his eyes were showing, veins stood out across his forehead, she would hear his breath from where she was lying. “That goes for all of you,” he roared: to Peter, to Hiro, to Claire, to Noah and Monica and Nathan and Elle. “None of you will do anything to hurt-even THINK about hurting-Molly or me, ever.” The full weight of his mental voice was behind his words, the full weight of his pain and adrenaline and caught-in-the-moment rage.
And then he fell to his knees beside Molly, untied her restraints with shaking fingers, took the gag out of her mouth, and she collapsed into his chest where he held her as she shook.
No one would look Matt in the eyes.
***
They tried to revive Mohinder, had pumped Claire’s blood straight into his heart. But his brain was too far gone; too many pieces of it had been ripped out and scattered across the concrete floor. They had him cremated, and when they met Venkamma Suresh at the Trivandrum International Airport forty-eight hours later, Matt and Molly’s eyes were so glazed over with grief and weariness that it was all they could do to manage even the slightest of smiles at a meeting that should have happened under completely different circumstances. With Mohinder leading the introductions, rather than taking up entirely too little space in the urn that Molly clutched to her chest as if it were a piece of driftwood keeping her afloat in the middle of an empty, bewildering sea.
She didn’t let go of it during the entire ride to Kanyakumari, either. She lay in the back of the car with Matt’s arms wrapped around her as he rested one hand lightly on Mohinder’s urn and the other in her hair.
Even dressed in white, Matt and Molly stood out on the beach. Molly could tell that none of Mohinder’s relatives knew what to do with them, everyone staying at a little bit of distance save for Venkamma and a man who introduced himself as Nirand.
“Did he find what he was looking for in America?” Nirand asked. “The answers to his father’s questions?”
“He did,” Matt said, squeezing Molly’s hand. He didn’t let go until after one of Mohinder’s uncles scattered the ashes, after Molly felt herself stop breathing for several long moments as she saw Mohinder for the last time, the dusty bits of his body sinking below the surface of water.
They went back to Chennai and stayed through a few days while Matt and Venkamma sorted and traded some of Mohinder’s effects. She enjoyed the cool comfort she felt whenever she was around Mohinder’s mother, but on the whole was hard not to mourn in Chennai, though, seeing all of the things that Mohinder must have seen as a boy, forgetting at times that he wasn’t someone she should be looking for and always turning at flashes of mild skin and dark hair, only to be reminded all over again that she had lost her third parent. So Molly was not sorry to leave India, not sad to be saying goodbye as they stood outside the airport terminal, Venkamma hugging Molly tightly for the last time.
“I know it’s hard, but try not to be sad for too long, Molly,” Venkamma said. “The longer you grieve, the longer Mohinder’s soul will remain with you on earth, trapped, unable to move on to the next realm. He wants you to be happy. Can do you that for him, sweetheart?”
She nodded, tears rolling down her cheeks. But there was a part of her that didn’t see what was the problem with Mohinder staying with her, forever.