heroslayer | if someone betrays me, i won't be a victim (rp for witnessof

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if someone betrays me, i won't be a victim (rp for witnessof_fate

He couldn't quite say what had caused the shift this time, his awareness of what Nathan did becoming less and less absolute as the lines between them blurred, but he could say that it had been both fast and sudden. One minute, Nathan had been on hold with Yagamoto Industries, trying to get in touch with Hiro as Mohinder had suggested, and the next, he was on the floor, the shift of skin and bone already slowing by the time his face connected with the carpet. He'd noted dimly that the change had to be some kind of record -- faster even than when he was in control of whose face he was wearing at any given moment -- and then the thought was gone as he tried to catch his breath.

He'd barely managed to get a handle on himself and the twitchiness that came in the wake of awareness when a voice, distant but still familiar, started yammering from -- somewhere.

Pushing himself up out of the carpet, careful to stifle a groan, his eyes fell to the ground as he searched for the source of the disturbance. It didn't take too long before he noted Nathan's cell phone, slightly worse for the wear from where he'd crumpled on top of it. It took even less time to connect things enough that he could place who, exactly, was shouting at him from the other end of the line and why.

Rage as sharp as the change back had been rose in his chest, choking the breath he'd just gotten back out of him again, and he reached out, fingers curling around the phone viciously. For a brief instant, he considered telling Nakamura that he was back -- hell, maybe he'd go for the whole truth just to put some kind of black mark on Bennet and Parkman's records -- and then he thought better of it. Instead, he simply tightened his grip on the phone, allowing himself a brief moment of satisfaction as it came apart in pieces in his hand.

Uncurling his fingers, he let the remains of the device clatter to the floor unceremoniously, and got to his feet, moving towards the door immediately. He needed to find Mohinder. Someone needed to suffer both for letting Nathan somehow manifest his abilities and for talking the politician into trying to make himself into an weapon of justice. Someone needed to pay for using him again, just as the Petrellis had, and leaving him with no voice to argue the choice. And considering Mohinder had been responsible for at least two of those slights -- a fact which he was keenly aware of now, when he hadn't quite been when he'd first come to -- it was only fair.

That in mind, he let himself into the garden where he could vaguely recall Mohinder telling Nathan he'd be when he got off the phone, and sunk into the shadows along its edges, not wanting to be seen before he could make the other man out in the dying daylight.

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It was a gamble, Mohinder knew, encouraging Nathan to use Sylar's emerging powers, but short of telling him the truth, he didn't know what else to do. And he couldn't tell him the truth. What was he supposed to say? "I'm sorry to tell you this, Nathan, but you're not really you. See, Sylar killed you, and apparently Matt, on the orders of your mother, had your consciousness transferred into Sylar's body, forcing his consciousness into the background and his body to shapeshift into you."

That would go over well.

He wasn't even sure if it was a consciousness in there, or some Sylar-as-Nathan, or what the hell Matt had even done. Was Nathan's soul alive inside Sylar's body, trapped there, or was it free, and this merely an identity crisis on Sylar's part, where too many memories were crowding in, and Matt's midfucking had messed things up. Could two souls share one body? Was there even a soul? Did it follow memory and consciousness--so long as Nathan believed he was Nathan, was Nathan still alive, or were they all fooling themselves?

The questions plagued him, keeping him up when he should be sleeping. He faked it well enough to know Nathan wasn't, to know he often wasn't in bed, leaving Mohinder to stare at the ceiling in peace, his mind whirling around and around with ethical, moral and personal dilemmas. Was what happened with Sylar...what? Had he cheated on a person who didn't even exist? Why had he let it happen? Why had he wanted it to? Why had there even been a smidgen of comfort in his arms at the end? Was it the absence of lies, the fact that they could drop all the pretense, finally, and he didn't have to watch every word for fear of triggering something--or, well, of triggering a change, because gods knew he could trigger Sylar on a hair.

He sighed, rubbing his hand over his face. He was glad Nathan was calling Hiro, glad there was something forward that could be done. Maybe it wasn't right, maybe it was all wrong. Maybe all of this was wrong, and he should call Angela Petrelli, or at least Matt and tell them what was going on--or, well, at least parts of it--and put an end to it somehow, once and for all.

