The Last Two Men [5/11] - Heroes - Mohinder/Sylar
Title: The Last Two Men [5/11]
Pairing: Mohinder/Sylar
Word Count: 2671
Rating: R
Warnings: end-of-the-world, character deaths, zombie-vampires.
A/N: Inspired heavily by 'I Am Legend'. Thanks to Babylon_pride for betaing.
Previous parts: One :: Two :: Three :: Four
Summary: On the 13th of November 2010, the dead began to remain undead. Two years later, the last men on Earth struggle to survive.
23rd of May, 2012
The blind whirrs away under the pull of Mohinder's hand, until he's left staring at coal-black eyes through the small glass panel high up on the door. No emotions, nothing but instinct and hunger. The monster snarls as they stare and with a supernaturally strong fist slams against the door. Mohinder takes a hasty step backwards as if that minute distance would do a damn thing if she actually broke the door down.
"What's going on?" Sylar demands, angry and bristling by his side. Mohinder can't speak, doesn't know how, wouldn't know what to say. He stares at her instead and feels sick, so sick: it all comes back, all the memories of the beginning and the mistakes he stupidly made. "Mohinder," he snaps, grabbing onto his arm with a vice-like grip. "Tell me."
"I don't know," Mohinder whispers. Another thud slams against the door. It won't crack, he knows it won't crack - he and Sylar prepared it properly, they worked hard, they caught her. It'll hold her, but she can still see him. Her black eyes watch them through the reinforced glass, hate and hunger and death. "I just…"
He tries to step forward - to help, to study, to fix, to apologise - but Sylar's hand on his arm yanks him back so quickly he almost loses his balance. His feet stumble to keep him upright. "We need to get out of here," Sylar says. His grip stays firm but he yanks Mohinder over to the desk, gathering the papers and books there. "What else do you need? We're not coming back here."
"I have to," Mohinder says, trying to pull away. It doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. The thud on the door this times echoes throughout the entire room. "Sylar, she's awake. I need to-"
"If she gets out of there, you're dead." Sylar glances over his shoulder at the face in the door's window, but if it bothers him half as much as it scares Mohinder it doesn't show. His face is blank, controlled. Unnecessary thought is dismissed. "We'll leave her here."
"I need to find out what's going on," Mohinder insists. "Sylar, Maya's progressing - and all of the others are linked to her. Patient Zero. She's where this all started." Your fault, he reminds himself. All his fault - all the dead, all the ill, all of it. "If she's able to wake during the day, soon the others will be too."
Sylar pauses, freezing as that ticks over in his mind as well: if all of the creatures progress to be able to walk in the daylight, they'll never be able to go outside. They'll be cooped up in their fortressed home forever, never seeing the sun, always hiding. Mohinder feels ill at the very idea.
Yet Sylar brushes it away when Maya slams her fist against the door again - and, god, Mohinder swears he hears a snarl - and he grabs Mohinder's arm again. "We can deal with that later," he says, dragging him towards the door. "Right now, we just have to get back home."
"No." Mohinder pulls and struggles with all his weight - not that he can do anything here; not that there's any way to fix this - but it doesn't do anything. Sylar's grip tightens until his fingers feel like they must be leaving bruises. "Sylar, stop it!"
Yet he doesn't and Mohinder isn't surprised. Seconds later they leave the shady lab behind them and sunlight splashes onto Mohinder's face like acid. It feels too serene. It's like a day on the beach, but the happy memories are tarnished and Mohinder can hardly think. Everyone that he can ever remember - the passers-by on the sand, the man who sold him ice-cream when it go too hot, the other children splashing in the water - is dead. Your fault, his conscience singsongs once more.
They storm through the broken, grass-lined streets of New York. The sun is still so high in the sky but Mohinder would swear he could see movement: small rustling sounds in the shadows. Probably nothing more than the wildlife hiding. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to concern himself with.
His heart hammers hard enough to feel as if it's breaking his chest.
"Stop it," Sylar hisses as they enter the house. He slides the bolt on the door shut behind them. Mohinder gives a cursory glance around to make sure that there's no one in here - there never is. Just them. It's only ever them that remain. "Stop thinking about it."
