The Last Two Men [8/11] - Heroes - Mohinder/Sylar
Title: The Last Two Men [8/11]
Pairing: Mohinder/Sylar
Word Count: 2530
Rating: R
Warnings: end-of-the-world, character deaths, zombie-vampires.
A/N: Inspired by 'I Am Legend'. Thank you to Babylon_pride for betaing!
Previous parts: One :: Two :: Three :: Four :: Five :: Six :: Seven
Summary: On the 13th of November 2010, the dead began to remain undead. Two years later, the last men on Earth struggle to survive.
9th of December, 2010
He's lived with his heart hammering a bloody rhythm for so long now that it seems normal. The adrenaline can't last forever - but he needs it to. Mohinder doesn't know what he'll do when it's time to stop running, stop fighting. One day, he knows, he will stop and he will look around and the world will be gone. Humanity will have dropped away. One by one. Death by death.
Not today, he tells himself, treading gingerly through the hushed streets. While his observations lead him to believe that the creatures that are the product of Maya's death will not venture into the sunlight, he has no way of being certain and no way of being safe.
Doesn't matter, does it? The streets are abandoned. The buildings are empty. The sun heats empty pavements with no one to enjoy her warmth and Mohinder walks through a ghost town of his own making.
Molly. Matt.
He hasn't seen them since the beginning of the outbreak: he tells himself that this is a good sign, a positive thing. He hasn't found their bodies yet. The possibility that life might flicker in their hearts still lives. He finds corpses more often than not, but they're becoming rarer now. The gore had lined the streets in the beginning, meat and blood and broken bones sprawled on the pavements. Bite marks. Chunks missing.
The bile rises when he thinks back to those days: he remembers how the strength had fled from him and he'd stumbled away, choking, to vomit by the side of the road, acidic. The congealed red colour is still imprinted into the back of his eyelids. He sees it when he sleeps.
No life stirs in the streets but he continues searching. One person, he thinks, one soul.
That's all he needs to fuel the hope in his heart, the hope that's starting to flicker away.
In a world populated by the dead optimism lies cold and still.
*
29th December, 2010
The radios turned to static two weeks ago. Before he had been able to pick up on the occasional frantic broadcast: appeals for help that he'd tried to answer. Reports. Updates. We're still alive, two young men had laughed hysterically over those radio waves. The bastards haven't got all of us yet.
They'd stopped reporting shortly afterwards. Now Mohinder flicks through the silent channels and listens to the buzzing silence, imagining their voices, their laughter, their company. The world is dying, miles away. The world is dead.
"This is Mohinder Suresh," he sighs into the recording equipment that he has managed to salvage from the wreckage of other people's lives. Every day he sounds wearier. "I'm in New York City. If there is anyone out there…"
He can't safely give away his location in case the creatures are able to listen, are able to understand. He can't arrange a meeting point in case he never makes it out of there again.
He pauses, lump in his throat, then forces himself to finish.
"Know that you are not alone."
He stops broadcasting and sits back, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw: he tries to imagine Matt and Molly somewhere distant, somewhere remote and safe, listening to those words. Smiling. Living. Yet the image is too faded. Even his imagination can't conjure such a lie.
His breath shivers. His heart aches. He keeps going, trudging forth - at this point there is really no other choice.
*
1st January 2011
The nights are long, and lonely, and empty. Terrifying. He lies on his side with wide eyes staring into pitch blackness: thinking. Imagining. Hearing.
Their cackles and howls penetrate the walls of the apartment he has decided to stay in tonight. They sound close. So close. Too close. Their inhuman voices are jubilant rather than frustrated tonight: they must have found something to hunt, to eat.
Mohinder's hand clenches tightly: what carcass will he find when he goes walking in the sunlight tomorrow morning? Whose blood will be smeared over the pavement? He breathes through his nose. It doesn't matter - dog, deer, cat. There's nothing human left in this city. They're extinct, aren't they?
His breathing jerks to a stop when he hears a sound from the stairwell. A creak. Short. Whining. Probably nothing at all, but every muscle that lines Mohinder's body tenses and prepares itself: prepares for what he can't tell. What would he do if they were here? Run? Fight? Either option seems futile.