But he couldn't be the one to sign either of their death warrants. He couldn't do that again. So he swallowed back the urge to call and kept his peace and hovered in gardens and corners and kept his watch and vigil and prayed it would be enough.

He was very afraid it wouldn't be, for any of them.

Pushing up off the bench, he paced around the garden, wrapping his arms around himself. It wasn't cold, it was never cold here, but he was chilled nonetheless, and restless, and movement seemed the only hope of curing either condition.

He waited until Mohinder's back was turned, heading back the way he had come as he paced, and then he was stepping out from his hiding spot. He hesitated for a moment, anger so blinding he was certain he wouldn't be able to unclench his fists long enough to make use of his hands, and then that moment was passing. Oh, he was still angry, but there was a sudden, dangerous calm that came with it, not unlike the day he had pinned Mohinder to the ceiling, the last time the sonovabitch had decided to torture him.

Expression going cold, he didn't bother to greet Mohinder as was generally the first move in their game -- this was no longer a game; this was his life -- instead raising his hand, slowly. His fingers curled, mimicking a none too kind hand on the geneticist's shoulder, and then he was yanking back and down, forcing Mohinder to his back on the ground, viciously. If he broke the poor man's skull under the force of the action, it wasn't his problem; he owed it to Mohinder for his betrayal, and he'd certain appreciate the irony if the son died similarly to the father for the same crime.

Mohinder's thoughts jerked abruptly to a halt as he felt the hand on his shoulder. He barely had time to register the feeling, register the pressure before he was falling, before he hit the ground, hard.

He couldn't breathe, the wind completely knocked out of him from the force of the impact, and he was pretty sure he was seeing stars from the way his head bounced on the ground. His back had taken the brunt of the fall, though, and the lungs were his main concern in the panic he was immediately feeling as he tried to draw air in and couldn't. He'd deal with the pain in the back of his head later.

Why, or what, he could barely think to process. He didn't really have to, anyway. The house was secure, and neither his mother or Molly would have the strength or inclination to attack him, which left only Sylar. It wasn't a thought so much as a knowing, and it did nothing to lessen the panic as he tried to force his lungs to work again.

[ooc: *snerk* SO the wrong icon]

Edited 2009-10-19 17:10 (UTC)

Sylar brought up his hand again, pressing down on the Indian's chest and stomach with enough force that he was just short of breaking ribs. He didn't want Mohinder to be able to catch his breath. Maybe then he'd know a fraction of what he felt, the terror at his inability to pin down anything half the time, unseen forces holding him just under the surface of Nathan. Or maybe Suresh wouldn't learn anything at all -- he wasn't all that bright, apparently, if he thought it was a good idea to use him like he had -- but either way, it felt good to make him suffer.

And that in mind, he bit out, "You sonovabitch."

There was no real anger in is tone, however, nor in what could be seen of his face as he crossed the garden to look down at Mohinder. If anything, he looked positively calm and that, perhaps, was the truly terrifying thing. He'd looked just the same way before he'd pinned Mohinder to the ceiling, back when they'd faced off in the other man's apartment all that time ago.

(ooc: LOL Oops!)

Mohinder stared up at him with wide, terrified eyes. The pressure was nigh unto unbearable, and though he sucked in desperately, it didn't feel like any air was coming to his lungs at all. He knew, physiologically, it was his diaphragm contracting and refusing to release, to allow him to inhale, but not being able to force slow deep breaths to relax it, because of the pressure on his ribs, was torture. He felt like he was suffocating, lightheaded and intensely frightened.

When Sylar's face came into view, he searched it for some sign of the man he'd been before, of who they'd been together, the two of them, of what he'd thought Sylar wanted from him. What had he done? He'd gone to him, willingly, last time, hadn't fought him, hadn't argued, hadn't called Angela or Matt to get rid of him and kill him once and for all. He kept his secret, didn't tell Nathan what was going on either, so the other man sharing his body could work to eradicate him. He'd found other explanations for what was happening.

So what had he done? He couldn't ask, though, without air, with the pain that was starting to pound more in his head with the added pressure of lack of oxygen. He could only stare, confused and scared with a simmering anger of betrayal underneath at himself and Sylar both that he'd ever thought there could be anything but this beetween them.