Mohinder follows him through to the kitchen and doesn't respond. What would he say? How would he point out that he can't think of anything else? He sits at the kitchen table silently and watches as Sylar thrashes around the kitchen under the pretence of making tea. The cupboards are flung open and mugs are slammed down onto the surfaces hard enough to almost make them shatter. The water pours into the kettle with all the force of Niagara Falls and Sylar still won't look at him. Mohinder stares at the boarded up window instead. Years ago, the person sitting in this chair would probably have been looking out at a serene street. Perhaps there would even have been children playing outside.
"You're going to kill yourself if you keep going on like this," Sylar snaps eventually. His voice shakes. His hands cling to the counter - if he holds on any tighter Mohinder thinks he'd probably manage to crush it. "If you keep blaming yourself…"
Mohinder sinks down in his chair. It feels unfeasibly uncomfortable beneath him. He wants to escape.
"I don't want you going back there," Sylar admits when the kettle finishes boiling. Mohinder doesn’t bother to tell him that he's wasting supplies. He knows they'll die long before they run out of tea. "Alright? Stay away from there from now on. Let her rot."
Mohinder would yell if he had the energy. All that escapes is a dry, empty laugh. "You can't be serious," he says, but Sylar is. Sylar always is. "She's Maya, Sylar. I can't just…"
"It's not her any more." Sylar slams his hand down on the counter, but Mohinder can only think of the sound of Maya thumping on the door. "Why can't you get that?"
"If I can cure her, then-"
"You can't cure her," Sylar snaps. "You've been trying, and trying, and trying and you can't. Get over it."
Mohinder doesn't want to look up at him but he forces himself to, meeting Sylar's eyes and wondering what happened to the sickening strength and determination that Sylar had possessed years ago. It had been corrupted through his motives, but that Sylar would never have given it to something like this. He would never have been willing to shrug and decide that it was over and that it was time to quit.
"I'm not ready to give up," Mohinder whispers. "I can't."
"You don't get a choice." Sylar looks at him with the flickering sparks of anger in his eyes. "You're not going back there any more - I won't let you."
"You can't stop me."
Sylar looks towards the kitchen door: it slams shut with enough force to make it rattle in its frame. His hands form fists by his side and Mohinder doesn't doubt that Sylar would hurt him - but that would be somewhat against the point of this forced protection. "I won't let you," he repeats. "So drop the subject."
Mohinder isn't sure which of them will look away first, but he's so tired of arguing with Sylar. Neither will back down, neither will admit defeat. They're trapped in a ridiculous loop, no one winning, no one losing. Mohinder feels like every day spent with Sylar makes him lose his mind a little more. He looks down, stares at the tabletop and breathes slowly through his nose.
He hears Sylar walking forward and taking the seat opposite him at the table. The chair legs scrape along the floor. Sylar's hand reaches out for his - Mohinder thinks that this is probably supposed to be comforting. If that's Sylar's intention, he's long since lost the knack for it. "If you keep on like this," Sylar repeats, "it's going to kill you."
Mohinder doesn't look up, can't make himself. He wants to pull his hand away from Sylar's but he can't make himself do that either - those words echo too strongly in his mind. He bites his tongue and holds back the urge to ask if it would really be so bad. He's so tired of this world. The only reason he's forced himself to survive this long is to find a cure. Instead the disease seems to be spreading, the creatures are getting stronger. The fight is futile.
"I won't let you do that," Sylar says. His hand tightens for a second, painful hard, before he releases him and stands up again. Mohinder's hand aches but he stares at it without care. He feels cold. Numb. Ready.
*
24th of May, 2012
He can hear them outside. His muscles are tense, his heart is hammering. They've never come this close before. Behind him, Sylar's breathing is shallow. Mohinder can't tell if he's really asleep or not - it seems at times that Sylar could sleep through anything undisturbed. Mohinder wishes he had that luxury.
Outside, there are the cackling screams and other sounds he can't identify: it's too close. Not right outside the house, but in their street, he thinks. The house that he and Sylar took is far from the centre of town, near the outskirts. If the world had still been normal, if the others had still been alive, he would probably have taken a bus everytime he wanted to go further into New York. Now he walks. They can't risk wasting the fuel they have.
Lying on his side in their bed, he listens to the sound of the creatures drawing closer. Just a coincidence, he tells himself. The monsters probably don't know that he and Sylar are hiding here - they're probably simply having to stray further and further from the centre of town in search for food. The locks on the door are strong. There's no way they could get in here.
Yet every sound reminds him of another life he should have saved; another person that his ill judgement turned into a killer. Each one of these monsters is responsible for dozens of deaths: and he is, in turn, responsible for each of them.
