for couples_therapy: reunite

[heroslayer]

(Mohinder is genetic_fate and is used at their request. Yes, I'm still working on these, and yes, yet again I copped out on actual smut. Shut up.)

and soon it will be all said and done
and we will all be back together as one
if we will continue at all

He's old now. So old that he's lost count of the turn of the years, each passing moment like grains of sand, slipping through fingers that don't even bother to try and catch them. There's no point to it, no reason to savor the moments, everything, even the near insatiable hunger of his youth, having long since shriveled and died. For as dark as that seems, however, there is no sadness, this loss of his not something to mourn. It just is, just like he is. Fact, forever.

He supposes it's easy to mistake, though; he hasn't spoken in nearing ten years.

It's not that he's so broken by his own timelessness that he's lost his mind. He still goes out in public, still lives and breathes and does, it's more that everything he could possibly say has already been said. Everything but three words, and since everything dies, there's no point to that, either. It's like that song from centuries ago that only he remembers the words to. It's dust in the wind. And while he knows that his silence earns him odd looks and pointed fingers, when he has his back turned, but he doesn't care.

He's never cared much for the opinions of others, and people seem to be able to read his facial expressions and archaic gestures well enough. Even the wide-eyed boy he runs into in the streets of his latest home, having been too interested in one thing or another to even notice him coming.

Making a small face that's equal parts sour and apology, he lowers his head briefly, about the same time the boy--not really a boy, as he must be at least in his late twenties, but age is relative--mumbles an apology. They stare at each other for a moment, and in that moment, he can't help but feel as though he knows him, somehow. He hasn't forgotten a face in such a long time, though, and while the curls are all too familiar, wide brown eyes like a ghost from the past, any similarity stops there. And so he forgets it, brushing past the boy, forever mute.

do you remember the time we
and all the times we
and should have
and were going to

He stops, turns, finds the boy still watching him. Neither of them speak, but for the first time in ten years, he tries to find his voice, ghosts of a past he doubts the other man can ever remember dancing under his skin from where he touched him. Old pain. Memories of science and dead fathers and longing and hate. History. History with him, staining the edges of boy's being like color on a church window.

"Mohinder," he breathes, nearly choking on the name, and the boy arches his eyebrows at him, confused and defiant all in one. It's a look he remembers all too well, even though time has yellowed his memories like old photographs.

"I'm sorry, but ... "

He doesn't let him answer, suddenly close, pressing his mouth to his. The shadow of the geneticist straightens, shocked, and he's sure that he's startling the boy, but he doesn't care. He needs this, should have done it hundreds and hundreds of years ago, though he never had. This is his chance, and feeling like this is the only one he'll get in the forevers that follow, he makes it count.

The boy that was Mohinder never kisses back, but it doesn't matter. And as he pulls back, ignoring the spectre of confusion that echoes the geneticist's, he puts a hand to his hair, lightly and briefly, tasting memory again. It's bittersweet and scalding, and he knows that nothing will make the wraith of his former object of obsession remember, but it's all he has.

and it feels like we're living in that split second
of a car crash
and time is slowing down
and if we only had a little more time
and this time
is all there is

This is all he has, and the reunion, however brief, is enough.


Muse: Gabriel Gray (Sylar)
Fandom: Heroes
Word Count: 625 (without lyrics)