He held on for a moment more, before dropping his hand. While the motion was enough to allow Mohinder the opportunity to breathe, however, the sudden tilt of his head that followed was more than enough to keep him pinned. He didn't want him getting up, he just wanted him to get his voice back so that he could try and fail at explaining himself. So that he could make him beg before he killed him.

"You're as bad as Arthur and Angela, you know," he told him coldly, in the space between the release he'd granted the Indian and actual proper breathing. "They thought they could lie to me -- use me as a weapon. I'm stronger than all of you -- stronger than even Peter, now. It wasn't a bad plan. Or at least it wasn't until I found out what they were doing." A beat, and then he asked, "You know what happened to Arthur, right?"

Mohinder stared at him, still terrified, but with confusion lacing it now, as well. Struggling a bit to make his body relax enough to draw in air, now that the pressure was gone, he finally managed it, but it was still a few moments before he could find his voice, and he was ashamed it trembled a bit. But the anger that had driven him just a few weeks before had dissolved too much, and now he was just...lost.

"I know, yes," he managed to get out, after he dragged in another breath. "But I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't...I haven't lied to you. I'm not trying to use you..." And from his point of view, he wasn't. He was struggling to figure out what to do in this situation, to protect all three of them, and, yes, he didn't want to eradicate Nathan--it hurt too much to think about--but he hadn't wanted to eradicate him either, and what the fuck was he supposed to do? He didn't have anyone to guide him, no one to turn to for help, no one he could trust.

"Really." He crouched down next to Mohinder, eyes jumping down to the Indian's rib cage as he considered breaking one of his ribs for lying. Or for being stupid enough not to pick up on what he was doing, ruining what little remained of his life by letting Nathan play hero with his abilities.

Deciding to point that out, he let his eyes drift back to Suresh's face, expression lacking its usual heat, despite the fact that he was staring at him from under his eyebrows. "Then why the hell did you talk Nathan into calling Nakamura? You could have taught him how to control his abilities. You could have given him something to keep him from using them -- or have you forgotten about that you did to me? But no, you sent him off to play hero with what's mine, and I didn't even get a say in it! What makes you or what you're doing better than Arthur and Angela? What gives you the right to be so Goddamn self-righteous?"

Edited 2009-10-20 18:19 (UTC)

"What I gave you to keep you from using your abilities was a drug that paralyzed part of your brain," Mohinder half spat at him, anger surging again. "It wasn't a permanent solution, wouldn't last, and I don't have access to the pills they use at the Company, even if they'd work on you, and how would I explain to him when he suddenly couldn't fly? The moment I tell him the truth of what's going on, he'll tell Bennet or Angela, and you're gone. He's going to want to live as much as you do, and they've already proven they want you gone."

He took a breath, while he still could. "I don't know how to teach him to turn them off, or control them. Let's think how well my working with Peter went on that one, when New York nearly exploded. I can try...but to teach him to control them, he has to acknowledge them...and Hiro was all I could think of that kept him away from Angela and Bennet. Or Matt." He stared at him, frowning, just as much indignant betrayal radiating from him. "I...am doing my best here. I don't know what the right thing is to do. I don't know how to fix this, for anyone...I'm just trying to get through each day keeping you both alive."

And he knew Sylar probably didn't give a damn if Nathan was alive or not, considering he killed him, but he cared, and if he'd said he didn't, Sylar would have known he was lying.

"You don't get it," Sylar snarled, sudden hot fury lighting in his eyes. "Nathan's dead, Suresh. That thing you're nursemaiding? It's not him. It's a ghost, it's a -- a cancer, and it's killing me. Just because you think you can wake me up every time you get tired of screwing him doesn't mean I'm winning. It's all slipping away and what are you doing about it?" He all but barked out a laugh. "You tell me you're helping while you screw me over, trying to make him -- me -- into something that isn't who I am. You're making it worse, and I've been helping you by letting him come back. I trusted you."

He paused, sucking in a short breath through his teeth as he tried to order his thoughts, realizing in hindsight that not only had that come out in a rush but it had been anything but coherent. If anything though, his efforts to calm himself down only seemed to further his fury. "Maybe I owe you something for not turning me in to Bennet and mom, but it's not enough. It doesn't make up for the fact that you're trying to force the redemption -- or whatever the hell this is -- that you'll never get on him. On me. I don't want it; I just want my life back. And I'm so tired of being your charity project. Or your whore. Or whatever the hell you want from me. You're not doing you're best -- you're doing whatever the fuck serves you.