Thinking of the blood on his hands, of the sheer quantity of it, Mohinder finds himself laughing - a dry, empty sound into the black stillness of the night.
Sylar's heavy arm thuds around his waist, half-asleep. Mohinder tenses even more as he feels Sylar shuffling closer: he's not supposed to do this. There are supposed to be boundaries. "Don't think about," Sylar mumbles as the creatures continue to scream and cry outside. "Just ignore it."
He can feel Sylar's breath - hot and steady - at the back of his neck and that alone is enough to calm him. That steady breathing is proof that all isn't lost. Life still exists. That means his hope can too.
Mohinder stares into the rough blackness and doesn't push at Sylar or force him to move away again. Just once, just for night, he needs to feel Sylar's breath as confirmation that they're still alive.
*
"They were close," Mohinder says quietly when the sun has risen - has risen and is starting to fall again. They haven't talked about it all day. He holds a hammer and set of nails in his hands: reinforcing the reinforcements. They can hope that they're not discovered, but Mohinder wants to be protected in case they are.
Sylar glances at him from the other window down the hall, going through the motions of adding extra boards to that one as well. There's a shotgun propped up against the wall next to Mohinder, just in case. His life appears to be made up of one 'just in case' precaution after the other.
"That doesn't mean anything," Sylar states. "Don't worry about it."
Sylar doesn't look towards him as he says that. Not once. All these years and still Mohinder knows so little about what has happened to them. All his research, all his work, all those panicked hours of brainstorming, and the swarms of the dead just keep edging closer. Mohinder stares at the boarded up windows and feels the fire of desperation and fear bubbling up inside him. They're building their own prison: why can't Sylar see that? Each board they put up makes this claustrophobia tighten around his chest.
The sun is beginning to dip. Mohinder can't see it through the tightly boarded windows, but his watch tells him that it is almost time. Time for them to resume their hiding and let the plague of monsters take over the streets for another night - and if they're like Maya, like his patient zero, soon their wanderings won't be restricted to night either. They'll have control constantly. It's not fair, Mohinder thinks, his hand curling to a useless fist against the wooden boards.
"We should lock up," Mohinder says quietly, looking along the hallway to Sylar. The man seems wholly involved in his work. "I can do it."
Sylar nods. There are nails floating in the air beside him and he clutches the hammer in his hand. Mohinder doesn't ask why he doesn’t simply use his powers to complete the job: if Sylar is making those baby-steps towards being 'normal', Mohinder supposes that it isn't his place to intervene.
The stairs creak as he descends. He can see his reflection in the mirrors they have positioned around the house: he looks haunted, tired, empty. The whites of his eyes are still readily apparent, but without them- Without that he would look exactly like the dead that roam the streets. He'd be a monster too.
He reaches the door: the locks wait for him to turn them and transform this place into a steadfast prison. There's a selection of every kind of lock imaginable: when they'd first been transforming this house, he'd thought it was overkill. Now, with the dead seeming to be winding their way closer with every night that passes, he isn't so sure.
His hand lingers on the lock. He can hear Sylar hammering upstairs. Thud, thud, thud. His breathing is shallow and Mohinder closes his eyes. Lock the door, he tells himself, but his hand won't move, can't move - can't allow himself to do this again, to keep hiding. If Sylar won't let him continue with his research, then this will be his life now. Eternity spent cowering behind closed doors. Forever hiding in this dark house, listening to the sounds outside. He can't, can't, can't do that.
His grip on the lock trembles. Though internally he screams to himself to do the right thing and lock up, his body disobeys. Breathing deeply, he opens the door. The fading sunlight filters in, dusky and warm. The sky seems hazy, beautiful colours scattered wide. Close the door, he tells himself, now.
Yet he takes a step outside, into fresh air, into freedom. Turning, he pulls the door shut behind him - feels it automatically lock, and uses the key in his pocket to lock it again. He can't make himself take the safe route - not any more, not after all this time - but that's no reason to leave Sylar at risk. The door locks with a heavy clunk.
Mohinder breathes deeply, shaking, and looks towards the sky. The sun's rays still curl wistfully in the sky. It isn't fully dark yet. Mohinder realises he didn't think to bring a gun with him. Weaponless, out in the open. Foolish. Stupid. Yet he'd go mad if he allowed Sylar to confine him to that house. His hands find their way to his pockets and he bows his head. Heart hammering, he starts walking.