He begs, silently, that this is only a result of his paranoia, but-
Another creak. Closer this time. Right outside the door. Shit, shit, shit. He throws the thin covers from his body and scrambles blindly in the near-darkness to grab the gun that is propped next to the bed. Already loaded, safety off: dangerous, but moments like this prove it essential.
He has the weapon aimed and loaded before the door even opens.
When he sees who is standing there - not a creature but still a monster - it's difficult not to fire. Blow a hole in the bastard's chest, leaving him bleeding gore over the hallway.
He'd stop the bullet, Mohinder thinks in a frenzy - a moment later, they'd smell the blood.
He doesn't fire, but he doesn't lower the gun. It stays aimed perfectly. He's had too much experience since the last time they found themselves in this situation. He wets his lips. "Sylar," he states. There doesn't seem to be much else to say.
"So you are alive, then," Sylar says. He strides into the room: his eyes narrow. "You look a state."
"I… Pardon?" He feels as if he's tripped into a bizarre mirror-world. Everything is wrong and yet Sylar seems fine. Seems himself. Hardly surprising that he flourishes while the human race dies. Sylar was built for this - designed for the apocalypse. A cockroach. A god. Mohinder thinks he's started laughing, now, but it's hard to tell what he's doing. His grip on reality seems to have loosened in the weeks that have passed with no human contact. Now his father's murderer stands before him with a faintly disgusted expression on his face. "Are you really here?"
"Looks like," Sylar confirms. "I thought you'd probably have something to do with this. Came as quickly as I could - only to find you like this. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered."
The gun doesn't waver from its aim at Sylar's chest, but Mohinder readjusts his grip upon it: shooting him would be a futile, suicidal move. He has few other options. "What are you doing here, Sylar?" he asks eventually, baffled.
He isn't real. He can't really be here, can he? They're dead. Everyone's dead.
Perhaps it is fitting that Sylar is the one that remains to haunt him. His worst enemy. The one person he hates most in the world. It has a painfully Dickensian irony.
"I don't know what's happening," Sylar answers. He looks around the room, unaffected by the gun. He hardly seems to pay it any attention at all. "People started dying, becoming - things. I don't like not knowing."
"I can't say I like it too much either." Mohinder knows that he is responsible. He knows that Maya is out there somewhere, still, and that it should be down to him to set right what he made go wrong. Beyond that, however, he knows very little at all. He certainly doesn't know where to begin trying to fix this.
Sylar's frown suggests that he's put out by this revelation. "You don't know anything?" he checks. "That doesn't sound like you, doctor."
The name is as bad as an insult.
"Maya…" Mohinder says, before shaking his head blankly. "It started with her. I don't know where she is now."
"It's spreading fast," Sylar says - and it's so easy to step back and let him take charge, make decisions, surge forward. Mohinder's aim begins to fall. "Soon there won't be anyone left."
"I know that," Mohinder snaps. "You think I don't know that? Do you really think that I needed you to track me down, to break in here to find me, just so that you could tell me that?"
"I came to help."
"What?"
"I came to help," Sylar repeats with rather more patience than Mohinder would previously have given him credit for. "If the whole world dies, I'm going with it. I won't let that happen."
Mohinder would laugh if he had the energy. "I suppose you'd call that an evolutionary imperative," he suggests.
Sylar's response is only to scowl. "Just tell me what needs to be done, Mohinder," he insists.
A strange alliance in the making - Mohinder pauses for a moment to allow himself a chance to breathe, to think, to relish his morals before he takes yet another step down the road to hell.
*
2nd January 2011
Within one day they've come close to killing each other a handful of times. Mohinder wears his black eye proudly, an outwards sign that not everything has changed. He may have to work alongside Sylar - he may have to endure a murderer's company - but he doesn't do so quietly.
It does make working together something of a difficult chore. They walk the street aimlessly - there doesn't seem to be a plan at all. Certainly, there is no way of catching Maya while staying safe themselves. They need to be prepared when they do this: Mohinder still doubts that Sylar realises what he's put himself in for. This will not be an easy fix.
"You want it here?" Sylar says, looking around the trashed remains that were once Isaac's studio or Mohinder's laboratory. "We could find somewhere better."
"I know this place," Mohinder says. "I've worked here before."
"And didn't that end well," Sylar mutters unhappily. Mohinder chooses not to respond.