"Just like your father."

Edited 2009-10-21 18:22 (UTC)

Mohinder flinched away from the words--more emotionally than physically, given his situation, but they hit their mark. They hurt, and not the least because of the grain of truth in them. Nathan was dead, and nothing Mohinder did was going to change that. Claire maybe could have, but no one had thought of that quick enough, and now he was left with a ghost and a madman, an echo and a resonance, all trapped and wrapped up in one body, and Sylar was right that it wasn't fair to him. What they'd done wasn't right, and to snap back that it was just punishment for what he'd done wasn't going to help, and wasn't right either. It wasn't just--there was no justice in this. Death would have been better, cleaner.

And maybe he was looking for his own redemption in the other two--in him, in...trying to force Nathan's basic decency into Sylar's consciousness somehow, to show him what he could be. He swallowed. Playing god, just like his father, just like Matt.

It really was too easy to slide down into guilt these days.

"What do you want from me, then?"

"Nothing," he answered, temper sliding back into cold calm. He shifted a bit, reaching out to brush his fingers over his hair, but there was no intimacy in the gesture. This was not the touch of the man who had inexplicably cuddled up next to him just weeks before. "You're out of chances, Suresh. And even though I'm going to kill you, I don't want your ability. You get to die like Chandra did."

His fingers twisted sharply in his hair. "Same crime, same punishment."

Mohinder felt a cold chill run through him at that, cold enough to snap back even the sharp pain of the fingers in his hair and leave him feeling numb. He looked at Sylar and all he could see was death. He'd seen it before, and always fought his way free, somehow, but he didn't know if he had the will for it anymore. There was too much blood on his hands and maybe he deserved it.

But they didn't, was all he could think, and he struggled a bit in Sylar's grip.

"Not here. Whatever you're going to do to me...don't do it here. Don't put my mother and Molly through that again...please..."

"Fine." He could at least honor the last request of a dead man walking. Call it payment for what little Mohinder had done to help him, not turning him over to Bennet and Angela. "But if you try to get away from me, I'll make sure you suffer. I'll make sure she suffers. We clear?"

"I won't try to run," Mohinder promised, eyes a little dull. Where was there to run to, anyway? If Nathan was dead, really, and he'd pushed Sylar from whatever they'd formed to this, and he had so much blood on his hands that he wasn't good for Molly anymore...she'd been doing so well under his mother's hands...

"We're clear."

"Good." That said, he readjusted his grip on Mohinder's hair, fingers even more vicious than before, and stood up, pulling the geneticist up to his feet along with him as painfully as possible. "Anywhere in specific you feel like dying, Suresh? Or do I get to pick?"

Really, he could care less, either way. Mohinder needed to pay for his betrayal before he slipped away again. It didn't matter where.

"Just somewhere away from here," Mohinder said, wincing as he tried to gain his feet and get them under him, even though everything hurt to move. "I don't care where, otherwise..."

Sylar hummed, accepting, and dropped his hand away from his hair. He turned, one hand curling into a fist at his side, Mohinder's shirt crumpling a bit as if his fingers were fisted in it. He tugged once, just to make sure the Indian understood the idea that he was leashed, then moved towards the door back into the house, dragging Mohinder through it and out onto the street, hurriedly.

He took a moment to look around once they were outside, taking it all in -- he hadn't actually been outside of the house the few times he'd been himself, always confining himself, not wanting to be seen. He didn't take too long, however, not wanting to risk Mohinder regaining his will to fight, and with a sigh he started down the street, still tugging the other man along. He stopped just short of the first unoccupied alley they stumbled upon; a brick wall would work as well as anything to beat his head in.

"You first."

Mohinder let himself be dragged. His mind was racing, trying to see a way out of this. He didn't want to die. Maybe he deserved it, maybe it was only fair, but he didn't want to die. But he'd promised not to run. He didn't know if she'd be safe after, anyway, but he hoped, prayed, that she would be.

But he didn't want to die.