The sun continues to drop.
Part Six
Pairing: Mohinder/Sylar
Word Count: 2671
Rating: R
Warnings: end-of-the-world, character deaths, zombie-vampires.
A/N: Inspired heavily by 'I Am Legend'. Thanks to Babylon_pride for betaing.
Previous parts: One :: Two :: Three :: Four
Summary: On the 13th of November 2010, the dead began to remain undead. Two years later, the last men on Earth struggle to survive.
23rd of May, 2012
The blind whirrs away under the pull of Mohinder's hand, until he's left staring at coal-black eyes through the small glass panel high up on the door. No emotions, nothing but instinct and hunger. The monster snarls as they stare and with a supernaturally strong fist slams against the door. Mohinder takes a hasty step backwards as if that minute distance would do a damn thing if she actually broke the door down.
"What's going on?" Sylar demands, angry and bristling by his side. Mohinder can't speak, doesn't know how, wouldn't know what to say. He stares at her instead and feels sick, so sick: it all comes back, all the memories of the beginning and the mistakes he stupidly made. "Mohinder," he snaps, grabbing onto his arm with a vice-like grip. "Tell me."
"I don't know," Mohinder whispers. Another thud slams against the door. It won't crack, he knows it won't crack - he and Sylar prepared it properly, they worked hard, they caught her. It'll hold her, but she can still see him. Her black eyes watch them through the reinforced glass, hate and hunger and death. "I just…"
He tries to step forward - to help, to study, to fix, to apologise - but Sylar's hand on his arm yanks him back so quickly he almost loses his balance. His feet stumble to keep him upright. "We need to get out of here," Sylar says. His grip stays firm but he yanks Mohinder over to the desk, gathering the papers and books there. "What else do you need? We're not coming back here."
"I have to," Mohinder says, trying to pull away. It doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. The thud on the door this times echoes throughout the entire room. "Sylar, she's awake. I need to-"
"If she gets out of there, you're dead." Sylar glances over his shoulder at the face in the door's window, but if it bothers him half as much as it scares Mohinder it doesn't show. His face is blank, controlled. Unnecessary thought is dismissed. "We'll leave her here."
"I need to find out what's going on," Mohinder insists. "Sylar, Maya's progressing - and all of the others are linked to her. Patient Zero. She's where this all started." Your fault, he reminds himself. All his fault - all the dead, all the ill, all of it. "If she's able to wake during the day, soon the others will be too."
Sylar pauses, freezing as that ticks over in his mind as well: if all of the creatures progress to be able to walk in the daylight, they'll never be able to go outside. They'll be cooped up in their fortressed home forever, never seeing the sun, always hiding. Mohinder feels ill at the very idea.
Yet Sylar brushes it away when Maya slams her fist against the door again - and, god, Mohinder swears he hears a snarl - and he grabs Mohinder's arm again. "We can deal with that later," he says, dragging him towards the door. "Right now, we just have to get back home."
"No." Mohinder pulls and struggles with all his weight - not that he can do anything here; not that there's any way to fix this - but it doesn't do anything. Sylar's grip tightens until his fingers feel like they must be leaving bruises. "Sylar, stop it!"
Yet he doesn't and Mohinder isn't surprised. Seconds later they leave the shady lab behind them and sunlight splashes onto Mohinder's face like acid. It feels too serene. It's like a day on the beach, but the happy memories are tarnished and Mohinder can hardly think. Everyone that he can ever remember - the passers-by on the sand, the man who sold him ice-cream when it go too hot, the other children splashing in the water - is dead. Your fault, his conscience singsongs once more.
They storm through the broken, grass-lined streets of New York. The sun is still so high in the sky but Mohinder would swear he could see movement: small rustling sounds in the shadows. Probably nothing more than the wildlife hiding. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to concern himself with.
His heart hammers hard enough to feel as if it's breaking his chest.
"Stop it," Sylar hisses as they enter the house. He slides the bolt on the door shut behind them. Mohinder gives a cursory glance around to make sure that there's no one in here - there never is. Just them. It's only ever them that remain. "Stop thinking about it."
Mohinder follows him through to the kitchen and doesn't respond. What would he say? How would he point out that he can't think of anything else? He sits at the kitchen table silently and watches as Sylar thrashes around the kitchen under the pretence of making tea. The cupboards are flung open and mugs are slammed down onto the surfaces hard enough to almost make them shatter. The water pours into the kettle with all the force of Niagara Falls and Sylar still won't look at him. Mohinder stares at the boarded up window instead. Years ago, the person sitting in this chair would probably have been looking out at a serene street. Perhaps there would even have been children playing outside.
