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

[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.

[heroslayer]

Between Mohinder's reaction and his own unique brand of understanding, he suddenly has a pretty good idea. He slides his fingers out of his hair and presses them to his jaw, taking a quick peek at the memory trapped under his skin, and he knows. Mohinder might not remember, but his body does. "They went through your memories."

[splice-of-life.livejournal.com]

For a moment, that doesn't seem to register, or perhaps it just doesn't bother Mohinder. That lasts one entire minute before his thoughts, loud and in Hindi, burst out angrily. Tuma aisā karanē kā kō'ī adhikāra hai!

It's true. They had no right to do that to him. And it hurts. It hurts and he has no outlet for that hurt. He breaks away from from Sylar towards Matt's body, shouting at it.

"Tuma kō'ī adhikāra nahīṁ thā! You were my best friend! Maiṁ āpa mēṁ viśvāsa thā! How could you have kiyā hai ki mērē li'ē?!" It's the ultimate breach of trust. Mohinder feels tattered. He leaves the room immediately, still seething.

[heroslayer]

He follows him, grabbing his shirt on the way out. Daddy can take care of the body; he has more important things to worry about. Like making sure Mohinder doesn't do anything stupid. Not that he's sure what to say or do at this point -- though, he supposes, if Mohinder wanted he could let him kill him, however temporarily -- but he feels compelled to follow him all the same.

[splice-of-life.livejournal.com]

He nearly rips his shirt out of Sylar's grasp, rounding on the other man. "Where's Peter?" The soft 'r' at the end of the other man's name drops away with the melodious accent. "I need to speak with him." A violation is one thing from men who see him as an enemy now, but to have he memories turned over and ransacked as if in a police raid? No. That's unacceptable.

[heroslayer]

"I don't know," he answers honestly, frowning. "He wasn't on the menu, so Arthur didn't tell me where he was."

There are ways of finding him, though, just as he planned on finding Parkman if Arthur had gone back on his promise. They could ask the Petrelli patriarch, for one, or he could try taking it from his mind. He could reach out for Peter's thoughts and track him that way. Or they could just start going through rooms and hope to find him in this maze. Either way, he shrugs.

[splice-of-life.livejournal.com]

"Find him." Mohinder asks for so little. Generally, it's to spare his life, leave him be, or not to hurt those he cares about along with a desire to be useful in his chosen field. And though he's demanding rather than asking for help for this, there's really no reason why he shouldn't be able to get it.

Arthur sighs and glances at Maury as he heads back to his office to meet the two. "Your boy is still causing problems for us and he's dead!" he quipped, arriving just before Mohinder had his small tantrum, growling out his desire to see Peter. Arthur folds his hands over his desk. "He's no longer a problem," he assures the pair. "And he'll never hurt you again, doctor. I've seen to it."

[heroslayer]

"You killed him?"

It's not the way Arthur words that that makes him immediately jump on that possibility -- it's that being in his presence is like being in a room full of broken clocks. He can sense his power, stronger now than it was the last time he was in a room with him, and it's his only guess. He said his original ability was similar to his and Peter's, after all, and he made a casual threat about having the opportunity to take his own abilities away from him, so he doesn't just borrow. Not like Peter.

[factnotbelief.livejournal.com]

Arthur laughs and gestures for the two men to sit. "Kill him? Good God, no. He's my son. I'd no sooner kill him than I would you."

Any attempt at reading Arthur's mind is met with an extreme feed back loop and both the older Petrelli and his supposed son suffer from it. Mohinder's quick to see to Sylar, frowning as he does so. "All right, if you've not killed him--"

"I've removed his powers. His body's in shock but recovering. We're not monsters here, doctor," Arthur says, wiping his mouth. "Not even Gabriel. I've something to show you both."

[heroslayer]

Sylar puts his hands to his temples, trying to massage away the lingering pain from trying to read Arthur's mind. It helps, albeit marginally, and he makes a mental note not to try that again before moving to take a seat in one of the chairs Arthur had offered them. Between his inability to read Arthur's mind and the idea that he might lose everything he's worked so hard for over the last few years in an instant, he suddenly doesn't like this much.

"What?"

[factnotbelief.livejournal.com]

"Doctor?" He watches Mohinder get up so very slowly before he leads the pair down the halls to the elevator and then the basement once more. "You've seen the medical technology we have here. Now look what else we can offer."

Arthur's amused at the way that Mohinder's eyes widen and he heads to one of the computer terminals. There aren't just incubators here, electron microscopes, or centrifuges. Arthur has offered Mohinder a geneticist's wet dream. And it shows on the doctor's face as he turns towards Sylar and his supposed father. "What's the catch?"

Arthur smiles. "No catch. Though we had been hoping you'd restart work on your research for a serum to provide artificial abilities to humans."

[heroslayer]

He likes this even less now.

"He can't," Sylar tells him adamantly. "He tried that once before, and I stopped him, because it's wrong on so many levels. How long before someone worse than me gets their hands on it?" He's comfortable with being the thing in the dark, a monster, despite Arthur trying to reassure everyone present otherwise. "And that's assuming it even works at all. The last time he tried it, it didn't turn out right. It would have killed anyone who tried it."

Or at least ruined their DNA to a point beyond repair.