the enemy of my enemy is my friend (rp for factnotbelief)

[heroslayer]

He doesn't like this.

Sylar knows he needs help if he's going to take on Parkman and Petrelli -- he might be smarter than both of them, but they're better armed, and he's never been good at fighting on two fronts -- but people don't just offer people like him help without a catch. Arthur's going to want something from him in return, and as good as he usually is about repaying kindness where kindness is offered, he likes to do it on his own terms. He wants to be the one who decides what and when people get something out of him, not have a debt held over his head, and he knows that's how it's going to go with Arthur. The Petrelli patriarch's already tried it, feeding him some bullshit story about how he's his son to him over the phone to try and make him feel obligated, and he doesn't owe him a damn thing yet. It can only get worse from here on out, he figures, and it's not like he can't find Suresh on his own. He's done it before, biding his time until the heroes let their guard down and move on to more important things, and he's got all the time in the world to wait now. They don't.

Unfortunately, however, neither does Suresh and as angry as he is, he's not too keen on waiting to reclaim what's his and what should belong to him, and that probably explains why, against his better judgement, he gets out of the car and stalks up to the building. If this goes badly, he'll just kill Arthur and go his own way. He makes a show of making sure Arthur knows that's in the cards, too, blowing the door off the hinges as he reaches it in a disturbing display of power. Arthur told him not to kill anyone on his way up here, and he didn't, but he never said he couldn't wreck his little house of cards when he got here.

Comments

[splice-of-life.livejournal.com]

"I've had bad luck with companies of late," Mohinder teases lightly, his look towards Sylar nothing but fond. The elevator stops at the penthouse and Mohinder hooks on his ID badge received in the lobby. It seems overly legitimate, this pharmaceutical company's headquarters. It's actually very similar to a place he'd thought he'd end up before he started after his father and began university work.

He's impressed by the number of employees here, no doubt most of them are normal, like himself. The place is the exact opposite of how Primatech was. It's encouraging.

Still, he hangs back when the doors are open for them. Sylar hadn't done that. "Welcome back. And hello, Doctor Suresh. My son thinks so very highly of you."

[heroslayer]

"Which one?" Sylar asks, flashing him a smirk, one tinted with sarcasm, as he leads the way into the penthouse. He's not at all impressed by the show Arthur put on in opening the doors for them -- if his power is so similar to his and Peter's, it only makes sense he'd have picked up something like that over the years. Telekinesis, as he understands it, isn't all that rare a gift.

[factnotbelief.livejournal.com]

"All three, incidentally, though for different reasons." Arthur laughs, another glass of whiskey in his hand. "Come in. You've taken your time getting back. I was starting to wonder if you wanted your gift, Gabriel."

[heroslayer]

"We were making up for lost time." He shrugs and props himself against the wall somewhere between Arthur and the door. "Besides. I figured my present wasn't going to get up and walk away any time soon."

[factnotbelief.livejournal.com]

Arthur chuckles. "No, of course not. He's waiting the lab for you both." The sound of ice hitting his lip and then the bottom of the glass follows. "And when you're finished that, doctor, you and I ought to have a business meeting."

[heroslayer]

Sylar pushes away from the wall, not bothering to wait to be dismissed -- he figures Arthur telling him where Matt in the first place is permission enough, and even if it isn't, he doesn't particularly care -- and heads out. He glances over his shoulder, just to make sure Mohinder's following, and once he's sure he is, continues on the way to the lab. Or where he assumes it is, anyway. He passed it on his way through the building the first time, and he's hoping it's in the same place, even if he really never got any further than the elevator. Luckily for him, it is, and he pauses outside the door, casting another look back at Mohinder.

"Arthur knows about your interest in how my brain works." And now that he thinks about it, that strikes him as odd. How the hell did Arthur know what he and Mohinder got up to before he was kidnapped? Was he watching them? Did Matt's father pull it out of his head while he was idling in the elevator and offer it to him? He frowns, albeit briefly -- either way, he supposes it doesn't matter. It's not like Arthur tried to stop him then and soon it won't matter whether he has a telepath on the payroll or not. His thoughts will be completely his own. As will everyone else's. "I'm guessing there's an MRI machine in here somewhere, if you want to take another look after I open my presents."

[splice-of-life.livejournal.com]

Opening presents means death for someone, or more than one someone and yet Mohinder is grinning. He's not desensitized, he's simply detached. Mohinder is a scientist and sometimes, science can be pleasant. He seems to have forgotten completely about consent. Or subject safety.

When did people become lab rats to him?

Mohinder's too busy grinning to ask those questions. "You'll need another shave. Or we can skin the heart monitor. You seem fine in there."

[heroslayer]

He's not terribly interested in another shave so soon after regrowing his chest hair. "We'll skip the heart monitor this time."

Without further ado, he lets them into the room, looking around for Parkman. He's not immediately visible, lost behind a handful of steel medical beds, all unoccupied, and rows of machines, but even so, it doesn't take Sylar long to find him. He's unconscious still, and he can't tell whether it's because of what he did to him earlier -- he's got a nasty goose egg starting just below his hairline -- if Maury did something to his son, or if he's just drugged, but he supposes it doesn't matter. Consciousness won't stop him from getting his ability, it'll just make it less rewarding beforehand as he won't be able to taunt him.