"You're going to kill yourself if you keep going on like this," Sylar snaps eventually. His voice shakes. His hands cling to the counter - if he holds on any tighter Mohinder thinks he'd probably manage to crush it. "If you keep blaming yourself…"
Mohinder sinks down in his chair. It feels unfeasibly uncomfortable beneath him. He wants to escape.
"I don't want you going back there," Sylar admits when the kettle finishes boiling. Mohinder doesn’t bother to tell him that he's wasting supplies. He knows they'll die long before they run out of tea. "Alright? Stay away from there from now on. Let her rot."
Mohinder would yell if he had the energy. All that escapes is a dry, empty laugh. "You can't be serious," he says, but Sylar is. Sylar always is. "She's Maya, Sylar. I can't just…"
"It's not her any more." Sylar slams his hand down on the counter, but Mohinder can only think of the sound of Maya thumping on the door. "Why can't you get that?"
"If I can cure her, then-"
"You can't cure her," Sylar snaps. "You've been trying, and trying, and trying and you can't. Get over it."
Mohinder doesn't want to look up at him but he forces himself to, meeting Sylar's eyes and wondering what happened to the sickening strength and determination that Sylar had possessed years ago. It had been corrupted through his motives, but that Sylar would never have given it to something like this. He would never have been willing to shrug and decide that it was over and that it was time to quit.
"I'm not ready to give up," Mohinder whispers. "I can't."
"You don't get a choice." Sylar looks at him with the flickering sparks of anger in his eyes. "You're not going back there any more - I won't let you."
"You can't stop me."
Sylar looks towards the kitchen door: it slams shut with enough force to make it rattle in its frame. His hands form fists by his side and Mohinder doesn't doubt that Sylar would hurt him - but that would be somewhat against the point of this forced protection. "I won't let you," he repeats. "So drop the subject."
Mohinder isn't sure which of them will look away first, but he's so tired of arguing with Sylar. Neither will back down, neither will admit defeat. They're trapped in a ridiculous loop, no one winning, no one losing. Mohinder feels like every day spent with Sylar makes him lose his mind a little more. He looks down, stares at the tabletop and breathes slowly through his nose.
He hears Sylar walking forward and taking the seat opposite him at the table. The chair legs scrape along the floor. Sylar's hand reaches out for his - Mohinder thinks that this is probably supposed to be comforting. If that's Sylar's intention, he's long since lost the knack for it. "If you keep on like this," Sylar repeats, "it's going to kill you."
Mohinder doesn't look up, can't make himself. He wants to pull his hand away from Sylar's but he can't make himself do that either - those words echo too strongly in his mind. He bites his tongue and holds back the urge to ask if it would really be so bad. He's so tired of this world. The only reason he's forced himself to survive this long is to find a cure. Instead the disease seems to be spreading, the creatures are getting stronger. The fight is futile.
"I won't let you do that," Sylar says. His hand tightens for a second, painful hard, before he releases him and stands up again. Mohinder's hand aches but he stares at it without care. He feels cold. Numb. Ready.
*
24th of May, 2012
He can hear them outside. His muscles are tense, his heart is hammering. They've never come this close before. Behind him, Sylar's breathing is shallow. Mohinder can't tell if he's really asleep or not - it seems at times that Sylar could sleep through anything undisturbed. Mohinder wishes he had that luxury.
Outside, there are the cackling screams and other sounds he can't identify: it's too close. Not right outside the house, but in their street, he thinks. The house that he and Sylar took is far from the centre of town, near the outskirts. If the world had still been normal, if the others had still been alive, he would probably have taken a bus everytime he wanted to go further into New York. Now he walks. They can't risk wasting the fuel they have.
Lying on his side in their bed, he listens to the sound of the creatures drawing closer. Just a coincidence, he tells himself. The monsters probably don't know that he and Sylar are hiding here - they're probably simply having to stray further and further from the centre of town in search for food. The locks on the door are strong. There's no way they could get in here.
Yet every sound reminds him of another life he should have saved; another person that his ill judgement turned into a killer. Each one of these monsters is responsible for dozens of deaths: and he is, in turn, responsible for each of them.