He walks instead through the debris that litters the floor: ripped paintings and shattered test tubes. Why couldn't Isaac predict this? he thinks. Why didn't he warn us?
It hardly matters now.
"Here," he states. "It's the right place for it."
He can rebuild the world from this laboratory, from the place where it all began. The creatures have trashed it once: they won't touch it again. There's no point. They'll know that there's no food remaining here. With any luck Mohinder could get away with it.
"We'd better get to work," Sylar says - he looks towards Mohinder, eyes dark and dangerous like they always are. "You start tidying up. I'll get the supplies."
"How are you-" Mohinder cuts himself off sharply. He's learnt better than to question Sylar over such matters. If he says he'll fetch something, he will. It's better off not bothering to ask how he'll get his hands on the building supplies they'll need. Mohinder could laugh at himself, worrying about stealing when there is no one there to steal it from. Stealing from the dead, stealing from the husks of buildings… It's hardly a crime at all.
Sylar leaves. The door rattles in the doorframe behind him, slammed too hard. Despite the warm sunlight that streams through the windows, the sudden loneliness turns the empty laboratory into a chilling playground for shadows. Mohinder swallows and ignores the shiver that hurries down his spine. He was alone for months before Sylar appeared: there is nothing to be afraid of when the sun is high.
He flexes his hand and looks around: it's difficult to know where to start.
From the beginning, he tells himself as he walks towards the door to clear away the shards of broken glass and shattered blinds that have scattered onto the floor when the creatures first burst their way in. You start from the beginning.
One hour later, when Sylar returns with the bare bones of the materials that they will need, Mohinder smiles and thinks that they might actually be able to do this after all.
*
14th January 2011
By the second week of building he has so many splinters embedded in his skin that he doubts if he'll ever manage to get rid of them all. His thumb is the proud owner of several hammer-inflicted bruises: he was never cut out to be a carpenter.
"I've been thinking about it," Sylar says, standing at the other side of the small room with a blowtorch in hand. Mohinder's gaze flickers uneasily down to the object as he tries to remind himself that it's really the last thing he ought to be afraid of in Sylar's company. The worst of Sylar's weapons aren't visible, after all. "We need to pick somewhere specific to settle down."
"We've been over this, Sylar," Mohinder sighs. Over and over the same arguments time and time again. Sylar doesn't know how to let something go. Mohinder doesn't know how to back down. Neither of them know how to work with each other. They're doomed for failure in whatever they do. "It makes sense to keep moving. If we stay in one place for too long they might find us - and with only two of us there's no such thing as 'safety in numbers'."
"We can find somewhere a short walk out of town," Sylar says. "Adapt it. This has shown that we can, hasn't it?" He pats a hand against the sturdy framework they've been building. It's almost done now. Almost ready. "If we find somewhere and fortify it enough, we'll be safe even if they find us. Carrying on like this… It's stupid."
"Then go," Mohinder suggests. "Find somewhere and 'fortify' it. You don't need me for that."
His attention pinholes in on the nail he's supposed to be hammering, purely so that he won't have to see Sylar's reaction to what he's said. He doesn't know what he's hoping for. You're hoping he'll leave, he tells himself sharply. Of course you are.
Murderer. His father's murderer. Even if he's the only man left in the city - possibly in the world - that doesn't mean that they ought to enjoy each other's company.
"Fine," Sylar snips eventually. He returns to work and they force a frosty silence to fall on their shoulders. Mohinder wonders, not for the first time, why they're bothering to do this. What will it accomplish? What can he achieve? It's so easy to be negative, to be defeatist.
At the end of the day - one hour before the sun is due to set - they step back from their work and can't help but smile. "We did it," Mohinder says with an impressed nod.
"We did it," Sylar confirms.
The old bathroom of Isaac's studio has been converted, has been strengthened, has been fortified. The window's glass has been replaced with stronger, shatter-proof material that Sylar salvaged from god-knows-where. It's thick enough to ward off attacks and secure enough to contain a live tiger.
Mohinder feels a burst of helpless laughter escape from him - he ignores Sylar's alarmed expression at the sound - and feels his spirits lighten for the first time in weeks. Before them stands a prison cell equipped to keep anything in: even a furious and hungry creature, even one of them.