[splice-of-life.livejournal.com]

Mohinder doesn't lose his smile, not right away. He's got instrument duty first. He's checking readings, glancing over the manual, and making sure that nothing will go badly for Sylar. The machine needs to function properly because though the man won't die, he can still feel pain.

"Make sure you remove anything metallic," Mohinder calls over, wiping down the inside of the machine. "That includes your jeans, the zipper will set it off!"

Standard procedures. Standard everything until Mohinder moves through the maze of tables. "My God, Matt!" He rushes over, checking his vitals. He's breathing. His heart is working just fine. "Help me get him up."

[heroslayer]

Sylar arches his eyebrows, wondering if he's kidding -- for all the terrible things Matt did to him over the last couple of weeks, why the hell would he want to help him now? -- then lowers them, almost unimpressed, when he realizes he's not. He shakes his head, and nudges Mohinder away from the table and his friend teleknetically; if he tries to go back to his side, it'll be a shove against the nearest wall. "No."

[splice-of-life.livejournal.com]

"You can't!" Yes, into the wall with Mohinder, enough to jar him, enough to knock the window out of him. Mohinder's a light weight. He crashes hard into things though, always tumbling.

He'll have some new scars from this and one very bad bruise just above the small of his back. Likely, that bruised his kidney as well. A bit of blood in the urine never hurt anyone, right?

[heroslayer]

"Why not?" He spares Matt one more glance and then turns on him, all the anger he's carried over the last few weeks coming back in a rush of white hot warmth. He curls his fingers into fists, and moves to stand over him, sneering. "He took you away from me. He probably would have had me kill myself if I hadn't managed to get out of whatever he was doing to me."

Or put a bullet in his brain. That, at least, might have gotten him somewhere.

"He was going to destroy you memories of me." He flings one arm in Matt's direction in a wild, angry gesture. "And if I let him go, he probably will just because I came back for you. Just because he can. He has this coming, Suresh. Don't try to tell me he doesn't."

[splice-of-life.livejournal.com]

It only takes the sound of his family name to cow him. He knows that Sylar is right. Matt won't give up, he won't back off. He's never going to leave him alone and the moment he can, Sylar will be ripped from his mind without consent. Or he'll persuade Mohinder into thinking that the man he loves is a monster.

Oh God, but he is a monster.

Mohinder watches as Sylar turns back to Matt. It's for the best. He's just holding on to something he doesn't need. Mohinder is getting good at convincing himself of anything Sylar wants him to think.

[heroslayer]

When no argument comes, he starts in on Matt viciously, his normal pristine, surgical cut anything but this time for as strongly as his rage has taken him. When he finishes, the top of the telepath's head looks like a ten-year-old's first attempt at carving a jack-o-lantern, but he doesn't seem to notice or care. He just peels off the top of Matt's head and dumps it on one of the empty tables nearby, before leaning down to check first that he didn't destroy his brain in his fit -- he didn't, thank God -- and then to look for his prize. As always, it never takes him long to find it, and when he does, he steps back, his fury subsiding in a instant of pain and the pleasure that follows.

He wonders idly, pleasantly, if Mohinder still wants his MRI.

[splice-of-life.livejournal.com]

Mohinder is sort of numb, his thoughts a broken jab of Hindi interspersed with English. He's the closest person to Sylar, so his thoughts were the loudest. Of the snippets of English, they all seem to be sad, so sad, raw and bright. He loved that man and now he was dead. Dead. Absolutely dead. He would never be back. Never see Molly again and--

He's praying. It's beautiful and fluid and incomprehensible.

But there are other people too, passing by on floors above them. As with Dale, getting a new power like that is bound to be overwhelming. Too many voices, all crying out at once. And mostly about what they want for lunch or if they have enough deodorant on.

[heroslayer]

He squeezes his eyes shut, trying to find a means of filtering enough out that he can hear himself think. There has to be a trick to it, as there was with Dale -- he found if he focused inwards on his own heartbeat, everything else became white noise -- or Matt would have been insane a long time ago for how overwhelming the noise in his head is. And maybe that's it, maybe that's why he thought it was a good idea to try to steal Mohinder's memories, maybe he was insane. He certainly feels like he's getting there, himself, and he's only had this power for a minute or two.

[splice-of-life.livejournal.com]

Sylar's pain is all that's needed for Mohinder to snap out of his own. He's dedicated to the psychopath, and though he just lobbed off his friend's skull, and Matt was laying dead on the table beside him, Mohinder's trembling arms immediately move around him. "Shh," he breathes into his ear, fingernails scraping a bit harshly against Sylar's scape.

Scratch, scratch, focus on me. He pushes his words through as forcefully as possible. A little tug, a bite on the jaw. He wants Sylar to only have him on his mind. It should help him focus.

Matt came into his ability little by little. Sylar's not having that option.