Thinking of the blood on his hands, of the sheer quantity of it, Mohinder finds himself laughing - a dry, empty sound into the black stillness of the night.
Sylar's heavy arm thuds around his waist, half-asleep. Mohinder tenses even more as he feels Sylar shuffling closer: he's not supposed to do this. There are supposed to be boundaries. "Don't think about," Sylar mumbles as the creatures continue to scream and cry outside. "Just ignore it."
He can feel Sylar's breath - hot and steady - at the back of his neck and that alone is enough to calm him. That steady breathing is proof that all isn't lost. Life still exists. That means his hope can too.
Mohinder stares into the rough blackness and doesn't push at Sylar or force him to move away again. Just once, just for night, he needs to feel Sylar's breath as confirmation that they're still alive.
*
"They were close," Mohinder says quietly when the sun has risen - has risen and is starting to fall again. They haven't talked about it all day. He holds a hammer and set of nails in his hands: reinforcing the reinforcements. They can hope that they're not discovered, but Mohinder wants to be protected in case they are.
Sylar glances at him from the other window down the hall, going through the motions of adding extra boards to that one as well. There's a shotgun propped up against the wall next to Mohinder, just in case. His life appears to be made up of one 'just in case' precaution after the other.
"That doesn't mean anything," Sylar states. "Don't worry about it."
Sylar doesn't look towards him as he says that. Not once. All these years and still Mohinder knows so little about what has happened to them. All his research, all his work, all those panicked hours of brainstorming, and the swarms of the dead just keep edging closer. Mohinder stares at the boarded up windows and feels the fire of desperation and fear bubbling up inside him. They're building their own prison: why can't Sylar see that? Each board they put up makes this claustrophobia tighten around his chest.
The sun is beginning to dip. Mohinder can't see it through the tightly boarded windows, but his watch tells him that it is almost time. Time for them to resume their hiding and let the plague of monsters take over the streets for another night - and if they're like Maya, like his patient zero, soon their wanderings won't be restricted to night either. They'll have control constantly. It's not fair, Mohinder thinks, his hand curling to a useless fist against the wooden boards.
"We should lock up," Mohinder says quietly, looking along the hallway to Sylar. The man seems wholly involved in his work. "I can do it."
Sylar nods. There are nails floating in the air beside him and he clutches the hammer in his hand. Mohinder doesn't ask why he doesn’t simply use his powers to complete the job: if Sylar is making those baby-steps towards being 'normal', Mohinder supposes that it isn't his place to intervene.
The stairs creak as he descends. He can see his reflection in the mirrors they have positioned around the house: he looks haunted, tired, empty. The whites of his eyes are still readily apparent, but without them- Without that he would look exactly like the dead that roam the streets. He'd be a monster too.
He reaches the door: the locks wait for him to turn them and transform this place into a steadfast prison. There's a selection of every kind of lock imaginable: when they'd first been transforming this house, he'd thought it was overkill. Now, with the dead seeming to be winding their way closer with every night that passes, he isn't so sure.
His hand lingers on the lock. He can hear Sylar hammering upstairs. Thud, thud, thud. His breathing is shallow and Mohinder closes his eyes. Lock the door, he tells himself, but his hand won't move, can't move - can't allow himself to do this again, to keep hiding. If Sylar won't let him continue with his research, then this will be his life now. Eternity spent cowering behind closed doors. Forever hiding in this dark house, listening to the sounds outside. He can't, can't, can't do that.
His grip on the lock trembles. Though internally he screams to himself to do the right thing and lock up, his body disobeys. Breathing deeply, he opens the door. The fading sunlight filters in, dusky and warm. The sky seems hazy, beautiful colours scattered wide. Close the door, he tells himself, now.
Yet he takes a step outside, into fresh air, into freedom. Turning, he pulls the door shut behind him - feels it automatically lock, and uses the key in his pocket to lock it again. He can't make himself take the safe route - not any more, not after all this time - but that's no reason to leave Sylar at risk. The door locks with a heavy clunk.
Mohinder breathes deeply, shaking, and looks towards the sky. The sun's rays still curl wistfully in the sky. It isn't fully dark yet. Mohinder realises he didn't think to bring a gun with him. Weaponless, out in the open. Foolish. Stupid. Yet he'd go mad if he allowed Sylar to confine him to that house. His hands find their way to his pockets and he bows his head. Heart hammering, he starts walking.
The sun continues to drop.
Part Six