Even his Patient Zero.
*
Part Nine
Pairing: Mohinder/Sylar
Word Count: 2530
Rating: R
Warnings: end-of-the-world, character deaths, zombie-vampires.
A/N: Inspired by 'I Am Legend'. Thank you to Babylon_pride for betaing!
Previous parts: One :: Two :: Three :: Four :: Five :: Six :: Seven
Summary: On the 13th of November 2010, the dead began to remain undead. Two years later, the last men on Earth struggle to survive.
9th of December, 2010
He's lived with his heart hammering a bloody rhythm for so long now that it seems normal. The adrenaline can't last forever - but he needs it to. Mohinder doesn't know what he'll do when it's time to stop running, stop fighting. One day, he knows, he will stop and he will look around and the world will be gone. Humanity will have dropped away. One by one. Death by death.
Not today, he tells himself, treading gingerly through the hushed streets. While his observations lead him to believe that the creatures that are the product of Maya's death will not venture into the sunlight, he has no way of being certain and no way of being safe.
Doesn't matter, does it? The streets are abandoned. The buildings are empty. The sun heats empty pavements with no one to enjoy her warmth and Mohinder walks through a ghost town of his own making.
Molly. Matt.
He hasn't seen them since the beginning of the outbreak: he tells himself that this is a good sign, a positive thing. He hasn't found their bodies yet. The possibility that life might flicker in their hearts still lives. He finds corpses more often than not, but they're becoming rarer now. The gore had lined the streets in the beginning, meat and blood and broken bones sprawled on the pavements. Bite marks. Chunks missing.
The bile rises when he thinks back to those days: he remembers how the strength had fled from him and he'd stumbled away, choking, to vomit by the side of the road, acidic. The congealed red colour is still imprinted into the back of his eyelids. He sees it when he sleeps.
No life stirs in the streets but he continues searching. One person, he thinks, one soul.
That's all he needs to fuel the hope in his heart, the hope that's starting to flicker away.
In a world populated by the dead optimism lies cold and still.
*
29th December, 2010
The radios turned to static two weeks ago. Before he had been able to pick up on the occasional frantic broadcast: appeals for help that he'd tried to answer. Reports. Updates. We're still alive, two young men had laughed hysterically over those radio waves. The bastards haven't got all of us yet.
They'd stopped reporting shortly afterwards. Now Mohinder flicks through the silent channels and listens to the buzzing silence, imagining their voices, their laughter, their company. The world is dying, miles away. The world is dead.
"This is Mohinder Suresh," he sighs into the recording equipment that he has managed to salvage from the wreckage of other people's lives. Every day he sounds wearier. "I'm in New York City. If there is anyone out there…"
He can't safely give away his location in case the creatures are able to listen, are able to understand. He can't arrange a meeting point in case he never makes it out of there again.
He pauses, lump in his throat, then forces himself to finish.
"Know that you are not alone."
He stops broadcasting and sits back, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw: he tries to imagine Matt and Molly somewhere distant, somewhere remote and safe, listening to those words. Smiling. Living. Yet the image is too faded. Even his imagination can't conjure such a lie.
His breath shivers. His heart aches. He keeps going, trudging forth - at this point there is really no other choice.
*
1st January 2011
The nights are long, and lonely, and empty. Terrifying. He lies on his side with wide eyes staring into pitch blackness: thinking. Imagining. Hearing.
Their cackles and howls penetrate the walls of the apartment he has decided to stay in tonight. They sound close. So close. Too close. Their inhuman voices are jubilant rather than frustrated tonight: they must have found something to hunt, to eat.
Mohinder's hand clenches tightly: what carcass will he find when he goes walking in the sunlight tomorrow morning? Whose blood will be smeared over the pavement? He breathes through his nose. It doesn't matter - dog, deer, cat. There's nothing human left in this city. They're extinct, aren't they?
His breathing jerks to a stop when he hears a sound from the stairwell. A creak. Short. Whining. Probably nothing at all, but every muscle that lines Mohinder's body tenses and prepares itself: prepares for what he can't tell. What would he do if they were here? Run? Fight? Either option seems futile.