The sight of the alley made his stomach twist in fear and he didn't think he could take that step, freezing at the mouth of it. He'd promised not to run, but he couldn't move inside either like a cattle to the slaughter.

"I can't..."

Casting a glance over his shoulder, he couldn't help but roll his eyes. He'd half-expected this, of course, self-preservation a powerful thing -- enough to win out in spite of Mohinder's apparent death wish -- but that didn't make him any happier. Nor did it stop him from digging his nails into his palm, invisible grip tightening in the other man's shirt or from making a gesture that seemed to suggest that he was throwing a baseball, pitching Suresh over his shoulder and into the alley without mercy.

Mohinder felt himself fly forward against all the resistance he'd put up, none of his strength helping him now as he fell to his knees, palms scraping across the gravel as he tried to catch himself and failed. He looked up, judging the distance, fight or flight kicking in, but flight wasn't an option, and even fight wasn't much of an option.

He didn't know what would push Sylar into going after Molly, and so the only thing he could think to do would be to talk his way out of this somehow. Rolling a bit until he was sitting, he watched the shadow in the alleyway that somehow managed to encompass love and hate and fear and faith all in one, and didn't know how anyone could carry so much conflict about another inside them.

"So this is it, then? I made a mistake, trying to find a way to keep this all together and you hidden from them, and it's the last one I'll make? Then what? You haven't got control back, Sylar. Nathan's too strong...what are you going to do when he goes home, freaked out about what's happened to me, with no one to explain to him, and goes straight to Angela and Bennet?"

"You don't listen," Sylar snapped, fanning his fingers out to shove Mohinder back into the wall behind him with enough force to hopefully break something. "I lose either way, Suresh. Bennet or my own brain deciding I'm the wrong half of this -- this hell. It doesn't matter. At least if I kill you, it's because I decided to. Rather than having you betray who and what I am again and again, behind my back."

Perhaps he'd let too much slip in admitting to Mohinder that he was starting to feel like his body and mind were trying to get rid of him rather than the other way around, but at this point, he didn't care. It didn't matter how blurred the lines were or what fleeting hope he may have given him. Suresh would be dead in a few minutes, Sylar not staying this hand this time. He wouldn't get the chance to try anything stupid, whatever that entailed.

"This is my choice. Not yours. Not Nathan's. Not Angela's. This is how I want to go down. Swinging rather than just fading away."

Edited 2009-10-23 17:40 (UTC)

Mohinder cried out a bit at the force with which he hit the wall, feeling a sharp pain in his back and side as he hit, and it was suddenly hard to breathe again. He wondered if he'd broken his back, but then reasoned if he had it wouldn't hurt this fucking much. Rib then, maybe, or scapula. Something. He'd heard a snap, he was sure, and breathing around the pain became necessary, even as he tried to figure out how to reason his way around it.

"So you'd rather kill me for trying to find a way to save you than work with me to find a way you can live with?" he asked, wheezing a bit, curling over in pain. "You've given up? Just going to go out in a flash of tantrum, causing as much pain as you can, and call it your choice rather than doing whatever it takes to survive? I never figured you for a quitter."

He made another gesture, this time intentionally snapping another rib in hopes that it would get Mohinder to shut up.

"You haven't tried. You stopped playing the game." That much was fact, far from the rage-fueled accusations of earlier. He'd given Mohinder weeks -- month. He'd threatened the things he cared about, demanding answers, as was part and parcel of how they worked. And what had Mohinder done? Nothing. He'd kept Nathan in the dark. He called him out whenever he felt like changing up who he was fucking. No actual progress had been made. "So excuse me if I don't trust you not to keep sitting on your ass until even you can't call me out again."

Mohinder cried out again, shuddering in pain. It was blinding, turning the world white and then dark in a way he couldn't fathom, couldn't deal with for a moment. Sylar's words were just noise, something in the background of the waves of pain washing through him and he couldn't breathe. At that moment, he just wished he'd kill him to stop the pain.

"I don't know how to reverse it," Mohinder finally said, gasping around the nausea from the pain. "It's not science, what they did...what Matt did...science can't undo it...you have to find somehow...something to hold on to...I was trying...trying to give you that..." Give them both that, but whatever. He could have let Sylar go the time he tried to, not called him out again.

if someone betrays me, i won't be a victim (rp for witnessof_fate

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