On me! My mind. Sort it that way.

[heroslayer]

Matt may have had more time to adjust to it, but Sylar has the advantage of understanding and a quick mind for learning. Having Mohinder around to offer pointers doesn't hurt either, and he leans into him, taking an unsteady breath, as he tries to focus solely on Mohinder's thoughts. It seems to work, albeit slowly, the weight of the rest of the building's thoughts pressing down on him slowly abating, and he sighs slowly, almost relieved.

"That was ... intense." He can't say for sure whether he actually said that out loud or if he just pushed his thoughts into Mohinder's head, just words without a command behind them.

OOC: My eyes say it's bedtime! More tomorrow!

[splice-of-life.livejournal.com]

Mohinder presses their foreheads together and smiles through his tears at the other man. "You'll get it. You're brilliant. You pick up on them all so fast. And you'll be able to ignore it like you've learned to ignore what you get when you touch something. Unless you care to know."

You manage to perfect the abilities.

Upstairs, Arthur turns off the feed as Mohinder guides Sylar to the MRI. Maury is impassive, though his eyes betray only the smallest amount of grief. "Suresh is the key," he tells the fat and balding man to his left. "We control Suresh and we control Sylar."

Night!

[heroslayer]

He brushes his fingers through his hair, and lets him lead him off to the MRI, laying down on the table that feeds into it when Mohinder tells him to. He knows the drill; he doesn't move. He does, however, take it upon himself to comb through Mohinder's thoughts, trying to see how he's dealing with this. He doesn't care if Mohinder's upset -- that's natural and it'll pass -- he just wants to make sure he hasn't broken his mind. He's not sure he could deal with Suresh being anything less than he is, and he'd hate to have to kill him or worse to preserve what he was.

[splice-of-life.livejournal.com]

Not everything is as it should be. Mohinder's shaken, Mohinder's upset. The buzz of his thoughts tend to range from wondering how he'll tell Molly what happened to never being able to see Matt again on the sofa watching the game. He blames himself, he blames Matt, he blames Sylar's nature -- but not Sylar -- and backs off of that train of thought almost immediately. He's worried for his lover, he;s worried about this place. There's also curiosity at how these scans will look, a faint desire to have known how Matt's brain looked before Sylar poked through it---

And bruising. A lot of bruising. It's difficult to really see it, but the edges of his memories seem tender, as if someone's been plundering them. And had been for days.

Mohinder's violation at the hands of his friends becomes clear. They've left traces. There may not be a rape kit for the mind, but Mohinder still is showing the classic symptoms of it.

[heroslayer]

The pictures Mohinder gets of Sylar's brain this time show changes on a massive scale -- telepathy, like an expensive watch, has more than its fair share of moving parts necessary to making it function and it shows in Sylar's head. There's been some change to three of the four lobes of his cerebral cortex and there's damage to all of them, faint but visible, and not healing on its own, as there was to his temporal lobe when he took Bridget's power. And while the pleasure centers of his brain are lit, as before, they're not nearly as bright this time, his high muted from having to deal with dozens and dozens of voices in his head immediately after acquiring it.

He shows no great interest in the results of Mohinder's scan, though, too preoccupied by the raw quality of his memories to care much as he climbs out of the machine when it's over. He moves over to Mohinder, grabbing his jeans as he passes to step back into them, and stares at him intensely, his head tilted to one side, trying to understand. It'd be easier if he could just open him up and look, but he won't. He can figure this out without resorting to getting his hands dirty a second time.

" ... what did they do to you?"

[splice-of-life.livejournal.com]

"Do to me?" Mohinder's not looking at Sylar, not directly. He settles his glasses over his nose -- he really would need some contacts in the near future -- and uses a provided grease pen to circle some of the more obvious section of Sylar's brain to study later.

He's concerned about the lack of healing and finally turns towards the other man to do up his fly. That's rather more affectionate than even a kiss. Mohinder's trying to tend to Sylar while he's in pain.

"Nothing really. Turned me off of poker for good. I'm terrible at it, as it turns out, and playing with a telepath..." He just lets the thought go.

[heroslayer]

He leans into him as he helps him with his jeans, but his expression doesn't change. He's like a dog with a bone now, he needs to work out what he felt in his thoughts, and he shakes his head slowly, slipping his fingers up into his hair as if spidering them along his scalp will help. "That's not what I'm talking about. Your thoughts feel -- wrong. Like someone went at them with a stick. Like a pinata."

[splice-of-life.livejournal.com]

That does give Mohinder pause, first at the brief pleasure of hands in his hair and then at the sick feeling in his stomach when Sylar explains the sort of brutality he feels at the edges of Mohinder's thoughts.

The truth is, Matt and Peter both could have scooped out any information from him that they wanted. Things could be missing and he'd never know. He presses a hand to Sylar's abdomen, strictly to get a grasp on the betrayal he feels.

"They're my friends, they wouldn't--" And yet Matt had been so angry sometimes, would stare at him with loathing. So. He'd known. He died knowing Mohinder's guilts, all of them.