He begs, silently, that this is only a result of his paranoia, but-
Another creak. Closer this time. Right outside the door. Shit, shit, shit. He throws the thin covers from his body and scrambles blindly in the near-darkness to grab the gun that is propped next to the bed. Already loaded, safety off: dangerous, but moments like this prove it essential.
He has the weapon aimed and loaded before the door even opens.
When he sees who is standing there - not a creature but still a monster - it's difficult not to fire. Blow a hole in the bastard's chest, leaving him bleeding gore over the hallway.
He'd stop the bullet, Mohinder thinks in a frenzy - a moment later, they'd smell the blood.
He doesn't fire, but he doesn't lower the gun. It stays aimed perfectly. He's had too much experience since the last time they found themselves in this situation. He wets his lips. "Sylar," he states. There doesn't seem to be much else to say.
"So you are alive, then," Sylar says. He strides into the room: his eyes narrow. "You look a state."
"I… Pardon?" He feels as if he's tripped into a bizarre mirror-world. Everything is wrong and yet Sylar seems fine. Seems himself. Hardly surprising that he flourishes while the human race dies. Sylar was built for this - designed for the apocalypse. A cockroach. A god. Mohinder thinks he's started laughing, now, but it's hard to tell what he's doing. His grip on reality seems to have loosened in the weeks that have passed with no human contact. Now his father's murderer stands before him with a faintly disgusted expression on his face. "Are you really here?"
"Looks like," Sylar confirms. "I thought you'd probably have something to do with this. Came as quickly as I could - only to find you like this. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered."
The gun doesn't waver from its aim at Sylar's chest, but Mohinder readjusts his grip upon it: shooting him would be a futile, suicidal move. He has few other options. "What are you doing here, Sylar?" he asks eventually, baffled.
He isn't real. He can't really be here, can he? They're dead. Everyone's dead.
Perhaps it is fitting that Sylar is the one that remains to haunt him. His worst enemy. The one person he hates most in the world. It has a painfully Dickensian irony.
"I don't know what's happening," Sylar answers. He looks around the room, unaffected by the gun. He hardly seems to pay it any attention at all. "People started dying, becoming - things. I don't like not knowing."
"I can't say I like it too much either." Mohinder knows that he is responsible. He knows that Maya is out there somewhere, still, and that it should be down to him to set right what he made go wrong. Beyond that, however, he knows very little at all. He certainly doesn't know where to begin trying to fix this.
Sylar's frown suggests that he's put out by this revelation. "You don't know anything?" he checks. "That doesn't sound like you, doctor."
The name is as bad as an insult.
"Maya…" Mohinder says, before shaking his head blankly. "It started with her. I don't know where she is now."
"It's spreading fast," Sylar says - and it's so easy to step back and let him take charge, make decisions, surge forward. Mohinder's aim begins to fall. "Soon there won't be anyone left."
"I know that," Mohinder snaps. "You think I don't know that? Do you really think that I needed you to track me down, to break in here to find me, just so that you could tell me that?"
"I came to help."
"What?"
"I came to help," Sylar repeats with rather more patience than Mohinder would previously have given him credit for. "If the whole world dies, I'm going with it. I won't let that happen."
Mohinder would laugh if he had the energy. "I suppose you'd call that an evolutionary imperative," he suggests.
Sylar's response is only to scowl. "Just tell me what needs to be done, Mohinder," he insists.
A strange alliance in the making - Mohinder pauses for a moment to allow himself a chance to breathe, to think, to relish his morals before he takes yet another step down the road to hell.
*
2nd January 2011
Within one day they've come close to killing each other a handful of times. Mohinder wears his black eye proudly, an outwards sign that not everything has changed. He may have to work alongside Sylar - he may have to endure a murderer's company - but he doesn't do so quietly.
It does make working together something of a difficult chore. They walk the street aimlessly - there doesn't seem to be a plan at all. Certainly, there is no way of catching Maya while staying safe themselves. They need to be prepared when they do this: Mohinder still doubts that Sylar realises what he's put himself in for. This will not be an easy fix.
"You want it here?" Sylar says, looking around the trashed remains that were once Isaac's studio or Mohinder's laboratory. "We could find somewhere better."
"I know this place," Mohinder says. "I've worked here before."
"And didn't that end well," Sylar mutters unhappily. Mohinder chooses not to respond.
He walks instead through the debris that litters the floor: ripped paintings and shattered test tubes. Why couldn't Isaac predict this? he thinks. Why didn't he warn us?
It hardly matters now.
"Here," he states. "It's the right place for it."
He can rebuild the world from this laboratory, from the place where it all began. The creatures have trashed it once: they won't touch it again. There's no point. They'll know that there's no food remaining here. With any luck Mohinder could get away with it.
"We'd better get to work," Sylar says - he looks towards Mohinder, eyes dark and dangerous like they always are. "You start tidying up. I'll get the supplies."
"How are you-" Mohinder cuts himself off sharply. He's learnt better than to question Sylar over such matters. If he says he'll fetch something, he will. It's better off not bothering to ask how he'll get his hands on the building supplies they'll need. Mohinder could laugh at himself, worrying about stealing when there is no one there to steal it from. Stealing from the dead, stealing from the husks of buildings… It's hardly a crime at all.
Sylar leaves. The door rattles in the doorframe behind him, slammed too hard. Despite the warm sunlight that streams through the windows, the sudden loneliness turns the empty laboratory into a chilling playground for shadows. Mohinder swallows and ignores the shiver that hurries down his spine. He was alone for months before Sylar appeared: there is nothing to be afraid of when the sun is high.
He flexes his hand and looks around: it's difficult to know where to start.
From the beginning, he tells himself as he walks towards the door to clear away the shards of broken glass and shattered blinds that have scattered onto the floor when the creatures first burst their way in. You start from the beginning.
One hour later, when Sylar returns with the bare bones of the materials that they will need, Mohinder smiles and thinks that they might actually be able to do this after all.
*
14th January 2011
By the second week of building he has so many splinters embedded in his skin that he doubts if he'll ever manage to get rid of them all. His thumb is the proud owner of several hammer-inflicted bruises: he was never cut out to be a carpenter.
"I've been thinking about it," Sylar says, standing at the other side of the small room with a blowtorch in hand. Mohinder's gaze flickers uneasily down to the object as he tries to remind himself that it's really the last thing he ought to be afraid of in Sylar's company. The worst of Sylar's weapons aren't visible, after all. "We need to pick somewhere specific to settle down."
"We've been over this, Sylar," Mohinder sighs. Over and over the same arguments time and time again. Sylar doesn't know how to let something go. Mohinder doesn't know how to back down. Neither of them know how to work with each other. They're doomed for failure in whatever they do. "It makes sense to keep moving. If we stay in one place for too long they might find us - and with only two of us there's no such thing as 'safety in numbers'."
"We can find somewhere a short walk out of town," Sylar says. "Adapt it. This has shown that we can, hasn't it?" He pats a hand against the sturdy framework they've been building. It's almost done now. Almost ready. "If we find somewhere and fortify it enough, we'll be safe even if they find us. Carrying on like this… It's stupid."
"Then go," Mohinder suggests. "Find somewhere and 'fortify' it. You don't need me for that."
His attention pinholes in on the nail he's supposed to be hammering, purely so that he won't have to see Sylar's reaction to what he's said. He doesn't know what he's hoping for. You're hoping he'll leave, he tells himself sharply. Of course you are.
Murderer. His father's murderer. Even if he's the only man left in the city - possibly in the world - that doesn't mean that they ought to enjoy each other's company.
"Fine," Sylar snips eventually. He returns to work and they force a frosty silence to fall on their shoulders. Mohinder wonders, not for the first time, why they're bothering to do this. What will it accomplish? What can he achieve? It's so easy to be negative, to be defeatist.
At the end of the day - one hour before the sun is due to set - they step back from their work and can't help but smile. "We did it," Mohinder says with an impressed nod.
"We did it," Sylar confirms.
The old bathroom of Isaac's studio has been converted, has been strengthened, has been fortified. The window's glass has been replaced with stronger, shatter-proof material that Sylar salvaged from god-knows-where. It's thick enough to ward off attacks and secure enough to contain a live tiger.
Mohinder feels a burst of helpless laughter escape from him - he ignores Sylar's alarmed expression at the sound - and feels his spirits lighten for the first time in weeks. Before them stands a prison cell equipped to keep anything in: even a furious and hungry creature, even one of them.
Even his Patient Zero.
*
Part Nine